Curious about antique key...

[MacGyver101]

I have a question for our antique lock experts...

One of the Canadian hardware/woodworking stores regularly features antique tools on their catalog covers. Their most recent catalog cover featured a collection of antique keys... including one which caught my eye:



Given the depth of knowledge on this site, I'm sure that somebody knows: what type of lock was this double-ended key designed for... and what is the purpose of the warding cut-outs in the centre? (It wouldn't seem that the vertical part of the "T"-shaped portion of the cutout would interact with any wards when you twisted the key... was the key made to be slid along some sort of keyway, rather than rotated?)

Many thanks, in advance, for any thoughts/recollections that people have.

[ilmr]

I have a question for our antique lock experts...

One of the Canadian hardware/woodworking stores regularly features antique tools on their catalog covers. Their most recent catalog cover featured a collection of antique keys... including one which caught my eye:

img]http://i226.photobucket.com/albums/dd104/MacGyverLP101/LV_HW_Cov.jpg[/img]

Given the depth of knowledge on this site, I'm sure that somebody knows: what type of lock was this double-ended key designed for... and what is the purpose of the warding cut-outs in the centre? (It wouldn't seem that the vertical part of the "T"-shaped portion of the cutout would interact with any wards when you twisted the key... was the key made to be slid along some sort of keyway, rather than rotated?)

Many thanks, in advance, for any thoughts/recollections that people have.

I'm no expert on old locks, but here's my thoughts on those.
For typing, those are warded locks. The double sided works inserted in four different ways. The warding inside the lock is made in a shape of an oval where you have the insertion part removed. It wouldn't rotate around it's shank, rather around the warding. The lock also might have additional guides for movement.

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[MacGyver101]

. . . The warding inside the lock is made in a shape of an oval where you have the insertion part removed. It wouldn't rotate around it's shank, rather around the warding. . .

Ah. So if I'm understanding that correctly, you wouldn't twist the key, but instead would push it along some sort of (counter-)clockwise track? Interesting: I'll have to dig around for an example of that. Thanks for the lead...

[greyman]

I know that type of key as a French latch, but it probably has lots of other names and wasn't invented in France! They are old - hundreds of years - in the days of the good old warded locks. The key works by sliding along a bridge in the lock with wards on it. It is a closed end, so that it compresses a spring clip as it goes and opens the latch. There are two bits on the key so I assume it's a type of "master key", since it can be used to open two different locks.

[Stray]

Lee valley Catalog?

[MacGyver101]

Thanks very much, greyman, for the info! The warding cut-out in line with the key shaft led me to believe it must have been something like that: I'll have to do some digging through my older lock references for some examples of that type of latch.

And, to answer Stray's question... yes: that was the latest Hardware Catalog from Lee Valley Tools. I've been resisting the urge to dig into it, as I know it'll lead to another wave of tool purchases that I don't really need.

[Stray]

I got the Christmas one in the mail yesterday, just don't remember seeing that one, unless my father got a hold of it before I did.

[aussielocky]

I know that type of key as a French latch, but it probably has lots of other names and wasn't invented in France! They are old - hundreds of years - in the days of the good old warded locks. The key works by sliding along a bridge in the lock with wards on it. It is a closed end, so that it compresses a spring clip as it goes and opens the latch. There are two bits on the key so I assume it's a type of "master key", since it can be used to open two different locks.

Technically known as ' Odells patent ' ..

[MacGyver101]

Thanks to greyman's advice, I was able to find this additional entry in an 1836 edition of The Engineer's and Mechanic's Encyclopaedia:

. . . There is another kind of [simple door] latch which affords all the security of a lock, with numerous wards, termed a French latch. A small, but broad, flat key, having numerous wards cut out of a solid plate of metal, is passed through a narrow horizontal perforation in the door (covered with a suitable escutcheon), whence it enters the body of the latch; the key being then merely lifted upwards, the solid wards of the latch pass through the interstices of the key, permitting the latter thus to unlatch the door.

I hadn't run across an example of those before... you learn something new here every day. Many thanks to everyone for the info!

(The encyclopedia entry does notably fail to mention whether the lock was considered resistant to 1836 bump-keys... but I'm sure that John Falle's great-great-grandfather had a French Latch impressioning system on the market.)

[Bandit_b]

To tell you the truth I've never seen anything like that key. Well, it does look very pretty I bet it costs a lot of money (for being an antique). Now you've got me really interested in this mechanism.

[sir lot is here]

You may find these locks with keys like that in old old church'es
thats my 2cence

[linty]

i have an ancient padlock at work somewhere that uses a key that slides along a path instead of turning. pretty neat, but in practice it's a terrible lock.
I don't think I'd be able to pick it or bypass it easily, but it takes a lot of work to get it open even when you have the key.

[Shark78]

the key of the middle looks like to the key of an old German lock. the particularity of this lock is that you are obliged to lock the door if you want to take the key out of the lock. you unlock the door, you open it, then you push the key totally inside the lock to used it on the other side of the door.

is it clear ? this lock is typical of a town in germany and haves the name of this town.