I need major help with reassembling a American Lock.

[winxcl]

I have watched some internet vidoes about someone opening and disassembling an american lock so i decided to try to disassemble one to see first hand how it looks. But While i as assembling it, after got the actual lock mechanism out and removed the c clamp, I accidentally placed the key pins barrow on its side and all of the key pins fell out. I was not paying much attention because i thought that there was only going to be 5 key pins and would be easily fixable when a key is inserted and replacing the key pins.
But then I realized that there were actually 10 key pins for the 5 slots that are used for this lock. So then i first tried to replace the spring and the driver pins back into the outer shell of the lock but then i noticed that the driver pins do not fit flush with the gap so I could not easily fit the inner barrow back into the driver pin shell of the lock.

And is there any way that I would reassemble a lock that has 2 key pins? I am guessing that these two key pins are used so that a master key would be able to open this lock as well.

And I have took some pictures which I placed into a zip file to save some space and it would be easier to download.

http://rapidshare.com/files/159189945/l ... s.zip.html

Any help would be appreciated.

Many Thanks!

[winxcl]

Oh, I forgot to mention some details.

There are two different types of driver pins, as in the pictures, can anyone explain why.

And there is also 2 key pins that are colored red. And once again I have no clue as to why they are so.

[Olson Burry]

I think 83mb of pics is a little excessive! I will try to help you though.

If you can get all the key pins back into the cylinder in such a way that they sit flush with the top then youre half way there, I line them up by a straight edge along the key first, then drop them in and see what happens, generally one or two are wrong but its simple to hold the others in and switch them around a bit.

I dont know if all of the smaller ("master"?) pins are all the same size but if they are its going to be easier.

The next bit is fiddly. You'll need some tweezers. You can use a plug follower if you can make one to make it a little easier. The basic trick is to push against the pin in the hole and spring trapping it there and using the end of a pick or something to drop it down, whilst pushing your cylinder over them.

Skip about 4.30 in to this video and see how he achieves this using a battery.

You can also achieve the same effect by using the actual cylinder with the key pins in turned just so that they dont fall out.

Its fiddly but if you use your imagination a bit it'll be fine.

[winxcl]

Sorry for the large file size, I didnt really want to individually upload the different pictures so I decided that making a zip would be easier

But i think that i understand the gist of what you are talking about. Ill will try this when i get home tonight. But i think that there are a little size differences between the different smaller key pins. I will try this time with the pins lined up with the key w/o putting them into the cylinder first because it is very difficult to get them into the cylinder

And do you think that the different driver pins mean anything? two of them are ribbed for some reason

And there are two of the longer key pins that are colored red for some reason

And I am kind of hesitant in fitting in the driver pins and the cylinder into them because i think that if the key pins are incoorect order, the driver pins would mess up the lock and prevent it from coming apart again to fix.

[jpb06080]

Did the drivers all fall out? One nice thing about these locks is there are holes at the bottom of the housing which allow you to reload each stack without a follower. You can use these holes to load the entire lock, including the springs. Just spin the plug to 6 o clock, drop in the springs, spin it back to 12, and push all the springs up into their respective homes. After that, do the same with the drivers. Use a pick to push all the pins into the bible, while applying turning pressure. Once the plug turns, return the plug to 6 o clock, insert the key, and put your bottom pins in. Be careful to make sure they are flush with the plug, otherwise the key won't work and you'll need to pick it and try again.

[Olson Burry]

I am kind of hesitant in fitting in the driver pins and the cylinder into them because i think that if the key pins are incoorect order, the driver pins would mess up the lock and prevent it from coming apart again to fix.

If the key pins are flush with the top of the cylinder with the key inserted then you have a right order.

You have a mixture of serrated and spool pins from the look of the pictures, you can really stick them in in any order, and as there is no way of telling which stack they came from you'll have to go ahead.

A steel pin should go near the front, if not *at* the front. As for the colours, some pins are like that to make identification easier for when you re-pin a lock, perhaps that has happened during this one's life.