ye olde unit lock

[jeffmoss26]

Customer brought this baby in yesterday.

Have seen many but never had the opportunity to work on one. They had no keys and wanted it rekeyed. One of my veteran coworkers was assisting me with the disassembly process.

Based on the Corbin 99 keyway it uses, Nite0wl and some guessed that it's from 1902-1906.
As you can see, the newest patent date is October 1900.

Turns out the hardware store I used to work at referred her. The owner is the one who taught me how to rekey my first kwikset lock ~15 years ago. Sorry, no Gordon-style gut shots

[Safecrackin Sammy]

The escutheons on that are absolutely beautiful.

Worked on a few over the years but never one that old or ornate.

[GWiens2001]

Harumph! No gut shots. Bah!

Thanks for sharing. Looks pretty solid.

Gordon

[sign216]

Beautiful piece of hardware. Let us know how it works out.

Joe

[jeffmoss26]

finished before we closed on Friday, awaiting customer pickup. Will try and grab a quick video of it in action tomorrow.

[jeffmoss26]

vidjayo:
https://imgur.com/gallery/I8p01zZ

[1d4]

Beautiful. Looks like it has the ball bearings under the key pins, typical of a lock that age. When you rekey a cylinder with the ball bearings, do you replace them with modern tapered bottom pins, or do you rekey re-using the ball bearings so as to preserve the original character of the lock?

[jeffmoss26]

I put modern pins in. However, in order to redeem myself, I used all the original pins on a Yale mortise cylinder today. Replaced the springs because they were shot.

[1d4]

Wow, maybe I've never looked closely enough, but I didn't realize old Yales have pins that look as if they are lightly threaded (?!). It looks like the effect I get when I run a coarse flat file across something spinning in a lathe.

[billdeserthills]

Wow, maybe I've never looked closely enough, but I didn't realize old Yales have pins that look as if they are lightly threaded (?!). It looks like the effect I get when I run a coarse flat file across something spinning in a lathe.

It's an anti-picking feature--even back then they had methods to make picking harder

[1d4]

It's an anti-picking feature--even back then they had methods to make picking harder

Yes, and that's incredible. I suppose I always assumed that serrated pins were a much more modern addition to the pin tumbler. So it's cool to know that Yale had them a long time ago. When I think of serrated pins, the first thing that comes to mind is American Lock. I wonder if American has always had some sort of serrated pins in their locks as well, or if they introduced them relatively later?

[billdeserthills]

It's an anti-picking feature--even back then they had methods to make picking harder

Yes, and that's incredible. I suppose I always assumed that serrated pins were a much more modern addition to the pin tumbler. So it's cool to know that Yale had them a long time ago. When I think of serrated pins, the first thing that comes to mind is American Lock. I wonder if American has always had some sort of serrated pins in their locks as well, or if they introduced them relatively later?

Got me I only ever stocked the Master padlock pin kit

[GWiens2001]

Yale not only had serrated pins way back in the day, but they also had mushroom pins. Not spools, mushrooms.

Not sure when American started using serrated pins, but it was a while back. I also like that American has serrated key pins.

Gordon

[edocdab]

That's a great piece of history and really nice to see it still in use Jeff. Thanks for sharing

[mastersmith]

Jeff if you get another unit lock in, you may want to show the folks how to get to the retainer. That seems to stump a fair number of them. I don't believe I have any old unit locks laying around anymore. If I did I would attempt it myself!