Lost keys - New locks?

turk3y

ukwoody wrote: »

This is one of the best and simplest ways to make life harder for the thief. Fit a good quality 5 lever mortise Deadlock as a second lock(£11, Wilkinsons). Even for a pro with the right gear, you will not generally have an easy time to open one of these. To improve on that go for a BS rated (often marked insurence) 5 lever mortise deadlock. These contain various shims and barrels designed to make picking nearly impossible, and special drills need to be used to drill the case open.

One slightly wierd contradictory point, is that with a lot of modern Euro cylinders, if the key is in the barrel on the inside of the door, it makes it virtually impossible to pick the lock or use bump keys from the outside, this is due to a spring mechanism fitted to many modern ones that relates to the depth a key can enter. So if you have a solid wooden door it *can* be better to leave the keys in.

woody

mortise, that was the term i was looking for, obviously way to early for my brain to function.

My parently leave the key in their rear door for that reason, and also if there was a fire they would not have to look round for the keys in the smoke, they dont do it with the front door as somone could use a coat hanger through the letter box to obtain them, although I dont know how easy or hard that would be.

rygon

I leave my key in and then leave the key tilted (rather than vertically which would allow you to pull it straight out. Guessing it would be much harder for the burgler to turn the key to vertical and take it out of the lock via the letterbox