My landlord just got through replacing all the locks in the building.
We have a new lock at the main door and all the apartments. Also we have new lock boxes for the mail.
I noticed that in all the locks on my apt door and on the front door, they are upside down. By that I mean the key with the straight edge is on top, and the part you grind is at the bottom.
The new locks on the mail lock boxes is sideways. Instead of an North and South type of thing the key fits in West to East (if that makes sense).
When I asked my landlord, he said it makes them harder to pick.
I know nothing about that, but I really doubt that, but I could be wrong. But the keys work the same so I find it hard to believe.
Again to be clear on the door locks, when you put the key in the lock, the edge that is varied (the edge that is ground by the key grinder) is facing down.
So any lock picking experts care to let me know, would this make it harder to pick? If so how much harder?
It might make it a little harder to pick since most previous practice locks will have been right side up. However, a criminal confident and skilled enough to attempt to pick a lock will probably have no trouble at all. Burglary due to this sort of lockpicking is exceedingly rare in the US, anyway.
Burglars will ‘bypass’ a locked door by jiggling a lose/unlocked window or just breaking the door jamb or lock. It is possible to ‘pick’ most common household or inexpensive commercial locks by using a bump key and almost no skill, and common padlocks can by bypessed in just a few tens of seconds with shackle shims or a ‘ripple pick’ designed to pick four and five pin Master-type padlocks with just a few rakes without having to actually manipulate individual pins (although in most applications a padlock can be bypassed just by attacking the hasp with a hammer or screwdriver).
There are certain types of locks that are difficult to pick because of certain internal features (albeit with mich greater expense both in the locks and key reproduction), but it would really just be better to put the money into other security features and precautions, including better lighting, a building/community awareness program, passcard access, et cetera. Turning the locks sideways is the laziest non-solution to the problem of burglary and theft I can possibly imagine save for printing up a bunch of stickers saying, “Burglars go home!”
reversing a lock wouldn’t matter for most lock picking methods. What would help are locks with a secondary system designed to catch the pins that are not aligned with the key or more advanced locks with multiple pin sets at different angles.
When I was young, teeth-down was more common. But I think someone discovered that the locks are less likely to get gunked up with dirt or whatever if the teeth are up.
It’s a similar story to three-prong outlets. They used to all look like smiley faces, with the ground prong on the bottom, until someone realized that ground on the top was safer.
In both cases, it’s good to be consistent, and so initially everyone consistently chose the way that looked nice. And then someone discovered a factor that mattered more than looking nice, and so they changed.
How is it safer to have the ground plug on top? What causes safety is to have the ground plug *longer *than the conductors, so the appliance is grounded before current can reach it.
Having the hole on the bottom makes the socket look like a little face. So it’s better.
Pins down is the European way. And those cylinders are pretty much all better than American (region) locks. Lock picking folks often use different thickness pins for European locks vs. American locks (e.g. 0.015" vs. 0.025").
Flipping a standard Kwickset in an American door seems silly though.
If you put the ground pin at the top then anything that happens to slide down the wall and accidentally contact the slightly-pulled-out plug hits the ground pin and not the hot part.
And yes I have had things like coat hangers randomly fall and strike that top pin, once in a decade or so, making me happy.
I was really into this some years back, so my house has about 1/3 outlets with ground pin on top and 2/3 with ground pin on bottom. The reason for pausing the effort is that in spite of the safety aspect, gadgets all expect the smiley-face orientation–wall warts and extension cords are all designed to have ground pin down.
This is another area where Europeans have us beat. Plugs in the UK have insulation covering the quarter inch of blade that might be exposed, and there is a disconnect mechanism in the wall that cuts off power if the plug is more than a tiny bit pulled out.
If the plug isn’t plugged in all the way, and if someone managed to drop a thin metal object (maybe a piece of wire) into the gap, it will likely rest on the top prong. So it’s better for the ground prong at the top.
Saw a really good reason once. Our department tech was unplugging something. The metal faceplate came down and landed on the ground prong. He really panicked there for a second. Some idjet had taken off the faceplate and put it back without the screw. If it was ground prong down there would have been a sparking piece of metal right next to his hand.
Even a non-metal faceplate isn’t enough as minor7flat5 points out.
One thing with safety, esp. with electricity, is to always assume that you are one “oops” away from something very bad. So being paranoid helps.
