day in the life of a locksmith

[ltdbjd]

Holy crap, yes!! Not only is it crooked (it should run parallel to the grout line), but the cover doesn't sit flush. I get the willies just thinking about it! Just like I do when I walk up to a house or business and see their lock on upside down. I usually offer to fix it free of charge.

Which is probably why my wife takes sadistic pleasure in sending me stuff like this:



And she says this describes me:

[Jacob Morgan]

Holy crap, yes!! Not only is it crooked (it should run parallel to the grout line), but the cover doesn't sit flush. I get the willies just thinking about it! Just like I do when I walk up to a house or business and see their lock on upside down. I usually offer to fix it free of charge.

...

And she says this describes me:

So what bothers you more in the picture below:




A) the plate behind the knob is crooked, or
B) it is an exit door for a training / meeting room, capacity 200+, and the panic bar has been disconnected.

[Silverado]

Oh goodness no. Please no. My other half's father just installed a new Locking knob in his front door because he old one failed on him. I looked and it's upside down. That was my weekend. I'm still cringing about it.

[Tyler J. Thomas]

So here's the end result of the button:





And it controls....



A Kaba ePlex. Instructions recommend 26-2 wire. Who has that on hand.....? Haha. 18-2 worked just fine. One gripe is that the wired release button only holds it open when the button is held down. I figured it would default to the locks timer, e.g. sending the same signal as a correct code. Oh well.

Potentially have a job to install a lot of NDE locks with a CDVI controller and gateway. That will be a joy, not just financially, if we get it. Tons of good pictures to come.

[cledry]

Glad you changed the screws to vertical orientation.

[Squelchtone]

So here's the end result of the button:





And it controls....



A Kaba ePlex. Instructions recommend 26-2 wire. Who has that on hand.....? Haha. 18-2 worked just fine. One gripe is that the wired release button only holds it open when the button is held down. I figured it would default to the locks timer, e.g. sending the same signal as a correct code. Oh well.

Potentially have a job to install a lot of NDE locks with a CDVI controller and gateway. That will be a joy, not just financially, if we get it. Tons of good pictures to come.

was the door already prepped with the metal wire pass through in the hinge area or does the lock normally come with all that stuff and then you have to snake the aluminum frame?
Switch looks nice, lock too
Squelchtone

[Pahaseta]

Made a three day trip to Bulgaria, Sofia, Prodecoders factory. Very nice people and got a little bit more experience to use their tools and one decoder fixed. Cheap food and drinks comparing to Finland.

[ltdbjd]

I was excited that I would get an extra hour of sleep last night AND get to sleep in. But sadly that was not to be. Had a call from a locksmith in town that needed help with a lockout at 0615 this morning. 18 wheeler with the keys locked inside; 88 mile round trip. On my way out, he called back with another 18 wheeler lockout that was on the way. At least I pocketed some spending cash for the trouble.

[Tyler J. Thomas]

was the door already prepped with the metal wire pass through in the hinge area or does the lock normally come with all that stuff and then you have to snake the aluminum frame?
Switch looks nice, lock too
Squelchtone

Aluminum storefront doors usually have top and bottom pivots. You route the wire through an armored door loop (that flexible, metal conduit cord that runs between the door and the frame - if you Google image search it, it will look familiar to you). This door already had an electrified latch lock at some point so I just ran the wire from the receptionist's desk to the lock itself. Fortunately, the cord was already installed and the wire was already pulled through the door - made installation a breeze. Once it's inside the door, the stiles are hollow. The stiles and rails are literally bolted together so snaking wire throughout the door is easy. Usually have to drill a hole where each stile meets the top rail but that was already done by the previous installer.

Thanks for the comments. Kaba sends great templates along with their ePlex locks - by far the best and most accurate templates I have ever seen out of a box.

Also, one more note for people that may or may not install these: if you ever rekey one, take a picture on the spacing of the lock from the outside before you remove it. They are very, very temperamental. Literally one rotation makes the difference between intermittent operation and perfect operation. Ask me how I know.

Switching subjects, we did get that NDE job and I'll be at the nearby Allegion office on Tuesday and Wednesday getting really learned on their platform. I'll make sure to put together a few write ups on the product and the job. These locks appear to be the bees knees. CDVI and Identicard make controllers for NDE locks that really give you the ability to use them for large scale access control. So far, they do pass the sniff test and they look like a viable, long term solution for access control jobs. If all goes well, my days of running wire through ceilings and doors and frames may be over, or severely reduced.

[Zed Ex]

You mean you don't enjoy troubleshooting someone else's cluster? I can't think of a better way to spend a few hours. Chasing wires, inspecting every single connection, trying to make sense of someone else's work, etc.

This is exactly the reason i like it when i see an installation like

I bet that was made by a woman.
Some years ago, I come to visit an ex-co-worker (female) that stayed on that job when I left. In a few months she had rewired six racks full of modems (phone lines + 25 wires rs232c cables), X25 switches (fat 25 wires cables) plus some coax and ethernet and they all looked just like that, they were beautiful, and did work well too.
On my time that racks were a forest, now they looked like a garden.
But I pity the guy that had to make 100's of custom cables to fit exactly where they were supposed to be.

[cledry]

You may or may not have noticed I haven't been posting in the thread much in the way of interesting jobs. That is because I am now the general operations director or GOD for short. I am now in the shop almost exclusively, dispatching, ordering, scheduling, invoicing etc. The days are longer and busier and not as interesting but i did get a nice wage increase.

This week i have in addition to normal shop duties been sorting out our new VOIP phones, selecting and sourcing new headsets, correcting issues with our web site. The new position is never slow or boring but I miss being able to be out on the road, perhaps try a different restaurant for lunch or just get a few quick errands done between jobs.

[femurat]

I did notice. Congrats for the new position. I'm sure You'll get used to it in no time.

Cheers

[Tyler J. Thomas]

Congrats; I missed the road when I did institutional work. Part of the reason I had to go back out.

It's been busy as heck for me. Nothing out of the ordinary so I won't bore anyone here. Another big IC rekeying this weekend. 366 cores. NDE job is next week along with another large rekey. Doing a Schlage Connect install Friday. I'll have some pictures of that.

[jeffmoss26]

Congrats on the new position, Jim!

[ltdbjd]

I've always just replaced the clutch on a Grade 1 lever lock in the past from the dozens of used ones we have in stock. I grabbed a clutch and went to the closet with the messed up handle. And of course, Mr. Murphy was waiting there to visit me. Somebody installed the lock "backwards." "Backwards" being an OCD thing, meaning the mounting screws were on the outside of the closet door instead of the inside. So I had grabbed the wrong clutch.

Going back to the shop to grab a different one is a 45 minute ordeal which involves rolling a cart of tools and equipment about a 1/2 mile round trip, loading and unloading it into a van, being searched on the way in and out, having all your equipment gone through on the way in and out, signing in and out, submitting a list of tools you bring in to be compared to the tools you bring out (they frown on leaving saws, hammers, screwdrivers, security bits, Dremel tool with cut off wheels, angle grinders, etc. behind) ... all drawbacks to being a locksmith at a maximum security prison.

I know the clutch failed because the spring broke; I've just never tried to replace one. And I didn't have a spring with me. So I carefully pried the cover off the clutch I brought with me so I could look at the spring position, and there was Mr. Murphy again ... SPROINGGG ... the spring pops out of position as I lift the cover. Wonderful, so much for having an example to work from. Luckily I have a pretty good idea how it should work based on some of the older Weiser, Westlock and no-name brand Chinese knobs.

Let's see, set the spring how I think it should be, try to put everything back together, and SPROINGGG, start over, SPROINGGGG, start over, SPROINGGG, start over. After loudly yelling "FUDGE," (which like in the movie A Christmas Story wasn't really "fudge") and a few more tries, I finally get it back together. Covered in old,
dirty, black grease. That is, until I realize the way I put it back together is about 90 degrees off. So I think about just leaving the handle in its vertical position and just telling everybody it's the new way of mounting things that they use on the other side of the equator where everything is backwards from the way they work in the US. But I have too much pride in my work. So I take it apart again, and after a few more spring issues and profanity, I finally get it together the right way. I guess that's one of the good things about working in a prison, nobody gets offended when you scream FUDGE in absolute frustration. Try that working on a door in Xerox headquarters one day and I bet it doesn't go over as smoothly.

So that was my day Monday. Good part - the sense of accomplishment getting everything working perfectly on a new task you had to learn on your own by trial and error. Bad part - learning a new task on your own by trial and error.