day in the life of a locksmith

[averagejoe]

Heh, reminds me of one of the old red BEST punches I had at a shop I used to work at. Was built in 1979 (per it's badge) and still cut through the keys like butter. Then the BEST rep came in and told me that the cutter was essentially a 4 sided die and that, more than likely, it had never been rotated. Sure enough, I took it apart and you could tell the other 3 sides were pristine.

They don't make them like they used to!

I have one of those red punches, a heavy beast of cast iron and brass. They say you can cut around 100,000 keys per side before you rotate it. The oldest one I have seen was from the 1940s. It still worked.

[Tyler J. Thomas]

Heh, reminds me of one of the old red BEST punches I had at a shop I used to work at. Was built in 1979 (per it's badge) and still cut through the keys like butter. Then the BEST rep came in and told me that the cutter was essentially a 4 sided die and that, more than likely, it had never been rotated. Sure enough, I took it apart and you could tell the other 3 sides were pristine.

They don't make them like they used to!

I have one of those red punches, a heavy beast of cast iron and brass. They say you can cut around 100,000 keys per side before you rotate it. The oldest one I have seen was from the 1940s. It still worked.

I'd believe it!

The locksmith(s) before me tapped the top handle with like a padding. I had to remove it. I have no clue what they were doing to get discomfort from cutting keys on it. A swift motion gives very little resistance.

I've gotten pretty fast with it. Makes me look more competent than I actually am. Side note, I've seen people use a Medeco Biaxial/M3 key machine before who can cut keys both ways. So, in other words, they'll load it, cut from bow to tip, load another and cut from tip to bow. I guess it wouldn't be hard to learn but the speed they were doing it at was incredible.

[jeffmoss26]

Tyler, that would be impressive to see!

[ltdbjd]

I had a customer who gave me the master key to his office building. HUH?!?!?! What is that?!?!?



"I thought it looked weird, but the locksmith said it had to look like that because I had a lot of offices."

What? Like, 500 change keys all on a KW1 system with a single master? Unfortunately I don't remember how the system was set up (I just duplicated the key in the shop). I wanted to ask him if the locksmith drove up in a lime 1972 green Ford Pinto, with a surfboard bungee-corded to the roof, wearing flip-flops with the left one having a broken toe strap making him walk funny, a tie-dyed Speedo, no shirt, eye patch, smoking a filterless Pall Mall from the middle with both ends lit, an old faded ketchup-stained yellowish velour OP Surf baseball cap on sideways, with 6 bare patches in his chest hair where he started to get his chest waxed before telling the lady he didn't have any money, saying, "Dude, where's that, like, lock thingy-thing you need me to, you know, put my magic tweak to, like, so it ... Dude, nice tie Bro, so it works totally good? You know?" And you thought to yourself, "now that's the locksmith I want being responsible for the security of my office!!! Ya baby, I scored big time hiring this guy off Craigslist!

No offense to anybody if you do business like that. The locksmith I described is purely fictional, based very loosely on Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High, as I would envision him showing up to a costume party.

[dll932]

Between the quality and lack of depths, I can't see why one would choose Kwikset for a system of any size.

[Tyler J. Thomas]

Accepted a new position today for a Flying Locksmith franchise here in Georgia. Been interested in this company for a while, I initially tried to get on with them last August but we could never work out a deal. Get to fly up to Boston in a few weeks to learn the ropes of the company. Never been north of Baltimore - looking forward to it. I've seen plenty of Massachussetts via This Old House but never in person.

I definitely think it is the future of the industry. I won't pretend to know the back story of Pop-A-Lock but it seems like they missed the boat, especially on national service contracts and commercial work. I think that any company that can capitalize on their ubiquity (I think I heard the goal is to have 100 franchises by years end) and then use that as a basis for local growth is going to come out as the top dog. Don't get me wrong, I don't think this will be the death knell of mom and pop shops, there is tons of work to go around, but I think most of the larger, commercial-oriented shops are going to have to be much more proactive to compete. It'll be interesting but they've got a lot of good people and good ideas going for them so I'm confident.

It'll be the first time I've been out in a truck since 2011. Mostly commercial but some residential. Must admit, there have been many days where I missed being out on the road. Looks like those days are numbered.

[mseifert]

Good Luck on your new adventure ..

[jeffmoss26]

best of luck on the new career!

[shutterstuff]

My wife and I owned a franchise store in the 90's. I will never do that again! The Franchisor was very controlling and then sold their business to another chain. The new owners were worse!

[cledry]

I find it interesting that they can cover the entire state of Massachusetts with just 6 vans. We have the same sized fleet and can barely handle one county in Florida. I like their business model of concentrating on commercial work, we do the same and it works well.

Pay is nothing to write home about but it isn't peanuts either.

If you are a 1 man franchise though I feel it will burn you out real fast. If you have perhaps 4 men it wouldn't be too bad.

[Tyler J. Thomas]

Thanks all.

If you are a 1 man franchise though I feel it will burn you out real fast. If you have perhaps 4 men it wouldn't be too bad.

You're right. I think the phrase used at one of the interviews was "we need a work horse". Right now, that works well for me. I know a lot of guys don't like or enjoy being on call but I don't mind it - especially pay day. The plan is to obviously grow with work and as quickly as possible; hope that is the case.

[mseifert]

My wife and I owned a franchise store in the 90's. I will never do that again! The Franchisor was very controlling and then sold their business to another chain. The new owners were worse!

This is common in most Franchise businesses.. Take McDonalds for example .. You may own the franchise but they tell you everything that you have to do ..

[shutterstuff]

My wife and I owned a franchise store in the 90's. I will never do that again! The Franchisor was very controlling and then sold their business to another chain. The new owners were worse!

This is common in most Franchise businesses.. Take McDonalds for example .. You may own the franchise but they tell you everything that you have to do ..

They went beyond reason. I actually know the owner of several McD's as well as another person that owns a couple Subways (a customer of mine). In our case, it was pretty lax until the industry started to change for the worse. Then they really got into micromanaging. They backed off a bit when one owner filed a lawsuit. The next year the Corp sold to a competitor. It went downhill from there.

[Tyler J. Thomas]

In Boston for a week of training. This is the best picture I could get. Boston isn't like in Atlanta - our highway runs right through the middle of city, Boston is a myriad of tunnels. Hopefully I've have better in the days to come. Really hoping to have some residential calls because these houses are literally works of art. Italianates, Greek and Colonial Revivals, Queen Annes, etc.

[cledry]

Crappy weekend on call so far, lots of huff and nothing to show for it. First call Friday night a recall on a Diebold Century vault door. A few weeks ago one of our techs went and changed the combination on one of the two safes. As set up from the factory these doors use two 4 wheel LaGard locks one left hand one right hand. You can use either lock to get into the vault. The customer splits the combination in two, one person has 2 numbers and the second person the other two.

Later in the week we recommended that they set the second lock to the same combination just in case the first one failed to open at some point. They agreed so the same tech went out and set the other to the same combination (obviously dialing pattern is different). However he left the locks in the locked position with the door open. The customer wasn't used to this situation and freaked out, they then proceeded to overwind two of the three movements in the time clock to the max setting of 120 hours! As you may know the one remaining clock set to 60 hours should still allow the vault to be opened after the weekend. First though we have to use the internal clock release to bypass the time clock so we can unlock the wedge bolt so the door can be shut. They had also turned the daylight hold up device.

We tested the locks operation 5 times and then decided we couldn't safely rely on just one clock mechanism so we removed the time clock linkage. We don't like to do this but the customer planned to have an armed guard on duty just in case. Hopefully Monday we can open the vault and reset the clocks properly.

Then Saturday I get a call to go out to a store at Disney. Nobody likes working there, it is always packed and they are strict on working on things where the public can see. The call was a new store that couldn't open one of their doors from inside. As predicted the store was packed and the employees less than helpful. They wouldn't disturb the manager on her lunch break and said there was no assistant available. So I have to play the waiting game (in the back of my mind Manchester United are about to kick off and I am not able to watch my match). Manager finally comes out and points me to a Doromatic panic bar that won't operate. I pull it only to discover the traveler is missing. It could never have worked, the store has been open for two weeks and today when my football match is on it has become an emergency!

Home for the end of the first half and squeaky bum time. Yay we win, barely. Rashford you are a star!

6:30 I get a call, right back down to the Disney area but to a local resort. Seems they had an irate customer rip a lock off the door. They said their maintenance men had tried in vain to fix the lock for the past 4 hours before giving up. I arrive and it is just an Adams Rite paddle that has been ripped from the door. Ripped being the operative word, the aluminum of the door is actually missing. I cobbled a temp repair with new paddle and was on my way.

Then today I get a call to open a house. I tell the woman it will be about an hour she says to hurry because she has frozen food in the trunk. I tell her I will need to see proof that she lives there. She then tells me she is the owner but lives in New Jersey and the house has been abandoned and they are just down to clean it out for sale. They claim the keys they gave the realtor no longer work. I do a quick check of the ownership online and it matches her details. I also see that the last tenant was released from prison a few months ago and lists this address as his place of abode upon release. Anyway it isn't far to drive so I head over there. I told the lady I would be there at 10 but I arrived early to scope it out. The lawn was freshly mowed, the trash cans had been rolled up from the kerb and there was nice lawn furniture and 4 child's bikes on the front porch with nary a flat on any of them. My spidey senses told me not to take this one so I left.

So out of 4 jobs I only get paid for 2 but at least I am alive.