Nov 6
Getting Started with Milling
My Mill
Several people have asked me about my milling setup, and so I decided to write a bit about my setup, and getting started with your own setup. This will serve as a very basic guide to setting up your own mill. Milling allows for a very large degree in freedom not just in modifying locks but you will most likely find many other uses for it too. You may be surprised how useful you find it to have a mill, once you have one around:) Read more
3 commentsSep 11
Medeco Biaxial Mortise – My Cutaway
Medeco Biaxial
The Medeco Biaxial is the previous generation of Medeco lock, however it is arguably a more secure cylinder than the newer M3. Involving almost as much complexity as the M3, it is frequently a hard lock to explain to others. While there are factory cutaways of this lock (similar to the M3 in the previous post) they do not effective in showing the unique features of Medeco locks. To be able to show people how Medeco locks really work I decided to make my own Medeco cutaway. This is also my first milled cutaway for the blog.
3 commentsAug 18
Updates
I am sorry for the lack of updates on my blog, after doing the last factory cutaway article I vowed the next one would be a custom cutaway on my new mill. There were some delays in getting the mill setup properly with DRO controls, and then several conferences that delayed me making another post. I am working on the next article as we speak, and it will be out soon. After that will be a short article about my mill now that it is properly working (and what you would need to get your own mill up and running). I thank everyone for there patience and will have content more regularly soon.
2 commentsDec 31
Medeco M3 and M3 BiLevel Mortise – Factory Cutaways
Update: Some errors were made in this article, please see the end for the corrections.
The Medeco M3 is Medeco’s latest commercial cylinder and was released as a replacement for the Medeco Biaxial. They released both the M3 and the lesser known M3 BiLevel (M3B for short) at the same time. On the surface both look surprisingly similar, and even with factory cutaways it may not be immediately apparent what the difference is. We will explore the workings of the M3 and M3B and see what they bring to the table beyond the Biaxial in terms of security and features. In addition we will take a look to see why the beefy looking M3 BiLevel may not give you much more security than the Kwikset on your front door.
8 commentsNov 29
Duo 14 Tumbler Cam – My Cutaway
The Dirty Duo. The Duo lock is somewhat unknown among lock enthusiasts, often looked at as a simple wafer lock. The Duo, however, is not everything it seems, as it features a non-reversible key and generally found in 8 or 14 tumbler versions. The higher end Duos’ feature more than the standard double bitting (cuts on the top and bottom of the key) and are triple bitted (having two parallel tracks on the top of the key, and one on the bottom). In addition, the Duo uses one spring placed between every two wafers (one pushes up while the other down, countering each other and making it harder to manipulate) unlike standard wafer locks. On the tripple bitted keys the lock does not use split wafers like some wafer locks, but rather one of the tracks is actually a side track (set slightly lower than the actual top track). I decided not only to make a cutaway of this lock but to do some restoration work for cosmetic and functional purposes. So let’s continue…
2 commentsOct 30
Abloy Protec Mortise – Factory Cutaway
The Abloy Protec lock is one of the most secure cylinder locks in the world. It is currently the second most secure lock that Abloy offers, only superseded by the Abloy Protec CLIQ, which is the Abloy Protec with an additional electronic chip. I recently acquired a factory cutaway and figured how best to celebrate but to photograph and disassemble this beautiful beast.
I would like to specially thank Jaakko Fagerlund, an Abloy expert, for not only direction on the breakdown but also technical review of this article. If you are lucky enough to be going to the upcoming Dutch Open you will be able to catch him speaking there. We have a lot to cover, so let’s get started… Read more
Oct 23
Master Lock 572 Padlock – My Cutaway
I figured I would start with a cheap rekeyable padlock. This is a MasterLock 572 bought from a Home Depot with a price of about $13. Aside from the cheap factor of this padlock the key feature was the fact it was rekeyable. Making cutaways of non-rekeyable padlocks is a whole lot harder than rekeyable ones (although not impossible, but that is for another time). It was primarily a practice but came out pretty well. Read on for the how to…
2 commentsSep 29
Welcome
Welcome to my blog, I am a lock collector with an interest specifically in cutaways.
I have always followed several other blogs, but few have much in the way of cutaways and even fewer in how to make cutaways.
I plan to not only document how and the result of the cutaways I attempt, but also any tools and professional cutaways I acquire along the way.
So welcome, and some real content to follow.
2 comments
