What's the hardest lock you ever reassembled?

[zeke79]

No as these are a small diameter. Your best luck might be looking for springs out of dimple locks but they will likely not be a heave enough spring to work properly.

[n2oah]

Abloy Protec (I had to decode all of the disks and the key), Fichet 787 was also difficult when I got the gears out of mesh. Miwa EC was also one I had a helluva time with.

[raimundo]

if you do lose some parts or have disfunctional old locks, you should take the spring clips, springs, pins, special screws and sidebars out before you throw the cylinder away, all this can be kept in a plastic pill jar, and when you next need a particular part you can look there to find one,
while its interesting to hear what is hard to reassemble, it would be more helpful if people shared the tricks that work in reassembling. a piece of corregated paper such as lightbulbs are wrapped in helps to arrange parts, the spring clip that replaces a follower in a euro cylinder is a good thing to know, and also as you dissasemble a lock marking parts with a black marker so that they can be replaced in the same orientation that they come out in is a good thing to do. You will have to wipe the lube off before marking.

[zeke79]

Another trick for euro locks is to cut a plug follower into pieces so you can load them one at a time from the slot that the cam sits in.