Sun Jun 22, 2014 11:44 am
vacuum cleaner lock
Some of you guys might see a lot of these, but for me it was a rare treat.
I wish I'd thought to take better pictures of this lock while I was working on it.
Inside of this door is the bucket of quarters that sits underneath a commercial vacuum cleaner at a car wash. Someone tried to drill out that Medeco lock to open it up and get those quarters. The crime proved too difficult and the lock was left unusable.
I thought I could do just a bit more drilling and let the pins drop down, but they were all jammed up in there. Plus there was the sidebar at three o'clock. So I ended up pulverizing the entire lock with carbide-tipped hammer drill bits. When I was through there was really nothing left of it but a pile of dust. I don't want to say how many hours and expensive bits that required. I'll admit I'm no expert at drilling out locks. It was never done at the shop where I learned locksmithing and it's not something I ever do.
Once the cylinder was gone I was able to get a large screwdriver in there and turn the circular cam. Here's what it looked like, only not so blurry. Also, the hole in the center was originally hexagonal:
The original cylinder had a hexagonal tail to fit into the hole in the center. The replacement cylinder from Medeco had a rectangular tail. I had to take a file and reshape the hole to fit the new lock. Then I found that the new lock was about 3mm too short and didn't even reach the new hole in the cam. So I had to build it up with some welds and then file the hole back into shape (not pictured):
The way this works is that this hatch, which weighs about 20 pounds, nestles snugly into a circular opening with a heavy steel rim. When the cam turns, the three pegs (only two of which are pictured) are guided along those spirally tracks to protract or retract from the edge of the hatch. When it's unlocked, the pegs are flush with the edge of the door and it pulls out freely. When it's locked, the pegs stick out about a half an inch inside of the steel rim and secure the door in place.
I wish I'd thought to take better pictures of this lock while I was working on it.
Inside of this door is the bucket of quarters that sits underneath a commercial vacuum cleaner at a car wash. Someone tried to drill out that Medeco lock to open it up and get those quarters. The crime proved too difficult and the lock was left unusable.
I thought I could do just a bit more drilling and let the pins drop down, but they were all jammed up in there. Plus there was the sidebar at three o'clock. So I ended up pulverizing the entire lock with carbide-tipped hammer drill bits. When I was through there was really nothing left of it but a pile of dust. I don't want to say how many hours and expensive bits that required. I'll admit I'm no expert at drilling out locks. It was never done at the shop where I learned locksmithing and it's not something I ever do.
Once the cylinder was gone I was able to get a large screwdriver in there and turn the circular cam. Here's what it looked like, only not so blurry. Also, the hole in the center was originally hexagonal:
The original cylinder had a hexagonal tail to fit into the hole in the center. The replacement cylinder from Medeco had a rectangular tail. I had to take a file and reshape the hole to fit the new lock. Then I found that the new lock was about 3mm too short and didn't even reach the new hole in the cam. So I had to build it up with some welds and then file the hole back into shape (not pictured):
The way this works is that this hatch, which weighs about 20 pounds, nestles snugly into a circular opening with a heavy steel rim. When the cam turns, the three pegs (only two of which are pictured) are guided along those spirally tracks to protract or retract from the edge of the hatch. When it's unlocked, the pegs are flush with the edge of the door and it pulls out freely. When it's locked, the pegs stick out about a half an inch inside of the steel rim and secure the door in place.
