100 • HINTS&TIPS
PROUD SPONSORS
OF THIS PAGE
How I solved it …
Matt Raw began picking locks at an early age when his father brought
home a set of locked drawers with no keys. His passion for picking locks
and then producing keys from blanks never dwindled as he got older, and
after many years of working in several industries, Matt decided to take
his Locksmith exams in 2012 and set up ‘Locksmiths of Knutsford’.
»»THIS IS MATT’S SECOND
editorial for this regular feature.
In this issue, he would like you to
consider the following scenarios:
SCENARIO 1:
Do you work from home and live
alone? Or perhaps your better half
goes to work before you do, and
you then take the kids to school
and/or go into meetings?
Anything that takes you away
from where you run your sole-trader
business could cause problems
when you’re out, and your stock
delivery or equipment arrives.
Does the parcel get left behind a
bush, only to be pilfered; does it get
left with a neighbour that proceeds
to inconsiderately go on holiday
before your paths cross; or even
worse, does the driver leave your
parcel in the grey bin, unaware that
it is due to be collected that day!
Do you give the regular delivery
drivers a key to your porch, or your
house?
SCENARIO 2:
You’re having work done on a
property that belongs to you. You
want the tradespeople to be able to
come and go as they please, so as
to not interrupt your routine. Do you
give a key to each of the workers?
SCENARIO 3:
You’re a busy parent. You want to
make sure that when the kids come
home, they don’t sneak out to play
again after dinner.
Maybe you’ve got a split/double
spindle gearbox on the strip and
you’re in the habit of closing the
door, but only on the latch, and
not realising that you have to lift
the handle and turn the key for the
door to be locked properly before
you go out.
THE COMPLEX SOLUTION:
It’s quite easy to give a key to
everyone, but with every key issued,
it increases the possibility of a key
being copied and/or falling into the
wrong hands. We could also look at
access control systems, as these can
offer a solution to all of the problems
above. The simple fact is, access
control systems are very expensive
and invariably rely on a mains power
supply - the installation of the system
in a domestic setting will likely result
in a redecoration project, and after
all that, you’ve then got the onerous
task of administrating said system
(and some companies charge a
small fortune in annual fees for their
software).
‘with every
key issued,
it increases
the
possibility
of a key
being
copied
and/or
falling into
the wrong
hands’
THE EASY SOLUTION:
With multi-point-locks arguably
being the most common, I will look
at it from this perspective. The
problem can be broken into two
parts – the strip, and the cylinder.
Let’s look firstly at the task of
making the locking mechanism
safer. This can be achieved with
considerable ease.
THE STRIP
There are a few companies that
are now manufacturing automatic
locking MPL’s (multi-point locks).
Lifting the handle to engage
the deadbolts/hooks becomes a
thing of the past. With these new
mechanisms, when the door closes,
it releases the deadbolts/hooks into
the keep and it locks them in place
until the key is used in the lock.
LOCKSMITHJOURNAL.CO.UK | SEP/OCT 2016
Thus, every time you shut the
door, it is locked, unlike traditional
split/double spindle locks whereby
the door is only locked on a single
point: the easily retractable latch.
Now, I can hear you thinking
about how good this is, but there
is a design flaw in nearly all of
these mechanisms. Most of these
mechanisms are gravity fed, and
gravity isn’t always quite strong
enough to be used for such
purposes; other mechanisms rely on
relatively weak springs.
Every locksmith will have come
across a misaligned PVCu door at
some stage. Indeed, my own mother
has a three-year-old composite
door in a PVCu frame, and it warps
in the early morning when the sun
has been shining on it. The simple
fact is, that for these auto-locking
mechanisms to operate, they
have to experience absolutely no
resistance to the deadbolts/hooks. If
they cannot travel their entire throw
distance, then they do not lock in
place automatically, and this means
that they can be easily disengaged
with a wedge and airbag.
This solution is therefore viable
only on a properly installed door, and
I would advise against it’s installation
in doors of the single floor-to-ceiling
panel type as they are prone to
dropping out of alignment.
THE CYLINDER
A few lock manufacturers released
new cylinders last year that appear
to hold the solution. They produced
a euro cylinder that requires
only the swipe of a smartphone,
token, or tap of a button on their
app from a device that is within
Bluetooth range. The lock is battery