Schlage L Series Mortise

[1mrchristopher]

At work today, I was tasked with pinning 4 mortise cylinders out at the county Fairgrounds, for new showers that were added.

The county had hired my mentor to pin and supply cylinders, because the construction firm insisted that the lock bodies did not include them (which was incorrect). I was called and told that those cylinders wouldn't work because they wouldn't fit the faceplate. My immediate response was: "What do you mean they don't fit the faceplate? Their standard mortise cylinders!?"

I headed over there and was greeted by this:


That confused me to no end. Looks like a KIK cylinder sticking out of the faceplate.
Disassembly however revealed this:


I admitted freely that I had never seen a mortise cylinder like this, but told the grounds manager that it was no problem to pin them up.

Here are a few pictures of the cylinder out of the door, and on the bench:



Now, bearing in mind that these were factory new Schlage cylinders, zero bitted, I was disappointed that one of the 4 cylinders had horribly disfigured springs:


Three of the six had to be picked out, as they were crushed, and one of those three had a stuck top pin that I was able to remove by gentle tapping. None of the GMS cylinders I've worked with have been so poorly put together. Was this a fluke, or is Schlage going south?

[hjlocks]

I haven't worked on that style of mortise cylinder, but I have taken apart a few newer schlage locks with mutilated springs. I think they may be a slightly thinner gauge than what is commonly used.

[billdeserthills]

I have only seen pictures of those, they are called "concealed mortise cylinders".
Schlage has been going downhill since they moved their factory under NAFTA over to Mexico
[ADMIN EDIT: a whole bunch of shit that doesn't belong on this forum was clipped from this line, OP sent PM about it] and for this reason sometimes when I open a schlage deadbolt I will find a knob lock strike plate in the box, or I will find that the mounting screw holes were never tapped or I'll find there are two packs of latch screws but the lock body screws are gone. No matter, I figure that is part of the fun of doubling my money and I have purchased extra screws for most if not all schlage & kwikset products.

I wonder how many of you guys even remember finding two sets of lock mounting screws in the old kwikset double deadbolts? Kwikset used to actually care enough about their clients security that they would toss in a set of one-way screws in Every double deadbolt. Try finding that today! I buy the one-way screws from kwikset in a big box so I can include them with the locks I sell.

I'm soo glad to hear schlage has once again cheapened their product, I would feel sooo bad if their company CEO wasn't able to make 10's of millions every year off the sweat of citizens everywhere.

[cledry]

I fail to see how the nationality of the person at the factory results in crushed springs.

[GWiens2001]

Have an old Yale mortise cylinder with that exact same shaped front. It even had serrated pins, if I recall correctly. So it is not just Schlage that made those mortise cylinders. Thought there was a cover plate missing, but now I see what that shape is for, so I learned here, too!

Gordon