Metrolocks Blog

Assembling a Cylinder It's not too difficult to assemble a cylinder, if you have enough practice. The problem is that most of us don't get enough practice. Most of our cylinders come straight out of the box or are made to order, and it's only on occasion that we need...

Where do our key blanks come from? Every key-cutter needs key blanks onto which to cut. Aside from a few quite bog-standard ones, most key blanks are quite specialist pieces of kit and get made in only a few locations in the world. It's an interesting and in part...

The Entropy of a Master Key Suite Entropy is all around us. Everything has entropy: the device you're reading this on, your haircut, the universe. But master key suites, too, have high levels of the stuff. (There's a short description of what a master key suite is...

Locks for Airbnb We've spoken about smart locks before, discussing how useful they can be, and what their drawbacks are. That article had one crucial omission, and that's Airbnb. Without Airbnb, smart locks would be quite niche Smart locks are cool, but without a...

Innovation in the Locksmith Industry The German Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin, inventor of the eponymous airship, was the laughing stock of his family. To his cousins, he was just a crank, or a mad scientist. But he was an important innovator, and revolutionised air...

Champion Locksmiths: Keeping the Big Apple Secure Back in the 1990s we had a partnership with a New York City-based firm called Champion Locksmiths. I've looked them up and don't think they're trading any longer. In 1996 we paid them a visit and our boss wrote a big...

The life of an out-of-hours locksmith Metrolocks is a fully 24/7 company, working round the clock every single day of the year. We cover any job, Londonwide, all through the night. But the city is a different place out of hours. For a city of almost 9 million...

The best places to keep spare keys so that you don't lose them Most locks come with at least two keys, if not three. You might only need one, so where do you keep the other two? In any case, you should always keep a key spare, in case you have guests, or lose your...

Things I'd like to change about the locksmith trade When Metrolocks started, back in 1991, we were great innovators without too much effort. That's because the locksmith industry in the UK at the time was sleepy and old-fashioned. There was a lot about the trade that...

What's the difference between a traditional locksmith and an auto-locksmith? There are all kinds of locksmiths out there. Some specialise in safes, others do standard residential work (lock-outs, lock fittings, repairs and so on), others specialise in installing...

What is a ‘dead-man switch’? A so-called dead-man switch is (usually) a switch where the circuit breaks automatically when the operator of the machinery 'dies'. Don't worry: most dead-man switches don't actually involve people dying. But they're crucial...

How do you become a locksmith? Locksmithing isn't something that's usually taught in local colleges in the same way that other trades are taught. You may be wondering how to become a locksmith, or indeed just wondering why we chose to be as we are.Here are the main...

Is there such a thing as a locksmith-proof door? This is an interesting question, especially since it raises all kinds of other questions: what does locksmith-proof actually mean? Is a locksmith-proof door actually a good thing? Does locksmith-proofing actually do...

How to run a successful locksmith business Being a locksmith isn't easy, and it won't necessarily make you rich. But your chances of success are better if you know how to run your locksmith business well. Here are a few tips, in no particular order, to help you on...

The decimal point that nearly cost us £16000 We were recently buying key blanks from Norway. When they arrived in the UK, we were given a bill for VAT by the courier. This is standard procedure: when importing from Norway, we don't have to pay Norwegian VAT, but UK...

Surveying a Skyscraper We have the privilege of being able to survey entire skyscrapers as part of our daily work. There are a few buildings that we survey annually, with great delight. What's the purpose of the survey? As you can imagine, skyscrapers have hundreds of...

Insurance Repairs Following a Break-in The thing with insurers is that they only pay to replace what was damaged. They'll never upgrade anything. Now picture this: your home has been broken into and some damage has been done. If the damage is repaired, you'll be just...

Can you repair a broken key? There are all kinds of questions people ask me frequently: "Can a thief copy my door keys?", "Is it legal to copy a fob?", "I’ve found a key lying around. What do I do!?" and "Can you make a key from a barrel, without a key?" Surprisingly,...

Why is our workshop full of cuttlefish? Cuttlefish are fascinating creatures. We recently learned something special about them, when the University of Cambridge published an article explaining how they "eat less for lunch when they know there’ll be shrimp for dinner"....

What is an FB key? Ever wanted to know what's inside those big, yellow rock salt bins that you sometimes find in public places? Ever needed to get into a meter cupboard in the corridor of your apartment building? What about gaining access to a bin area in a large...

Getting keys cut at home? Can you do key-cutting at home? This is a question we get asked on a regular basis. The short answer is: no way, José! However, there are other ways of getting keys cut without setting foot outside your home. Why not? The average price of a...

A burglar's carrier bag: the trouble with cheap hotel-style safes Having a safe at home is quite an attractive proposition. We all have valuables and important things we'd like to protect: jewellery, deeds to the house, a will, or just good old-fashioned fat stacks of...

A Day in the Life of a Locksmith Locksmithing isn't really a nine-to-five like most jobs. Days can be very varied, and there's not really such a thing as a 'day in the life'. Still, here's our closest approximation, so you can see what our boys get up to all day....

As a rule, we don't tend to get many time-wasters, but now and again people show up who are either deliberately prank-calling us, or have simply come to the wrong place by mistake. I'm a forgiving sort of chap, and hold no grudges against pranksters (with the notable...

A turned curtain is when your key suddenly won't go into your Chubb-type lock. The curtain is the not-quite-closed tube that constitutes the key-hole. This is a piece of metal that defines what key can fit. If I take your key and copy it onto the wrong type of blank,...

"My key is just spinning in the lock." This is a very common problem and, to understand why it happens, we need to discuss how cylinder locks work. The cylinder consists of a plug, which is pretty much the key hole, and then either a tailbar (if it's a Yale cylinder)...

Keys snap in locks for all kinds of reasons. You've put the wrong key in; your key or lock is old and brittle; the lock is broken, which makes the key stick inside; your key has a fulcrum in it due to a very deep cut; you've been heavy-handed. These are all possible...

"My maglock isn't working anymore." I can't count how often I've heard that one. 99 times out of 100, it's for one reason only. First, what's a maglock? A lot of fancy offices and some communal entrance doors have electromagnets fitted instead of traditional key...

Welcome to the first post in a series about common locksmith problems. Today, we're discussing the so-called snib drop. The snib button is the little button on the inside of most Yale locks, which allows you to hold open the latch, or to prevent the key from turning...

Over the coming months we'll be releasing blog posts about common locksmith problems. These are all things that a locksmith has to deal with frequently, though our list is by no means exhaustive. The first post—about the so-called snib drop—will be...

The world around us is replete with keypad locks. They're a brilliant form of access control because they're easy to use and they don't require you to dish out endless amounts of keys to all the staff or users of the building. They do what they're supposed to quite...

Metrolocks is turning 30! Yes, it's official: we've made it to 30 years old! Who'd've thought we'd ever get this far, what with the tumultuous 30 years we've had: the dotcom bubble, the 2008 credit crunch, the decline of printed directories, the rise of the internet,...

"I've lost my key. Can you make a key just from the barrel?" We get this question quite a lot, and most people walk away disappointed. Still, the question is too broad for a simple yes/no answer. See, it depends on two things: (1) the barrel in question, and (2) the...

Locksmith Industry in Turmoil Over Door Handle Shortage Due to long-running industrial action in a Turkish door handle factory, there is now a dearth of new door handles in the UK. Shortages are exacerbated by panic-buying locksmiths and DIY-fanatics. A dispute...

I went to the Stasi Museum in Leipzig back in 2017. It was fascinating beyond anything I could have imagined to learn what life must have been like in a police state run by the Stasi. The tour guide was saying how the Stasi enforcement officers would break into your...

It’s hard to imagine an unbreakable lock. Practically everything can be got into, given plenty of time, and assuming nobody cares about the noise of a drill for hours on end. But there’s a locking solution that is, in a sense, dangerously unbreakable. Pad-eyes aren’t...

It wasn't always this way, but nowadays cutting keys is quite a high-tech affair. In the olden days, keys would have been cut by hand, with a file. (Cutting mortice keys with a file is still part of the Master Locksmith Association exam.) These days, a great many keys...

The poet Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) wrote one of America's most important poems in 1883. Her sonnet, The New Colossus, is inscribed on New York's impressive Statue of Liberty. It's a poem welcoming those in search of freedom to America, giving them the gift of...

A German chap came into our office once and was looking for some back door security advice. He had just moved to London from Germany, and couldn’t understand British home security: “You all put so much effort into keeping your front doors secure,” he started, “but...

We’ve written all about front door security for individual flats or homes, but what applies there doesn’t necessarily apply to a communal entrance door on a block of flats. The needs of the two doors are quite different. A flat door only needs to let in those who have...

So far you’ve read all about different types of locks and cylinders you can have on your front door. But the story is far from finished! A secure front door needs more than just locks. Here we’ll go over a few additional door security items that you could install on...

A lot of our customers ask if there’s a way to stop people from copying their keys. The answer to that – obviously 😉 – is yes, YES, YES! The way to do this is using ‘security’ cylinders. It’s a bit of a stupid name, because all cylinders provide some degree of...

The Return of the Road Trip The pattern recurs every summer: Britons are packing their cars ahead of their road-trip holiday, only to realise that their roofbox key is missing. With days to spare, they contact us via our key-cutting form, and manage to get a key in...

For a few years now, there has been a new breed of cylinder on the market: the anti-everything cylinder. These are anti-pick, anti-snap, anti-bump and anti-drill cylinders that are extremely tricky to open. They’re the bane of a locksmith’s life, really, because if...

We’ve spoken a lot about Yale locks so far, especially about auto-deadlocking Yales. Why, if the Yale lock acts as a deadlock, do you need another deadlock underneath? Isn’t that overkill? No, of course it’s not! Don’t ever be fooled into thinking it is. A Yale lock,...

How to Take Pictures of Your Key In many cases, we need to have clear photos of your key before we can make copies. Here is a guide to show you how best to take photos of keys. Here is the long and the short of it. Lower down, you can also find some more specific...

In our previous article we spoke about nightlatches, aka ‘top locks’ or ‘Yale locks’. The fundamental thing about them is that you can just pull the lock shut and the door will lock automatically. Still, there’s much more to it than that. There are a few different...

Cutting Keys for Yachts and Boats As an island nation, we Brits enjoy a lot of recreational sailing. But it doesn't stop there: the UK is home to thousands of house boats that house people up and down our expansive canal system. As such, it's not all that uncommon for...

A secure front door is not only great for your own peace of mind; it’ll also keep your insurance company from causing a fuss. They will often prescribe lock combinations for your door. In this article we’ll go over a couple of combinations and discuss pros and cons....

We have an IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT to make! We're making a blog series all about front door security, the different types of locks you can use, what solution is best for the job etc. We'll be releasing one post a month on the topic, for the next few months, starting...

The Trouble With Cutting Thousands of Keys We discussed bulk key-cutting a couple of times before (here and here, to be precise), but it continues to be an exciting topic. Every bulk order we get presents its own challenges. To make key orders in bulk (bulk is...

Is it legal to copy a fob? We get this question a lot. Many people assume that, because a fob is electronic and doesn't look like a key, copying a fob is somehow different to copying a key. But really, if you think about it, a fob is a key in every sense of the word....

A TDoS attack ain't nothin' pretty. Sadly, Metrolocks and other locksmith companies in the UK have been subjected to heavy TDoS abuse by an unknown source, presumably an aggressive competitor. What is TDoS? TDoS stands for telephony denial of service. Denial of...

The moment has finally arrived. We've tried for years, but finally we can clone Paxton fobs and cards! Paxton fobs generally run on a frequency of 125kHz which is the standard frequency for basics RFID fobs. The catch is that Paxton fobs are encrypted, which has...

Metrolocks has just been accepted as a member of Interkey, a prestigious international key-cutting association. What is Interkey? Interkey is a Europe-wide key-cutting and security trade association for serious and qualified professionals. It has been around since...

You may have already read that we at Metrolocks can now copy car keys! It's big news for us, and we're proud to have mastered the process. But how exactly does it work? What's the procedure? Is it safe, is it legal? In this blog post, we'll answer all those questions....

We recently attended a pre-Christmas party with one of our many lovely customers. A co-invitee was AskPorter. AskPorter is an ingenious AI-based concierge service that deals with all kinds of property-management issues digitally, thereby saving property management...

We were recently ordered on a repossession call-out by a bailiff. Repossessions only happen once the bailiff has obtained a High Court order to allow the job to take place. Since it's tough to evict people when they're in the building, a lot of repossessions (or...

After acquiring a tonne of specialist equipment, and after a day of intense training, we can now cut car keys! That's right: we can make spare copies of most types of car key. It's generally quite quick with us: the average time taken is about ten minutes from start...

If you're here, you're probably trying to change the registration details of your Metrolocks EVVA key. Once the key is registered, only the registered person(s) can authorise the cutting of new keys. This allows you to control the amount of keys that get made. Click...

If you're reading this, the chances are you're having trouble with your intercom system.This article will give you an explanation of what intercom systems are meant to be able to do. It's not hugely complicated: any intercom needs to be able to do at least four...

Copying a gate fob – or gate remote – doesn't have to be as difficult as many people think. In fact, the vast majority of gate remotes can be copied relatively easily. There are two steps, normally, to getting a new gate remote, which we will guide you...

What to do when you find keys lying on the street It's not uncommon to see keys just lying around in the street, and there are many conscientious people out there who would love to return those keys to their rightful owners. Anyone could find those keys and break in,...

Keys can be a messy business, especially if they're for things we don't use so often. I've never lost my house key, but I've certainly misplaced the key to that filing cabinet I never need to lock. "Doesn't matter," I tell myself, "I won't ever need to lock it."...

We’re proud to announce the launch of a new website, welovekeys.co.uk. We Love Keys is the best and fastest way to get replacement ABUS keys, with low prices and short lead times. Why should I care? ABUS replacement keys have for years been notoriously difficult to...

The idea behind a lock and key party is simple: it's a silly icebreaker for singles looking to meet new people. A bunch of people meet, where all the men have a padlock and all the women have a key. They each wander round the room having a quick chat with...

A locksmith does all kinds of exciting work, and his repertoire is not limited to bog-standard slam-shuts. We're regularly called out by London Borough councils who need assistance on what are known as mental health assessments. Social workers at the council sometimes...

If you're here, you've probably been asked to supply a letter of authorisation for a security key. Security keys tend to be restricted in a number of different ways, and therefore usually require some sort of end-user authorisation to get made. In most cases, a simple...

Our nationwide fob copying service is fast, efficient and affordable. If you need a fob copied, you’re in the right place! To read more about the service, including how it works and how much it costs, click here. Below you can find a list of all the fobs we know we...

At Metrolocks, we offer a mail-order fob copying service and an online key cutting service. Both of these things occasionally require customers to post us their keys or fobs, but problems occasionally arise... This article is designed as a guide to posting us your...

I once met a locksmith who, when he applied for an apprenticeship in the early 80s, was told, “Don’t bother, mate; everything’s going to be electronic by the mid-90s.” Well, that didn’t really happen, did it? But smart locks – locks that you can control from your...

Locksmiths are all thieves who charge unholy amounts purely because they know they can, right? Wrong. Being a locksmith these days isn't easy. Life in the 1990s was much simpler, in pre-internet days: an ad in a local parish newsletter provided many locksmiths with...