D Vautier
5/23
One of the simplest of all locks is the drawer or cabinet lock. It has a cylinder, a bunch of pins and a cam sticking out at the end. A key is inserted into the keyway of the cylinder and has cuts (bumps) in it that bring the pins into alignment with the edge of the cylinder. The cylinder housing has channels that prevent the cylinder from turning unless these pins line up.
My son needed a new lock for his cabin on his boat. The old one had no key. I said "I can fix that (not really knowing what the hell I was getting into)." So I searched around in my vast collection of lost and forgotten keys and found a set that matched the keyway.
This job
required some pretty basic tools; pliers, file, screwdriver, needle nose.
I
removed the cylinder and took out all the pins and arranged them in order.
Each pin had a different size on the top and bottom. I also studied the
key and eye-balled each of the cuts on the key and where they were. There
are five cuts in a normal key and the last cut is not a cut. So I started
with that one.
After inserting the key into the cylinder I then began putting each pin into the first slot until I found a good match, a match being when the pin is even with the surface of the cylinder. This worked well for two pins. Two more pins were close matches but needed filing. The last pin was just way too off so I went with the four. After some additional filing the unit worked well.