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Person holding a door-handle and latch assembly at a worktable outside a glass entrance, with additional handles and tools laid out. — Commercial Rekeying, Firth's Corners

Commercial · Firth's Corners

Commercial Rekeying in Firth's Corners

A key turned up in the parking lot with the shop's name on its fob. It came back to you, which is lucky, but it means keys are leaving the building on rings you have never seen, and the shop's locks have not changed since opening day.

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Commercial Rekeying

In plain words

Rekeying is also a chance to decide how the keys should work, not simply to change them. Most businesses settle on a small number of key groups: one key for the doors every employee uses, another for the office, cash room or server closet that only managers open, and perhaps a single master for the owner that opens everything. The locksmith maps this out on a keying chart before touching a cylinder, then pins each lock so the plan holds true on the door. Staff carry one key instead of a ring, managers carry two, and the chart tells you at a glance who can open what.

Sound familiar?

The drawer behind the counter holds a tangle of keys with tape labels: front old, side, Dave. Some open things, some open nothing, and the hardware-store copies mean the true count drifted long ago past anything written down.

How the visit goes

Firth's Corners

How the visit goes

  1. Who is entitled to order the change

    Every commercial rekey starts by confirming that the person asking for it has the standing to do so. For a small business that is usually the owner or a director; for a larger one, a facilities manager or property manager acting under written authority. The lease matters here too, because it decides which doors are the tenant's to alter and which remain the landlord's, and many leases ask that the landlord be given a key or told when locks change. Getting this straight before any cylinder comes out protects the business, its neighbours in the building and the locksmith, and it means the finished keying chart lands in the right hands.

  2. Cutting and marking the new keys

    Keys are cut to the new combinations on a code machine rather than traced from another key, so every copy is exact and the tenth key fits as cleanly as the first. Each key is stamped with a short code that means something only on the keying chart; the business name, the address and the word for the door it opens stay off the metal, so a lost key gives nothing away. Keys are counted out by group, tagged, and listed against the names of the people who will carry them. Where the plan uses a restricted keyway, the blanks are drawn against the authorization letter, and that letter is filed with the chart for future orders.

  3. How copies get made from now on

    If the business moved to a restricted keyway, the way keys are copied has changed for good. Hardware stores and kiosks do not stock the blanks, which makes running off a spare on a lunch break far harder to arrange. New keys are ordered from the locksmith by one of the people named on the authorization letter, who signs for them, and the register grows by exactly that many. On a standard keyway, the same discipline is kept by habit: the manager orders keys, the register records them and a key that turns up unlisted prompts a question. Either way the count on paper and the count in the world stay the same, which is what key control means.

Commercial Rekeying

In the van

  • Mortise cylinder set screws and cams
  • Standard and restricted key blanks
  • Key gauge and decoder
  • Master pins
  • Cylinder removal and spanner tools

What affects the quote

Same fees day, night or weekend

  1. 1Doors out of alignment

    A door whose cam, strike or closer needs adjusting so the freshly rekeyed cylinder throws the bolt fully is corrected during the visit, and that adjustment is a separate item.

  2. 2After-hours or split visits

    Work done after closing, before opening or split across two visits to suit trading hours costs the same amount as a single daytime block. The exact figure is confirmed on site once the number of cylinders and the keying plan are known.

  3. 3Several locations

    Rekeying two or three sites onto one keying plan means travel between them and a chart that spans buildings, quoted per site plus the shared design work.

What to have ready

0 of 3 ready

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Commercial Rekeying: questions

We lost a master key. Does the whole building need doing?

Only the cylinders that master opened, which the keying chart identifies. If the lost key was the top master, that is every lock in the system; if it was a departmental master, it is that department's doors. Where no chart exists, the locksmith reads the cylinders first to establish what the key reached. The remaining doors, and any keys that never opened them, are left exactly as they are.

How often should a business change its keys as a matter of routine?

There is no fixed interval. Rekey on events rather than on a calendar: a key not returned, a lease change, a break-in, a renovation crew finished, or a key count that no longer matches the register. Businesses with a good register and a restricted keyway often go years between rekeys because nothing prompts one. A yearly check of the register against the keys on the hook is the habit that tells you when the time has come.

Will rekeying affect our alarm system or card readers?

Mechanical rekeying leaves electronics alone: alarm panels, card readers and keypads keep their codes and credentials. What changes is the list of people holding keys, and it is worth updating the alarm company's keyholder list and retiring the codes of anyone who has left at the same time, since keys and codes usually walk out together. Where a door has both a card reader and a keyed override, the override cylinder is rekeyed with the rest.

Commercial Locks

Two rows of lock cylinders on a metal surface with keys and colored key tags in front. — Master Key System Design, Firth's Corners
Master Key System DesignA new hire at the shop gets handed whatever spare key happens to be in the drawer, and it turns out to open the stockroom, the back office…

Commercial Rekeying near you

Below, each lock and key service we offer in Firth's Corners gets its own page, with a description that assumes no prior knowledge. Start anywhere. Many customers arrive for a lockout and leave knowing exactly why the strike plate on the back door has bothered them for years.

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