Found some old locks, have questions.

[m3ph15t0]

So I found this great place in my town called A&R salvage. The guy who owns it is selling me old deadbolt cylinders for 2$ (american). I picked up two yales, two corbins, and one that says "sargent" and one that says "eagle".

So, my questions are: Has anyone ever heard of eagle or sargent? And the two corbins each seem to have what looks like a small ball on the bottom of each pinstack. Anyone know what"s with that?

I"ve been too busy to practice picking for a long time, and lately I"ve been getting back into it and I"m really excited to have several locks that I can"t pick yet, because my master #3"s, cheapo target locks, and crappy kwikset cylinders have been getting boring.

[Raymond]

All of those lock brands are very common, or at least used to be very common. The Eagle is probably the most rare.

The Corbins use ball bearings instead of bottom pins to prevent the bottom pins from wearing out. I still occasionally set up locks with several balls on doors that get a lot of heavy usage. Use at least one solid bottom pin at the end of the plug. The springs will probably have a small rod inside the spring to prevent overlifting the ball to the shear line. Pin the lock normally using master pins just above the ball to create the correct pin length. They also probably have spool top pins as Corbin, Russwin, and Yale were known to use them.

The Sargent is still a normal lock in current usage, depending on the keyway.

[StabbyJoe]

I've heard of Eagle... those locks go by another name as well... company changed name or got taken over or something... see if you can get the other name off someone and you might be able to get some more info by searching for the other company instead of Eagle.

[dmux]

funny you say that, i have an eagle lock right here in my hand, my dad has it since like the 70's when he was in the army. it has a very restricted keyway but it can be picked with petersons slenders

[m3ph15t0]

Thanks, I took them apart and checked, and you're all correct. The corbins have the pins in the springs, and all of them, have some spools, which is excellent, I need practice.

[jpb06080]

Sargent is still very common, although eagle i think just makes high security now. The ball bearings in the corbins were to ease the pressure appplied to the pins in corbin locks. Tough locks to pick in general.