Hardware systems
Lockset, cylinder and keying work on commercial openings in Charlotte — mortise and bored locks, worn and hard-turning cylinders, keying schedules across a building, and making sure whatever secures an egress door still releases in one motion. Call (333) 333-3333.
At a glance
Compare this against the other three leaf assemblies or read the standards reference.
Hardware systems
A surprising amount of commercial lock work is undoing something that was installed to solve a real problem and created a worse one. A deadbolt added above a lockset on an exit door, a thumbturn swapped for a keyed cylinder on the inside, a chain on a back door because of a break-in. Each of those is somebody responding sensibly to a genuine risk, and each of them turns a single-motion egress release into a two-action one, which is not allowed on an opening in a means of egress and is the kind of finding that closes a business on a Friday afternoon.
So the first thing that happens on a lock job is establishing whether the opening is in a means of egress. If it is, the answer to the security problem has to be one that still releases in a single motion from the inside — and there usually is one.
Detail
Mechanical locking hardware. Electronic access control, credential readers and anything that terminates in a panel is a different contractor with different liability, and we will hand that off by name rather than have a go at it.
Mortise locks are covered by ANSI/BHMA A156.13 and bored and preassembled locks by A156.2, both with a Grade 1 / 2 / 3 structure where Grade 1 is the commercial heavy-duty tier. We are deliberately not printing a cycle figure here — see below.
A key that needs jiggling is a worn cylinder, a worn key, or a strike that is making the latch bind so the whole thing feels stiff. Those are three different repairs and the third one is not a lock repair at all.
Master and grand master keying, rekeying after a change of tenancy or a lost key, and getting a building back to a schedule somebody can actually administer. A building where nobody knows which key opens what is a security problem regardless of the hardware quality.
| Variable | Why |
|---|---|
| Mortise or bored | Different prep, different body, different working time in the leaf. |
| Number of openings on one schedule | Keying is a per-building job. Six openings on one schedule is not six times one opening. |
| Whether existing prep matches | A new lock into an existing prep is quick. A different prep in a steel or rated leaf is a different job entirely. |
| Whether the opening is in a means of egress | It constrains what hardware is permitted, which sometimes rules out the inexpensive answer. |
| Rated leaf or not | A labelled leaf restricts what can be cut in the field. |
No figures appear in that table and none appear anywhere on this site, because a price quoted before anybody has seen the opening is a number somebody ends up unhappy about. Those are the variables that decide it.
Why us
Before any conversation about what hardware goes on.
Published counts vary by series and by edition and sources disagree. We cite the standard and the grade and leave it there. Anyone quoting one confident number has not checked which standard they are in.
Because a binding latch feels exactly like a worn cylinder from the key end.
A keying schedule that lives in one person's head is not a schedule.
Rather than a mechanical contractor improvising around a panel.
Process
First question, always.
A binding latch presents as a bad key.
Especially on steel and on anything labelled.
On paper, to somebody whose job it is to keep it.
Tell us how many openings are on the same key and whether any of them are exit doors.
