Corbin with weird pins

[Wolf2486]

I bought this older Corbin, and I took it apart. Much to my surprise I found the pin stack to be odd. Below are pictures of the Corbin and the pin stack, instead of a normal key pin it is a little ball with a, what looks to be a spacer, pin on top. The driver stack consists of two pins, one spool and one regular. Any information on the what fors and why nots on this lock would be much appreciated. Thank You. Wolf



Here's the lock



Here is the pin stack, the bottom being the ball and on top the key pin and so on.

[MrB]

I believe the extra (looks like spacer) pin in the stack would be a sign of master keying. The ball would be to help prevent excessive wear in heavy use by reducing friction between key and pin.

[MrB]

By the way, wouldn't your two recent posts fit better in the Locks forum rather then the Lockpicks - Automatic/Mechanical forum?

[Wolf2486]

That could be a possibility. Your right about the location, that was what I was going for I just wasn't observant enough to catch which forum I was in.

[Pickermeapie]

I have a similar lock I have seen in use except it was a Russwin with a RU4 Keyway. Does it make picking any harder having that ball bearing in there?
-Pickermeapie

[Wolf2486]

No not really. You have to raise them higher and sometimes they make the pick slip. However, the five spool pins within the lock do make it rather challenging. It took me a full 15 minutes the first time I tried to pick it.

[Pickermeapie]

love...ly

[raimundo]

that spacer pin is indeed a master pin, there might have been more of them in the other pin stacks, although they can fall out at the 180 degree turn if a pick is used rather than a key, (the key fills the keyway and dosent leave room for them to fall into the bottom of the keyway when its turned up.) The ball bearing is used in old corbins at the first pin to reduce wear on the first pin. when a key is put into the lock, all five places wear on the point of the first pin, while the last pin only meets the key for its own place. So the first pin will wear five times as fast as the last pin. If the lock is used on an apartment building with 30 or more people keying it 3 or more times a day, ten years makes an old lock.

[Wolf2486]

Yeah, sounds logical enough. However the ball bearing is in the first AND second postition. I guess to provide even more protection against wear.

[Pickermeapie]

I took apart a old Russwin with a RU4 keyway, First 5 had ball bearings in them. 6 pin plug.

[mikeg]

It looks like a Corbin master ring cylinder, unless you have really small hands. The balls keep pin wear down, , Corbin uses them only in the first two pin holes. The idea of the long pin used on the spool pin was more to lock the master ring in place, masterkeying only in the plug. These cyllinders have two shear lines in them.

[Pickermeapie]

Yes, thank you for establishing that MikeG And for the record, im sure this has more than 2 shear lines in it. It can have multiple depending on how many pinstacks contain master wafers.

[digital_blue]

Maybe I'm confused about this, but if I'm not mistaken, Pickermeapie, you mean that master pinning could create multiple "combinations" (ie individual pins could be set in several positions and still work), but there would still only be two physical shear lines. In other words, there would be two paces at which the plug would turn (a plug in a tube, so to speak).

At least that's how I understand it. Somebody correct me if I'm understanding this wrong.

db

[MrB]

Somebody correct me if I'm understanding this wrong.

No, you are right. There are only two shear lines.

[mikeg]

If you took all the pins out of that cylinder, there is a piece that looks like annother "mini" cylinder. That is the pare creating the two shearlines in this lock. It functions like a plug (without a keyway) some pins will fall into the plug or be raised into the master ring letting this ring and plug turn, or the plug just turns.
mike