Cedar Dale Locksmith Pros · Oshawa
Lost Keys — Same-Visit Rekey: preparing for the visit
Locksmith · Oshawa, Ontario
Your purse was taken from the back of a chair at a restaurant. The cards can be cancelled by phone tonight, but the house keys were in the side pocket beside a driver's licence that shows exactly where those keys fit.
Worth answering before the call
Is any lock a keypad, smart lock or homeowner-rekeyable type? Would you like every exterior door to work on one key? Have any of the locks been stiff, sticky or hard to turn lately?
Can all my doors work on one key afterwards?
Usually, yes. Cylinders that share a keyway family accept the same blank, so they can be pinned to one combination during the rekey. The front door, back door, garage entry and a gate padlock of the same family become a single key. Where a door uses a different family, the locksmith can swap its cylinder for a compatible one in the same visit, or you can choose to keep two keys for that door.
Does rekeying weaken the lock?
No. On a conventional pin-tumbler cylinder, the housing, springs and top pins are untouched and only the bottom pins are exchanged for the same grade of part the lock left the factory with; a homeowner-rekeyable design is reset through its own procedure instead, and a high-security cylinder may also need its sidebar or finger-pin elements reset. If the locksmith notices worn parts, replacing them is offered as a separate step, leaving the lock stronger, not weaker.