It can be a mere frustration when you lose your keys and don’t have a duplicate of them. Now you might be scratching your head and wondering who can come to rescue you. So the next best thing that will come to your mind is calling a professional locksmith. But waiting for them to come and facing their tantrums can disappoint you. On top of that, professional locksmiths charge a hefty fee, so fixing it would cost you much more.
We have a solution for you. If you can’t afford a locksmith or spare time for them, then a few methods can make your life easy. At home, you can become a locksmith yourself. Not a professional one, but at least you can consider yourself one.
Methods
As technology is advancing every day, locksmith solutions are getting easier. If you revert to the ’90s when you had no internet access, it was way more difficult for you to open locks yourself. Now all you have to do is search the internet and get countless solutions with one click.
Here are some methods that can facilitate you or maybe your friends and family as well on how to make your own key at home. In all methods, the basic thing that you will require is a blank key, a filer, and a vice grip.
A blank key is a key that hasn’t been cut into specific dimensions. However, its cross-sectional area matches an average key and fits a cylinder easily. And later, by using a filer can be carved into the required form. A vise grip is used to hold a key steady during filing or while taking impressions.
Impressions on the key blank
This is the most frequently used method by professional locksmiths. It requires inserting a blank key into the cylinder and then wiggling it to get its marks on it. All you need is a blank key, filer, and vice grip for this method.
Take a blank key and hold it tight as much as you can by using a vice grip. Take the cylinder, insert the key inside, and turn it so that the teeth and pins inside can make an indentation on the key. Take the key out, see the marks on the key and start using the filer so that you can make the required teeth. Repeat the steps until the lock opens.
Keycode mentioned on lock cylinders
This method is also straightforward. Generally, if you hold a cylinder, you might see a code embedded in it. If you can fetch that code, then take it to the locksmith. He will enter the code into his system. If the code matches the software’s inventory, it will give you the parameters that are needed to cut a perfect key. He will probably write the code on the card, which later he will use to cut the key through a key-cutting machine.
Moreover, as technology is evolving, so are locksmiths. They have an advanced key-cutting machine that only requires certain parameters. When you add them, the cutting machine carves the key you want for yourself. Isn’t it good?
Scoping tools
This method can be a little complicated, but it can work for you. There are special types of cameras manufactured for these specific purposes. Take a camera, and insert it into the cylinder with the help of the tool. From that, you can have a rough idea about the pins and wafers inside. Take a blank key and cut it according to what you have seen in the camera. Hopefully, this will help you enough to cut the keys on your own.
This method depends on the circumstances which you need it for. It may be best for you or maybe not. And this method requires experience that only professional locksmiths have.
Removing the cylinder apart for decoding
This method is the most complicated one. It can become messy as you have to disassemble all the locks. If the cylinder has free access to you, take it apart. From that, you will see pins and wafers, and you can easily measure what an operating key should be like. Then from the cuts, you can determine how to make the key. This is the most convenient way to decode your lock within your house. Hence if you house lockout then this method will help you out.
Wrapping it up
These are the quick methods that can resolve your locksmith issues in no time. However, all of them have a different approach to making a key. You should opt for the best one that suits your situation. The blank key impression is the most convenient and easiest method that everyone can do with limited tooling. Although everyone has a different way of approaching things, if somebody thinks that a certain method is easy, the other might think the opposite. Hence, it is up to you altogether.