"Tricks of the Trade"

I hate this phrase. I have been told my hatred for it is irrational but perhaps you can join me in banishing this from the language forever. I am not overly optimistic.

"Tricks of the Trade" seem to fall into two groups. The first are those which are simply things every professional who knows his or her craft should know. They are not tricks. They are skills and job expectations.

An example of this might be to read the depths of the cuts from a sample key using calipers and then reading a cut table to find the closest standard factory cuts before pinning a cylinder. You could just take a LAB pin kit with pins in increments of 0.005 and visually drop in pins to get to level on the plug. (If you are not a locksmith, this will mean little to you. Sorry.) You could. However, you were given a sample key from a group of keys already in circulation. It could be high or it could be low or it could be some of both. (Ponder that, a key can be some of both.) When this lock is installed, some of the other users may have keys which are higher or lower. You do not know. If you find the factory standard, that is the key which was used to copy all those others and it will be workable or at least that is the best odds. Should you later cut a key by code, you KNOW it will work.

To look beyond your own nose, here is a different example. I saw a panic exit device installed by a contractor and while well done the construction marks were visible in places beyond the bar on this steel door. They were very visible in black felt pen. No painter who has to work on this door later wants to deal with that. Pencil is covered in one coat but the felt lifts up and can be seen through the paint. It is not a trick of the trade to use pencil, it is good practice since nobody wants you to make the work harder for the next person.

There! Two quick examples of knowledge you should know just as part of your trade. I could go on. I have four years of trade classes and years of work to find examples.

Now for the other kind of 'trick of the trade'. It is usually some action which is trying to save time or materials. It is a short-cut which produces inferior work and sometimes the person doing this knows it and sometimes not.

Self-tapping metal screws. Certainly quick to install but when they are not provided with a fire-rated exit device, the rating is toasted if you substitute the fasteners. Is that the end of the problem? No. Self-tapping screws do not have the hold of tapped in bolts. If an exit device is not fire-rated due to being on an exterior door, then it has a vital security role and for it to work well, the screws must hold onto the door as best you can. Self-tagging screws are weak when installed and some of the thread gets chewed away every time you need to pull the hardware for routine work like changing the keying on the lock.

Do not get me wrong, there are places for them. Also, they do come in various grades and specification. Used appropriately would be on parts with no relative rotation or shifting shear. In my opinion, they work fine for holding a push plate or a sweep.

Another 'trick of the trade' which bothers me is making a key fit better by filing the top of a plug and/or reaming out the chambers. (We have all seen it.) Again, it has its place in rare occasions where a single later of keying is in place and probably always will be. Places which are keyed but really have low security standards for this door like the front of some apartment building. When you are there late at night since the worn out SC1 mortise cylinder had started to have the pins rotate and jam rather than lift you have no choice but to supply a new cylinder with new pins. However, it is an open stock key and you know there are, at least, two keys per suite and you can not test most of them. If you are strict and find the factory code you know you will orphan many of those keys and make no end of problems for the building management. (If they understood the problem and wanted high security, they would never have had an open stock key.) So you file the plug and drop in pins 5 thou short. The shorter pins allow for high cut keys and the flattened plug allows for low cut keys. Some keys may be so extreme they still will not work, but most will.

The next step in a decision like this is to inform the management. You have softened the keying up so most of the tenant keys will work. If any one key fails later, it is not the locksmiths problem. It is not a call back. I check they have a supply of working keys to just quickly substitute keys which do not work. Again, these last customer service points are what separates a professional doing good service from somebody just going fast. You served the customer needs but also provided information about the loss of security.

Feel free to disagree with my examples but tell me why. Is there some other description of a 'trick of the trade' which you do not think this covers?

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Laux Myth ... Thoughts From a Locksmith
By MartinB, Found @ http://lauxmyth.blogspot.com/