Josh-the-Locksmith
25 Years Experience
Austin, TX
Male, 46
I've been a locksmith since 1998. I did automotive residential & commercial work from 1998 to 2008. From 2008 to 2018, I did some residential, but mostly commercial work. I have been project managing & estimating since 2018. I used to locksmith in the Chicago area, now the Austin area.
Are you saying your alarm system isn’t going off, and your cameras aren’t picking anyone up?
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I don’t know if you’ll be able to find anything to work with your existing hardware. They quit making that lock YEARS ago, & parts usually aren’t compatible between mortise locks, except cylinders of course. You’re probably better off replacing the whole thing if you want a big change like that, or if something breaks.
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Hard to say without knowing what kind of lock exactly, but sometimes those old mortise locks have a split spindle. You remove 1 half by sliding it out, and the other half hooks into the lock. You just unhook it. Some brands have a solid spindle that goes all the way through, but I’ve never seen it get stuck. Some have a screw that screws into the spindle from the backside, but if you don’t see a place where a screw would go into it, that’s probably not the case. Those are my best guesses. Any one spindle has always been either solid and once you get 1 knob off, it just slides out of the lock, of the split spindle style.
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Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeon
Do you ever operate on guys who get their jaws busted in a fight?
Antiques Dealer
If you buy an item that turns out to be stolen, do you have to turn it over to the police?
Hotel Employee
What was the craziest request you ever got from a guest?
Sounds like you are describing the most common deadbolt that people put on their houses and retail storefronts. One problem I see with that is there is what may be more secure against a physical attack may not comply with your local fire code. Being a classroom you have to comply with a code that requires 1 motion for your students to get out in a fire. Such as a lever handle, you just turn and walk out. If you had a separate deadbolt on the door, it would require knowledge of the deadbolt being locked & having to turn the lever. Makes a big difference when the room is filled with smoke in a panic situation.
I think in an active shooter situation, a locked lever handle is going to stop someone unless they’re willing to shoot their way through, and then you have a different problem. They’re not going to take the time to get tools out and pry the door open.
To me the most common sense solution is a lever that can be locked or unlocked with a key from both sides. So a teacher can lock the EXTERIOR lever of the classroom from the inside or the outside with a KEY. Yet when the inside lever is turned, people can still escape if they had to whether it had been locked or not. It would also allow emergency responders to get into the room with a master key. That function does exist by the way. It carries different names depending on the manufacturer. The more common lever style is a thumb turn on the inside, keyed on the outside. The problem with that is it allows a student to lock the door, which in normal day-to-day operation could be a problem with students messing with it, potentially locking a teacher out of their own classroom.
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Not quite sure what you mean by that, but if you mean the MOST redundant lock, it would be the residential locking door knob/lever in an exterior application. I always recommend people to replace them with a non-locking handle, or disable the one they have so it no longer locks. Most people who get locked out of their homes do so because they walk out with a key and it automatically locks behind them. You don't really have the problem with a deadbolt. That is of course assuming they have a deadbolt. Also, compared to a deadbolt, there are no comparison in the security. Deadbolts are MUCH more secure, and adding a locking knob/lever doesn't really help the security of the door.
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Yes, Medeco makes a few different options. I would recommend finding a local locksmith who sells Medeco and buying through them. There are a few options with different features. Medeco XT, Medeco Classic Cliq, and M3 X4 Cliq. Classic Cliq might be your best option, economically. Your local rep could probably give you some better guidance.
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