Postal-box locks are crap, especially the master-keyed ones. The fact that so many adults – especially healthy adult men who work out – are walking around having never realized that they can just punch doors out of their way if they need to never ceases to amaze me. However good the lock, most adults who are willing to do it can just punch them off their hinges without slowing down.” Whereupon I shrugged and said, “Mostly they’re just wooden doors anyway.
#MAILBOX SKELETON KEY INSTALL#
Sooner or later they’re going to lose their key, or get locked out, or the key will get locked in, or the locked thing will change ownership but the key won’t, or someone will want someone else to have access to it for some emergency purpose but won’t be able to hand them the key because, eg, they’re a hundred miles away, or something – so they install locks, thinking that they believe the locks are secure, but in the back of their minds they know, and are relying on, the fact that the locks can be defeated at any time if they really need to, and people get very upset if that moment arrives and they truly can’t defeat the lock. I had a locksmith explain to me once that there’s only so secure people really want their locks to be. I’m sure I can not be the only person to realise this, which begs the question of why illusory security is still going strong.ġ, It’s ment to keep honest people honestĢ, Make it easy to prosecute idiots who walk around with “secret” lables hanging off things. So at a quite early age I learnt that much of security was purely illusory and easy to bypass. I would then take the lock out and put another lock I had a key for in it’s place, take the lock home “measure it up” and have it back in the door within a couple of hours.īecause the keys I made did not have “FB” stamped on them, most locksmiths would cut copies from it… (proving that putting the equivalent of the word “secret” on a key was not a usefull security measure just as it is not with documents). Usually it only took a few minits to open the dore which suprisingly were not alarmed even though the break glasses were. If it did not open the lock would leave an “impression” on the pencil lead which would tell you where you needed to fill a bit more off. So you would cut a rough master then go back to the building put pencil lead on the edges and try it in the lock. Thus with a five leaver lock there was not a lot to remember to cut your own from a blank key and a needle file set.
Also as the door keys had to work from both sides the key was symmetrical. Some pirates just smashed the glass and stole the key, which was silly because many of the break glasses got wired into the building fire alarm system.Īs I’ve mentioned before, complicated though keys look, they are cut on a grid system which it was easy to find out the basic measurment like an 1/8th of an inch.
Often there was a “break glass” key holder next to the door with a key in helpfully labled “FB1 through FB3” the same with paddlocks on emergancy gates. Thus tower blocks of flats especially on hills were well sort after. To get your signal out you needed the antenna to be as high as possible. It’s a similar reason with “Fire Brigade Keys”.īack in the 1980’s and 90’s London had a thriving FM Pirate Radio scene. Changing the master key for physical mailboxes is a logistical nightmare, which is why this problem won’t be fixed anytime soon.
0 kommentar(er)
