In one of the other threads floating about it came to my attention that not everyone knows how to repin the older style, non IC solid brass locks. Ie, the type that come sub-assembled in Locksmith form and require pinning, capping with brass caps and filing / linishing to finish. I have seen the thread on converting Tri-Circles, and perhaps there are others as well, but thought it might be helpful if I documented me repinning and refurbishing one here for all to see, in this case an old Lockwood 234, the pre IC original version. I hope this proves helpful for some
You will require, a lock, some brass plugs (LAB sells these), and some fresh springs.Step one. Locate and centrepunch your old chamber caps.
These caps are found on the face that the blade on the key points to, where the pins are
On the Lockwoods, they use the brass caps. Most brands do this in the same manner, although some older locks will have a single plate here to cover all the pins, like the Tri-Circle, documented in this thread. I have also found that some older Yales do this. Usually you can see the caps with the naked eye. If you look closely, you will see a slight change in color, or if well used, a slightly depressed cap. Once located, I use a centrepunch to mark, and slightly depress the cap so the drillbit has something to guide it. It dosn't matter if you centrepunching is not accurate, the drill will follow the hole.Make sure you do all the caps, this model is a 6 pin lock so has 6 with the plug retained elsewhere, but some models will have the plug retaining pin here, for example the 245L which has 7 holes here. As you can also see, whenever I grip the lock in the vice, I wrap it in cardboard to stop it getting marred.Next you want to do the same for your plug and shackle retaining pins, and any others your lock may have.
The location and amount of pins varies a lot lock to lock, so try and find an explosion diagram, or a picture of your model sub-assembled in locksmith form. If you cant, again try to find them by looking for any round, depressed or discolored markings. Once identified, do the same here, and centrepunch to depress the pins as a guide.
Now drill them!
In this case, the pin hole is 3mm in diameter, with the new caps being 3.4mm or so. I use a 2.5mm drillbit and the best method I have found is to try and capture the old plug as displayed in the image. To do this, use a reasonably slow drill speed, start your hole, and then apply a reasonable force down to snag the drillbit in the plug. 9 times out of 10 this works for me, and the plug will stick to the drillbit. If not, drill the plug with the 2.5mm and then finish removing it with a 3mm to bring the chamber back to its correct size, for the pins, and the plugs. If you encounter an empty chamber, which is common with some crappy master pinning schemes, be careful not to go too deep and drill into the plug. This will ruin the plug as your pins will fall past the resting shelf. At this point, I nearly always tear up the springs, so well replace them later.
This is what it will look like when you have finished the above.
The brass shards you see down the bottom are all the old plugs after they have been captured and removed. Note, I crashed the drill chuck into the body of the lock, so always remember to check your drillbit is in tight, even if its there from the day before!
We will fix this up further along.Now you can dump the old pins.
To remove the pins, first use tweezers to remove any spring that may be left, or more usually, crushed and sitting atop the pin stacks. This will jam up the chambers and prevent the pins from dropping out. Then go ahead and rap the lock on the bench a couple of times to free up and drop the pins out. As you can see, to keep eveything in order, and prevent dropping all the pins at once, I use a piece of tape that I move along one chamber at a time. This way if you want to decode the lock, you can keep the pins in order.
At this point, you can also drop / remove your shacle retaining, plug retaining pins and any other pins. Just as a side note, I usually have trouble with the shackle retaining pin on this model of lock being stuck, and I usually cannot remove it. I thought I would drill the hole for this demo anyway, and this time it came out no dramas. Anyway, just something to keep in mind. If you can get away with it, dont bother trying to remove the shackle pin on a 234.
Here is where we are now. Do you like my pinning mat? Its great.. But I always seem to have trouble with Mul-T-Lock pins springing off it, like they are repelled or afraid of it or something?! Weird huh? ;P
I left the locking pawl and spring assembly in during the entire process for this lock. If you want to remove it, you can by hammering out the brass plug that runs parallel to it along one side.
Next, we give the lock a clean up.
This is the 'Refurbishment' part. I like to do this to all of them, as the body tends to get really beat up over time, with lots of gouges, marks and wrinkles forming in the brass with use, and dropping etc. To do this, I run a bastard file lightly over everything, paying attention to not square the edges too much. I take out all the big stuff at this point, be careful not too take too much meat off in this step! As you can see, I also drilled a 3mm hole where I had put the centrepunch in the wrong spot, hammered a cap in, and filed it off rough.
OK, now sand it!
Staring to look better now? Good for another 20 years perhaps? I use 400 grit sandpaper, this seems to give me close to the finish they come with from the factory. This will depend lock to lock, so play around with a few different grits until you get to where you would like to be. After the sand, I use coarse steel wool, this gives it a bit of polish, and removes any leftover sanding marks. Dont forget to give the body a good blow with compressed air to remove any filings before we get on to the next step.
Reassemble.
At this point, I have reinserted the plug and shackle, replaced the retaining pins and hammered in my brass caps. For these pins, the original pin and hole diameter was closer to 2.5mm than the 3mm plugs I have, so I first drilled them to the correct size. Hammer the caps in to where you are comfortable that they wont escape, and before the body starts to deform too much. These particular chambers always get a slight wrinkle around the edge, probably because I should be using a 3.2mm or so or imperial drillbit. But the Imperial system is a joke (right?
, so I just hammer em in, and file away any deformation. I like to get the plug at least 2/3rds of the way in.Re-pin and cap.
You can now repin the lock, by inserting your pins into the chambers! Hammer in your plugs until they are nearly flush with the body of the lock, so there is plenty of cap inside, and still a little to file off so we dont leave depressions in the surface. Again, if you go to far, this can be fixed by filing more off, but you want to try and preserve as much meat as possible, or the lock starts to look lopsided! You will need the fresh springs at this point, to replace the ones we destroyed earlier.
Lastly, file and sand to finish.
Back into the vice to file away the excess of the plugs. Try and follow the shape of the lock, and don't take too much off, as again, this will leave the lock looking strange. At this point, you also want to do your best to remove any gouges or marks, such as the drill chuck mark I got in it earlier. Try to keep everything straight.. This is harder than it looks. Once filed, hit it with one last sand and another steelo, and you are done!
Fin!
Hope somebody finds this useful! Best of luck with your re-pin!
adi_picker
