by Sinifar » 14 Jun 2015 11:09
This is another "Running the Railroad" story.
Back in the late 70's like 77 - 79 we sold a lot of Medeco. We made the keys on a HPC 1200, which today is the Blitz. Good product, secure, and had some good key control, as unless you had a machine in house which cut the 30 degree skews, you could not make the keys. Back in the day there was Level 1, Air, and basically Level 2, Sky. You had to buy into Sky, but Air could be had off the shelf. The Sky buy in was not so bad, if I remember we had to buy $500 bux worth of cylinders and keys.
Long about 81 or so Medeco announced that they had Bi-axial ready for market. HPC had one of the first classes, and it was an all day affair held down in Chicago. I still have my "toys" from that class - the two keys, one a "V" check space key for setting up the 1200, and a key cut with fore and aft "1" cuts as an identity tool to make sure you are on space. Also a small block which went on top of the rotating cutter head with K B Q Fore cuts, L C R center cuts and M D S as Aft cuts. Bi-ax is also different in depths, and shown on the special Medeco Bi-ax card which went into the machines to cut the keys.
Then Medeco pulled the switcheroo. As presented in the class this was going to be available in both Air and Sky cylinders, so what did Medeco do? They made it s subscription deal where you had a huge buy in, over $2000 and got another keyway - Originally Patriot and later Liberty. Since most of us at the class had already bought the Medeco K 5001 Bi-ax pin kits in anticipation of the release -- we felt betrayed by Medeco.
The Story ---
SO we had gotten a call from a landlord who had a property near the war zone, and he wanted to keep the trash out. Okay, Medeco will give you the key control you need I promised. We got he job, and installed the three knob cylinders in the front inside door, and the two side exits. THEN I made up our own switch key to take a mortise cylinder for the underground parking. Job in, keys distributed. A month later I get an angry call that the trash is still getting in. The landlord reminded me that I "promised" this would end his problems and was threatening legal action if I did not do SOMETHING NOW about the situation.
I said, okay give me a week to fix the problem.
Back at the shop, I remembered the Bi-ax class, and looking at the pins, they were indexed differently. If you look at Medeco pins you will note that there is a little "hand" sticking out. This is to keep the pins from over rotating and getting out of line. Regular were set at the top, and Bi-ax were at the side. They would NOT interchange between the two cylinders. What to do ???
In the end, I moved the index mark around the pins from the side to the top, by filing off the original index mark, and then staking one at the top, and then stuffing them into the Sky cylinders. In the end, I had R - B - B - R - B - R pins in the cylinder load. Cut into Sky keys, it worked. Now to make up the set for the job, and install it. That ended the problems. OR so I thought.....
Almost a year later I get a call from the Medeco Rep, and he is wondering what I did... The back story. So I installed this interesting setup in the apartment, they distributed the keys, and it was working. Now the same, I would guess so called low life locksmith who had cut my original Air keys for the trash as duplicates was trying to cut the Sky keys. It turned out he had cut almost two dozen keys and none of them worked. In the end he sent one of my keys to Medeco to find out why he could not cut the keys. Medeco to their credit did not tell him the secret of the mysterious keys, but only said it was a new system they were developing. But due the fact that Sky is already marked "DND" - I had put my bench mark on the keys - the Iron Cross you see right -- and this is how they traced the keys back to me.
Medeco never came back at me for my ingenuity, in making this hybrid up -- but they were put on notice that some smiths did things "different" with their product. He reminded me that the warranty was void on these cylinders, but I didn't care, if needed I could just eat the things and put something else in. ANYTHING to avoid being sued...
In the end, I just dropped the replacement cylinders to the landlord at no cost, and ate this one to keep from being sued. AS far as I know they were still in the building 10 years later until it was sold, and then I lost track of the job.
This is one way of making your own "high security" locks for a job. I have others, Squelchy knows of another one which we have been discussing off line -- but that is another post.
Sinifar
The early bird may get the worm, but it is the second mouse which gets the cheese!
The only easy day was yesterday.
Celebrating my 50th year in the trade!
