Why did this lockie grind my key?

[linty]

Right: Best Access Systems. Tip index stop.
Spacing tolerance needs to be exact to 1/1000" and the distance between the nose and the index is not something , so if you index to the nose, you'll likely get a spacing error.

Sorry, I retract my use of Best keys as an example. Thanks for catching that.

Still the rest holds true I guess.

[Eyes_Only]

If the cost of the key was reasonable don'y worry about it. The time spent worrying about this could be put to use picking locks.

Thats is true. These guys charge the lowest price of most all their keys, like $1 each.

[kissnatcher1]

Now to play devils advo you all may be right on the reasoning to ensure a repete cust but then again how worn was the key u had the shop to dup?maybe he has a worm machine and was doing his job by takeing the burs off?Dont know just a thought

[freakparade3]

Now to play devils advo you all may be right on the reasoning to ensure a repete cust but then again how worn was the key u had the shop to dup?maybe he has a worm machine and was doing his job by takeing the burs off?Dont know just a thought

I'm not an expert on key cutting but aren't burrs removed with a wire or nylon spoke wheel not a grinder?

[Jaakko]

freakparade, you are right about that. I have heard about this kind of "keeping the customers" practice, just never have seen a "modded" key...

[davou]

i might be able to help you.

i read on here once somewhere, that some, somewhat low class lockies will do something like that. something small, and not so noticeable.

what happens next is this: you go to the nearest place to get a key copied, and because there is a piece of it missing that doesnt stick out to you, the following happens: some other lockie copies the key, and you take it home, and the key doesnt work. or it is sticky, or whatever else.

so you take the original back to the first lockie, the one who cut it funny. and he copies it perfectly for you and it works great. from then on you always go there because for whatever reason he can cut your key.

what happened is this: the second lockie doesnt know that there is a spot shaved off, and when its placed in the machine, it doesnt sit right. subsequently, the copied key is wrong.

solution? ask for your key to be cut by code and not just duped.

optional: call out the first mischevious lockie and tell him hes an donkey for cheating unsuspecting fools like that.

thats PROBABLY it.

I recently had to file my fiances key in this way... She had taken it to a co-op (hardware store in Canada) to be copied and there was two problems with the cut

-The shoulder wasn't in the right position
-The lower part of the blade was longer than the original. (suspect this was the cause of problem #1)

Both were very easy to notice and fix once we realized that the key wasn't operating the lock, but she got a little pissed at me... I have no deburring wheel, and ruined her relatively expensive emery board.

[rakemaster]

Are you sure he was grinding the key and not deburring it? Most key duplicators leave the key kind of rough, and it's common to have to use a brush wheel on the key to take the burrs off after making a duplicate. Of course if he was actually grinding it everything said above applies, but there might be a misunderstanding about what was going on.

[Eyes_Only]

Yeah I thought they were doing that for extra deburing too. Thats why I initially didn't think much of it until later on when I realized they only grinded the top slope of the tip on one key and then the bottom slope of the tip on another key. I just really wanted to know what this was for.

[rakemaster]

Ah, OK I misunderstood then. Hadn't realized you actually noticed a different result.

Unless this was a tip-stopped key (like a BEST), I don't see how grinding anything from the tip would make it hard to duplicate the dupe, so I doubt that was the reason it was done. The reason is that most key machines index off the bottom shoulder. So the usual trick for making a key hard to duplicate (a sleezy thing to do to a paying customer, but a common thing, i hear), is to grind off a bit of the bottom shoulder. The top shoulder will still be there so the key will work, but the key will go too far in on a duplicating machine.

Do the top and bottom shoulders line up? If not, then this is what was done to your key. Otherwise it's something else (such as someone suggested, using a 6 pin blank for a 5 pin key).

RM

[Eyes_Only]

Well only one small part of the key tip was grinded leaving the rest of the key material there so I doubt it was to shorten the key from a longer one.

I really do doubt that this was any kind of fraud since like you said the key was aligned at the shoulder (this is for a mailbox lock and not any kind of tip stop key). This only makes me more curious about this than anything.

[TOWCH]

Have we established that this was in fact a grinding modification of the key, and not just a de-burring wire brushing?

[Eyes_Only]

I'd say yes. The key was run in a wire brush prior to the light grinding.

[Darwin Steve]

eyes_only - I reckon I know what he was doing, and I don't think it's anything fraudulent or dodgy. If you handed him a 5 pin key, and he only had the 6 pin version of that same key profile, he will have cut the key, which will have left an unusually shaped tip - he will then have ground off the superfluous extra piece so that your key would slide easily into the keyway......

[Eyes_Only]

And I thought this thread was dead by now. lol. I really don't care anymore. I asked my co-worker about this but even he didn't know why only the upper tip was grinded and he's been cutting keys at our shop for 7 years.

It doesn't really matter anymore, if I need a key cut next time all I have to do is cut them myself at work.

[Raccoon]

rakemaster: The bottom shoulder of a key has no reliable use or purpose. A key is indexed by the top shoulder and the bottom spine of the key. Not every key has a bottom shoulder, and not every key's top and bottom shoulder line up (take a look at KW10 titan keys).

You will note that every (?) key machine has a flip-up shoulder stop index that makes contact with the blade of the key.