Bluejellychick & I recently bought an antique corner-type china cabinet at a second hand store. It’s in great condition and we considered it a steal until we got it home and realized there was no key in the little lock on the glass door. :smack:
It looks like it ought to be open-able with some sort of hollow-ended skeleton key - we just bought a bunch of those on ebay in hopes one will fit. We tried picking it with a paperclip, large hairpin and a credit card. No go. Bluejellychick considered removing the hinges, but they’re old and it looks like a bad idea. Short of hiring a locksmith (which will rapidly make this not-a-bargain), does anyone have any suggestions for opening the damn thing?
Thanks so much for your reply, Phnord. The lock looks like, well, a stereotypical keyhole. Hacksaw, eh? We have a couple of those, but I don’t know about that because I think we’d run into the side of the cabinet - it’s triangular, due to being a corner piece, and of course the lock is on the side of the door, not in the middle of two doors.
We won our bid, so hopefully one of the keys will work, whenever they get here. Meanwhile, I have this behemoth blocking out the sun in my kitchen, and serving as a reproach to impulse buyers everywhere. sigh
Sigourney Weaver, definitely. But she needs to be in Alien. Hell, then my china cabinet would get opened, no problem! 'Course, a slimey monster would leap out of it…
Did you check the cabinet completly for the key? It may be in a drawer or taped to the back or top or something like that.
I’d call the shop you got the cabinet at as with it locked and no key it’s kind of useless. I’m sure they either have some keys or know how or who to open it.
Gah, we looked everywhere. And we got it at a thrift shop, so inquiries were met with a blank stare we could actually detect over the phone. I don’t think they’re allowed to reveal the biological parents of our adopted cabinet. In fact, this is probably why they got rid of it.
You come up with good ideas for a Daftbugger ! Resale and antique shops must get this problem all the time, right? Maybe I can call a couple and see what they do (“Oh, we’d never buy a piece like that!” :rolleyes: ) I confess I was hoping there might be such a person on the boards, although I suspect my title was more appealing to Ghostbusters fans…
well depending what kind of keys you got off ebay they might work. Those locks are not real real secure… they were to keep the kids out mostly. So, not many different keys out there.
If the keys you won on ebay do not work let me know I can probably scrounge a few more at the shop and let you give them a try as well.
I love daftbuggers suggestion. In my experience antique furniture places tend to have odd ball keys that may work.
It sounds like a warded-tumbler lock–the key would probably have one or two rectangular “teeth”. There’s a fair chance that one of the keys you bought will open it with a little fiddling; the important thing is that the spacing of the teeth be close.
You didn’t describe your attempt to pick it in detail, but the most commonly known approach to picking is meant for pin-tumbler locks and won’t work on a warded one. What follows is an approach I’ve used for picking small locks of this type:
Take a heavy paperclip, straighten it out, and bend a section of the end about 3/4 of the length of the keyhole at a right angle. Insert it carefully into the keyhole until it touches the end of the keyway, then rotate it slowly toward the edge of the door, feeling for resistance. When you feel resistance, it probably represents either a ward (firm resistance), or a bolt-retaining spring (springy resistance)–the latter seems unlikely in your case. If you don’t feel resistance within half a turn, try rotating the other way. If you’ve found a ward, apply gentle pressure against it, and slide your pick back toward you slowly, feeling for the gap in the ward. When you find the gap, rotate the pick carefully until you feel resistance again; that should be the bolt. Turn the pick very gently to move the bold; you don’t want to break your pick in the lock. You may need to add another bend to the gripping end of your pick to provide leverage.
If you don’t find a gap, or the bolt doesn’t move, try again, rotating the pick in the opposite direction at each stage.
IANAL(ocksmith), nor do I play one on TV. I mostly play around with pin-tumbler locks, and have only picked a couple of warded-tumbler padlocks.
There’s various places on the internet that talk about warded locks. This site talks about how to pick them, and this site talks about how they work. They don’t look too hard to pick - maybe you have a friend with an (un)healthy interest in locks?
I hesitate to give a link, but if you type in “homemade lockpicks” in Google, there’s a forum on the first link that might be able to help you, if you’re up to the effort.
[sub]The research was for my character in my novel, I swear.[/sub]
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