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Mortice locks can become difficult to open for various reasons. Examples are a worn key, misaligned door, worn lock, or a foreign object.

This British Standard 5 lever lock has just been removed from a steel welfare toilet unit. Customer could not unlock the door. The original keys were in good condition. The door could not be picked and it didn’t feel right when trying. This tells a locksmith that the lock is faulty.

The only option to open the door was to make a small and accurately placed hole through both the door and the armour plate of the lock. Once the lock was disabled the door could be opened.

You can see the gap between the side plate and the body of the lock. A lever spring is stuck in the gap. This allows the lever to slip off the key and not spring back. This is quite often seen with this make and model of lock. If I fit them I will Loctite the screws in place to prevent it happening.

UPVC doors commonly fail / break due to door misalignment, old age or misuse.

One of the rarer problems I’ve come across is due to the door being full of water. In one example a customer reported their door was jammed shut if it was really cold. On first attendance it was below freezing and the door felt heavy. Later in the afternoon once it was warmer you could hear water sloshing about in the door. We drained nearly 10 litres from that door before correcting the other fault.

In another UPVC door below that had jammed shut due to corrosion of the multipoint mechanism you can see the final dregs of about 5 litres of water being drained out of the door.

If your UPVC window won’t open there may be a few causes. The simplest of them to to fix will be a faulty window handle. At the other end of the spectrum is a window jammed shut because the mechanism has broken.

With the correct tools a jammed window can be opened and the mechanism replaced. We carry stock for most types of window mechanism.

Even a layman can see why the mechanism in the picture below wasn’t working. This make and model of espag (espagnolette) gearbox is one of the more common ones we come across.

Do you have a door that is difficult to lock from one side? Mortice locks are normally designed to operate from both sides. If key is mostly used from one particular side of the door the key can wear unevenly.

An indicator of a worn key is it working better from one side, and/or having to jiggle the key up and down to get it to turn. Getting a new key cut from an original (not a copy) may solve your problem.

In the example above key has worn but this made worse by being a badly copied key from a high street shop. Points A and B should be flat across the top but you can see the uneven wear. Because point A is too narrow it has been able to slip off lever 5 in the lock. Unfortunately the worn keys had cause wear to the levers so it was necessary to replace the levers too.

There is a bit of a flurry of faulty/jammed ignition locks at the moment. Here are 2 examples. Top is a Honda, bottom is a Citroen. Vehicles were 10-15 years old and had quite a lot of use.

Sometimes ignition locks jam because the key is worn. In that case it’s simple enough to cut a new key to original dimensions. In the 2 cases shown above the lock barrels had failed. The lock/housings needed to be removed and replaced. Occasionally the lock isn’t at fault, it’s the ignition switch but it can be difficult for the layman to identify.

If your key is starting to become difficult to turn in both the ignition and the doors, the key is likely worn. If it is difficult to turn just in the ignition then you might want to think about getting the lock replaced before you find yourself marooned in a car park.

On some vehicles (e.g. a lot of VWs such as Polos, Golfs etc) just the lock barrel can be changed. In the case of Land Rovers, Volvos and the examples above it’s easier to just change the entire lock housing.

We are open every day over the festive period. Nothing will cheer me up more than you locking your keys (and your presents) in your car, or locking yourself out. If you need a locksmith over this period then give us a call.

Xmas Eve – Open

Xmas Day – Open

Boxing Day – Open

New Years Eve – Open

New Years Day – Open

New Anglian mechanism (left). Old, discontinued version (right).

If you have old Anglian doors windows that can’t be opened the mechanism has probably broken. This can happen due to wear and tear, shifting in the building, or poor installation when new.

Even jammed or broken windows can be opened. The older mechanism types are long since discontinued but the later version mechanism can be made to fit with a few tweaks.

How long the newer gearboxes will be available for is uncertain.

Whatever make windows or doors you have, they can normally be repaired or improved. That is significantly cheaper than getting new ones installed.