Random has kindly sent me a 6 lever padlock that has seen better days, and this one is a candidate for disassembly. There is no springiness in the levers, and it has the appearance of something that has been buried for a long time.
I marked the center of the posts, and drilled open the lock.
The springs were shot - some were there, but snapped off if any pressure was applied to them. The levers were still useful, as I could measure them even though the springs were wrecked.
I attempted to clean the parts as much as I could - some time, plus a combination of parts degreaser, soap and water, and CLR help.
An image of the levers.
As part of a separate project, I was able to get enough parts together to make a cutaway lock. I had purchased an Empire lock off Ebay, and this one had been in a fire, so the springs were shot. The levers from a different Champion lock were used to create this cutaway.
Since the last posting, I've worked on decoding a number of pancake locks. Many of the locks I purchased had dead shackle springs - I wish I'd read the part in Lauren's book about asking sellers to test the spring **before** I bought some of these locks. The majority of the locks I've purchased don't have screws holding them together. I have one (dead shackle spring unfortunately) but I'm not going to take it apart. It should be noted that one of the locks I have springs back when you push down on the shackle, but doesn't spring up when the lock is opened.
For my cutaway, I made a spring out of .040 phosphor bronze spring wire. This is much thinner than the original spring, but it works, and it's what I could get.
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