by MBI » 1 Dec 2015 22:40
Weiser and Kwikset are the two most common locks in Northern Utah where I'm located, with Schlage coming in third. Well, I should amend that to say that's what's most common in hardware stores.
In new homes, builders tend to use the cheap Chinese copies of Weiser and Kwikset. Cheap to the point of being disposable: not worth trying to fix any part of it if it breaks. They're so bad I've often seen them fail within one to three years after the home is built, depending on foot traffic. Once I replaced a lock that failed about six months after the home was built.
Sometimes they even have depth and spacing specs that are different than the lock they're trying to copy, making your precut keys sometimes useless if rekeying a McHouse where the builder is using these cheap clones. So I guess the one good aspect of those locks is that if a burglar is trying to bump one of these locks to break in, the bump key probably won't work on the ones that use non-standard D&S.
There is ONE thing that I really like to use these locks for, the Weisers particularly, and that is for teaching new people how to pick. The Weiser uses a night straight keyway like the Kwikset with great access to the bottom of the pins, except the Weiser is a little bit wider. The name-brand Weisers are usually very easy to pick, but on the clones the tolerances are so poor that when the lock is clean and lubed, it's incredibly easy to set the pins most of the time, sometimes with significant movement of the plug. The only down side is that when they are using a plastic housing, the "click" when you set a pin is sometimes a little bit more muted, and you have to be really careful with the plastic ones when putting them in a vise to hold it while you pick.
