Swift Locksmith Bristol

General information

Locksmiths are often asked about High-Security Locks by their clients. This article is an attempt to describe these locks and the security features contained within them. Most of us have seen a typical door lock or deadbolt before and generally know what they do and how they work; someone closes the door, the bolt slides into place preventing entry until a key is inserted (or in some cases, a button or handle is turned). In order for high-security locks to be effective, they are designed by locksmith companies and function somewhat differently than normal locks. The first and most obvious difference is the physical keyhole itself. Most high-security locks have no visible keyway at all. This would seem to prevent any sort of conventional entry methods, such as picking or bumping. The second major difference between a High-Security Lock and a "normal" lock is in the way the locking mechanism acts on the bolt/cylinder when it is locked. A normal tumbler-based lock has two sets of bitted cuts inside the cylinder, one set each for when the cylinder sits in either position (locked or unlocked) with respect to the bolt/turning plate. These biting cuts are generally at an angle to each other; this causes them to both contact matching notches in the bolt simultaneously when the key is turned in the appropriate direction. This results in a "pinning" of both sets of bitted cuts, causing the lock to be effectively locked. In order for this pinning to have any chance of working, it must have either friction/pressure or some sort of spring-loaded interlock (such as a detent) preventing unequal pressure on the notches and therefore making picking easier than if one notch were pressing down while the other remained stationary, otherwise, there would be no way for one rotation of the cylinder to reliably prevent entry.