Hi All! What about Skeleton Keys?

[dazza]

sorry about spelling i ment skeleton key

[Shrub]

Well i think as the others realsised ketle meet pot wasnt at the original poster.

[dazza]

no worries shrub thought you was on about me ?i will try
to give better advise next time im still learning.my apologies
its took me a year to build confidence to post i think i best take another year and learn a bit more first.

[Shrub]

No not you

As you all know it came from the phrase 'thats the kettle calling the pot black'

[Chrispy]

So true, so true.

[-DDay-]

[quote="pizarro"]

Have a look at a key for a pin tumbler lock, and a key for a mortice/lever lock. If you can figure out how to create a tool that will open both these types of locks, please, PLEASE, let us know.

[quote]
^ Unfortunately in my newbishness I have no idea what a mortice/lever lock is... I mean, I know what a pin-tumbler lock is...but...*sigh*

[HeadHunterCEO]

skeleton keyhttp://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.eng.fsu.edu/~emcdonald/drafting/images/skeleton_key.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.eng.fsu.edu/~emcdonald/drafting/&h=616&w=720&sz=86&tbnid=5hsgjd92SZlTeM:&tbnh=118&tbnw=139&hl=en&ei=Wr0IRJeJJM38aITUiMsD&sig2=htmsl6Gk41gtGLQ-IHA3fQ&start=17&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dskeleton%2Bkey%26svnum%3D10%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26sa%3DN

[linty]

i may be wrong, but i believe that would be more properly referred to as a barrel key, since a skeleton key refers more to an aplication than a design.

[nezumi]

You're right, Linty. That COULD be a skeleton key, but it likely isn't (and it certainly isn't without a lock to accompany it!) Skeleton keys are of that style of key though.

^ Unfortunately in my newbishness I have no idea what a mortice/lever lock is... I mean, I know what a pin-tumbler lock is...but...*sigh*

A mortice lock basically means a lock built into the door itself, rather than through the hole for the deadbolt or through the knob. Usually the face is flush with the side of the door.

A lever lock is an older style lock they use mostly in Europe. Basically the key turns a bunch of round bits with notches or somesuch. The notches allow different levers to be at different levels within the lock. Almost by definition they're mortise, it would seem. You can use the search function to find some nice examples around here.

But the point of the post is probably just that you need different tools for different locks (or just a big drill, but I don't think you could even loosely define that as being a skeleton key).

[Shrub]

A mortice is a blind recess or rebate in a material, in the case of lever locks this means that instead of notching out a cut from the face of the door and screwing the lock on that way the mortice lock is recessed into the edge of the door.

A lever lock works on the princible that you insert the correct key to lift all the levers in that lock to a correct hight in order to throw the bolt, the levers are differing sizes to help make the key have differant bitings.

In much older locks instead of having more levers with anti pick features on them the locks had a warding that the working key must be cut to for it to turn in the lock.
A skeleton key would be one of these keys cut down so that essentially all that was left on the key was the part that threw the bolt and not any of the part that would need to get around the wardings, as these keys were seriously wasted they were often refered to as a skeleton key as they were stripped down to their bare bones, a ring of 4 or 5 keys will in most cases open any warded lock you came upto so the next obvious way was to change the size and shape of the key holes more and more until the lever system was brought into play,

This then progressed onto locks haveing more levers until they were icked then anti pick features were added to the levers until then a british standard was released that set a standard of minimum security standards a lever lock should forfill one of these requirements being that a curtain has to be in the lock this means that a disc of material with a key hole in is placed behind the case cover, once turned the only hole visible to get tools through was the hole for the stem which in most cases is either 4.5mm diameter or 5-5.5mm diameter now you try and get a tool strong enought to lift 5 or more levers individualy and a tool that tensions the lock in the same hole and you are beigining to understand the complexities i picking these locks, add to that that the curtain extends to the other side of the lock meaning your tools can only more 10-20' rotation either way.

These are not old school locks with them being far superiour to most of the locks the members in the us side of things on here use for practise, youve got more chance of picking your cylinders than succesfully opening a mortice lock.

Illusion has a guide on here that shows the insides of one of the simple locks out there if you care to see what they look like.

[nezumi]

Ugh... Any way to delete headhunters URL post? Or to generally limit post sizes in the future? Scrolling across like this is a pain in the butt.

[Shrub]

It does get a bit of a pain at times i agree, there are ways you can post a url without it showing the full url but to be honest deleting a helpful post from another member isnt the way to go and somthing you cant request.

You have to live with it im afraid just like we do with all the pics the noobs display that are 5 times too big, way of life unfortunatley.

[illusion]

I guess you make a text link for the Url, but it's involve bothering a moderator needlessly to edit his post. The page-stretch is pretty long though.