Commercial · Woolwich
Commercial Rekeying
The renovation is finished and the contractors have gone, along with the loaner keys they used for six weeks.
In plain words
For most business doors, rekeying is the sensible middle path between doing nothing and buying new hardware. Commercial cylinders are built to be repinned many times, and a lever set, mortise lock or storefront cylinder in decent condition has years left in it. Rekeying keeps the finish, the door preparation and the handles you already have and changes only the small brass pins inside. Where a cylinder is worn, corroded by winter salt or too light for the room behind it, the locksmith says so and offers a replacement for that door alone; the rest are rekeyed to the new plan.
How the visit goesA 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.
Commercial Rekeying
How the visit goes
Who needs to open what
The keying plan is a picture of how the business runs, so the assessment asks who goes through which door on a normal day. Front-line staff need the customer entrance and perhaps the stockroom; supervisors add the office; the owner and the bookkeeper hold the cash room; the IT contractor reaches the server closet and nothing else. Out of that conversation come the key groups: doors keyed alike so one key covers a role, doors keyed differently where separation matters, and whether a master for the owner earns its place. The plan also names anything left out on purpose, so the chart shows both what changes and what stays.
Retiring the old keys
The job is finished when the old keys are proven dead, not when the new ones work. At every rekeyed opening the locksmith tries a sample of the old keys, including the master if one existed, and confirms that each one enters the keyway and turns nothing. The collected old keys are then cut through with snips in front of the manager and can be handed back as scrap or taken away. Any door deliberately left on its original key is written on the chart in plain words so nobody assumes it changed. That last check is what turns a day of brass work into a genuine reset of who can open the business.
Storefront hardware ready for the salt
Cylinders on a street-facing door live a hard life: slush, salt spray from the sidewalk plough and a dozen freeze-thaw swings a winter. Each cylinder handled during the rekey is cleaned and dressed with the lubricant approved for that model, a dry graphite, PTFE or specified liquid lubricant applied sparingly, since too much graphite can gum a cylinder just as oil traps grit. Keep it that way with a puff of the same lubricant each autumn and a wipe of the key before it goes in on a slushy morning. A set screw snugged, a cam aligned and a bolt that throws fully are part of the handover, so the rekeyed door also locks more cleanly than it did before.
Commercial Rekeying
In the van
Key stamp set and tags
Rekeyable padlocks
Key gauge and decoder
Commercial pin kit
Plug follower
Commercial Rekeying
What affects the quote
Restricted keyway
Moving to a patented, restricted keyway means new cylinders or cores rather than a repin of the old ones, and the blanks themselves carry a higher price than standard keys.
Distance to the premises
Travel to the site is part of the call-out, and a unit in a downtown plaza and one at the end of a rural industrial road are different trips.
Padlocks, cabinets and mailboxes
Small locks add up. Each padlock repinned to the door key, each cabinet keyed alike and each mailbox cylinder replaced is listed on its own so you can decide what to include.
What to have ready
- Do you have a current list of who holds keys?
- Are any cylinders stiff, loose or hard to turn at the moment?
- Which staff need to open which doors on a normal day?
Commercial Rekeying: questions
QuestionsCan the aluminum storefront door on our unit be rekeyed?
Yes. The narrow stile of a storefront door houses a screw-in mortise cylinder secured from the edge, and it unthreads, is repinned and screws back in like any other. What the locksmith watches is the cam: it has to suit the hook or deadbolt mechanism inside the door and sit at the correct depth, or the bolt throws short. Weather-facing cylinders showing salt wear are pointed out so you can decide on replacement.
What do you do with the old keys?
They are gathered, tested at each rekeyed door to confirm they no longer work, and then cut through so they can never be used or copied. You can keep the pieces or the locksmith takes them away. Any old key that still operates a door you chose to leave unchanged is handed back and noted on the chart, so it is clear which keys remain live and which are scrap.
How many keys should we have cut?
Count the people who need each group, add one spare per group for the safe, and stop there. Extra keys cut 'just in case' are the ones that end up unaccounted for. Because the keys are cut to code from the pinning records, more can be produced later to the same standard, so there is no need to stockpile on the day. Restricted keys are ordered by the named signatories when needed.
Related services
- Access Control InstallationHead office wants a record of who opens the branch and when, tied to an actual name rather than a shared code scrawled on a sticky note taped under the till.
- Panic & Exit HardwareThe fire inspector's note is blunt: the banquet hall's second exit still turns on a deadbolt, and the crowd it is rated to hold needs a door that opens under one motion, no key involved.
- Commercial-Grade Lock ReplacementThe kitchen delivery door gets shouldered open more than a hundred times a shift, and lately the latch slips past the strike plate instead of catching it on the first push.