i'm gonna call this uh locksmith tails
and uh basically what it is
is
these are
fun and unusual
encounters that i have encountered out
in the field with with different locking
mechanisms
and
they're not something that you're going
to learn
in a a school or textbook type of
setting because they're just
odd um this right here is a mortise body
lock
it's meant to go on
you know you're thicker than average
doors i mean you can use it on a regular
thickness door too but a lot of times
the doors here are are thicker they're
custom and they're thicker than standard
hardware will fit on so they use these
mortise units to go ahead and go in
there and then your really nice fancy
rocky mountain hardware or
um
this one here is uh accurate stamford
hardware will go on the outside very
decorative very arch architectural and
uh very neat
um
however when they start to have problems
like this one
when i came up to this lock it had the
hardware on the outside
and
that
was facing like that um so obviously
something has gone horribly wrong here
for the key cylinder to be halfway out
basically they put the key in
and went to open the door and it just
completely jammed uh and locked up
now here's why this causes so many
problems is because on the inside of the
door
you're going to have hardware and the
only access that you're going to have to
this lock
is here and here
because the thumb turn would go here so
this would be completely blocked off
you know you would have absolutely no
access to that
uh and the problem with this is that now
this has become jammed and the key won't
even go in
uh
or it's actually it's not the right um
bidding anymore because some of the pins
have felt fallen out and landed in other
chambers inside here
so
this is a
very
um
odd and uh difficult situation to deal
with
what happened
is
the tail piece which goes on the back of
the lock
here
actually the screws
came loose and the tailpiece fell off
like so only it did so
into
here
into the linkage in here
like so
and wedged itself
to the point where
everything was jammed
so the first plan of attack was to try
and get that lock cylinder out well the
screw in the back along with the pins
being in the wrong chamber
has prevented anything
from happening with that with the key
um and even if we could get
a
uh get that picked out of there it's
still not going to do us that much good
because we don't know exactly what's
going on in here so
we actually got all the way to this
point
and from the back side drilled an access
hole into here
to where i could then find out and see
exactly what the problem was and try and
manipulate the
lever back like so
however the
tailpiece was so wedged down into this
inner linkage in here that i could not
take a pic
like this and
actuate anything it was 100 percent
completely wedged down in there
to the point where it was
jammed and with this small access hole
and the door being shut and locked dead
bolted by the way
i would have no access to any of the
releasing
set screws in here
so this caused a lot of problem
i probably messed around with this thing
for
a good half an hour 45 minutes trying to
you know i knew if i could get something
in here then i could get this to actuate
and i could get this to release and then
go ahead and open the door but the way
it was set up
that was impossible this was completely
blocked off and jammed by this little
piece that i literally had to take this
piece apart to pull out of after this
all came out of here
so what we ended up doing actually
is um
probably not
is actually having to cut the deadbolt
in half
and uh
that's what we had to do
so basically i had to
cut this deadbolt in half because that
was not releasing at all and at that
point in time i could then manipulate
that latch back
to at least open the door
so where i could actually start pulling
this stuff apart and get the cover plate
off and pull this stuff out of here and
start rebuilding this setup
so that's just something you're not
going to see in a classroom
setting you can see the screws
wedged in there
and and all these pins have gone into
separate chambers and all sorts of bad
things that happened here so now what i
can try and do is get in here
and pick this thing open
and
begin
rebuilding the entire system
you can see it caused some damage
there's some
uh
scarring and marring back there but what
i'll be able to do is i'll be able to
pick this lock open i'll be able to turn
it over pull it out just completely 100
rebuild it uh put this system back
together and then or i've already
ordered one of these new units
and put this back in the door i've put a
separate locking cylinder in there just
because we ordered everything new we
might as well just replace that too
but that was one of the
more
time consuming difficult
encounters out in the field you just may
not see
in your everyday
occurrences that can happen with store
front doors too
tail pieces come loose all the time
usually they just fall right down and
you have access from the inside with a
thumb turn or another key to be able to
go ahead and open that this one provided
absolutely no access whatsoever to that
reverse side
simply due to the thumb mount the thumb
turn from the inside
so just fun entertaining stuff to think
about
when you walk up to a project
you got to really think outside the box
because once things go that wrong
there's not really a conventional
solution to the problem you just need to
come up with one on your own on the fly
so for more information check out the
website below and uh take it easy have a
good day