Night latch and snapped key

d0nkeyk0ng

A couple of months ago, my brother in law broke our yale nightlatch. I think he tried pulling and twisting the tab at the same time. After that, the latch wouldn't work. I opened up the lock and put it back together as best as I could and it worked okay. But I was always worried about it failing and locking us out.

So i ordered a new yale night latch, identical to the old one. I swapped the locks over, keeping the same rim cylinder. The new lock was a little stiff to turn with the key and the key would not return back to centre automatically, so I would just manually turn it to centre to remove the key.

The lock's been fine for two months but today I stuck the key into the lock. It felt a bit soft and when I turned the key back to remove it, it snapped off. So I have the key blade in the rim cylinder.

Now I could quite easily swap the old cylinder for the new one that came with the new night latch but it does mean cutting more keys. I'm also worried the same thing will happen again.

Any ideas on how to remove the blade?
Any ideas on how to prevent it happening again?

flashg67

Only ever changed one of these and at first attempt, it was a bit stiff. The bolts holding the rim lock in must have been slightly different, or have moved because I refitted it again and it was fine. I also had to back the screws that hold the latch to the door a turn or two which probably allowed a little bit of movement that the lock 'blade' needed to turn the latch easily. My amateur conclusion was that the lock blade has to be a perfect fit into the latch , if it's out of true even a tiny bit, it causes it to stick/become stiff to turn

Norman_Castle

Remove the cylinder and try banging it on something. The intention is to get the remaining blade to move out of the cylinder. Tweezers might help.
To prevent it happening again work out why the lock is stiff and remedy it, try loosening the cylinder screws then temporarily refitting the lock, and avoid using your key to open paint tins etc.

bluesnake

sounds like you over tightened cylinder when you fitted it. Also contraction of metal in winter

Now the cylinders usually have a metal floppy bit that goes into the lock ant the exiting keyway goes through the cylinder to the floppy metal bit, With the cyliner ar the correct orientation, just put a thin pannel nail in and lightly tap it out

look here at the 60 seconds where the cylinder is in the door and the floppy bit sicks out. Notice a slot in the cylinder 90 degrees to the floppy bit? This is usually the key way and that is where your thin nail goes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLA4NBYrUxU

Better still freeze this at 1:06 and you can see the keyway goes completely through the cylinder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sYECRnAvxU

Method 2, sometime you can tease it out the front with jewelers screwdrivers.

That floppy blade may not be compatible with a new lock

robin58

flashg67 wrote: »

Only ever changed one of these and at first attempt, it was a bit stiff. The bolts holding the rim lock in must have been slightly different, or have moved because I refitted it again and it was fine. I also had to back the screws that hold the latch to the door a turn or two which probably allowed a little bit of movement that the lock 'blade' needed to turn the latch easily. My amateur conclusion was that the lock blade has to be a perfect fit into the latch , if it's out of true even a tiny bit, it causes it to stick/become stiff to turn

I agree with this. Had to back my latch screws to get it to fit easier.

Usually the tightness is due to the blade being a bit out as it goes into the latch. Will take time to get it just right - at least a 3 tea job with a couple of swearwords thrown in - but after that it will be OK.

As for getting the broken key out I agree with the 2 above posters.

If you need to get a new key cut, try to get the key cutter to do them in steel as they don't tend to snap like the cheap brass based ones.

prosaver

When fixed, spay w40 oil in the barrel, worked for me

d0nkeyk0ng

Thanks for the advice guys. Managed to get it sorted.

Removed the cylinder and pushed a pin in a hole above the metal bar. The broken blade slid out quite easily. Then I decided to play around with the latch. Whoever initially installed it had chiselled out a recess into the door for the mounting plate. This meant the plate was flush with the door but also meant I had previously struggled to mount the latch onto the plate because the tabs were too deep. I used the broken blade and chopped off a bit of the metal bar from the new unused cylinder and stuck them to the back of the mounting plate.

This brought the plate out a bit. The latch fitted perfectly onto the plate. It also meant the cylinder didn't stick like it previously did. As a bonus, the latch locked firmly into the strike - previously, I had to give the door a bit of a push.