An old mortise lock opened without a scratch
- Work
- Emergency lockout
- Where
- Oakwood
- Finished
- Oct 12, 2026
A 1920s front door, a bent key and a locked-out homeowner at 11 p.m. Open in 18 minutes, nothing broken.
The key had snapped in a hundred-year-old mortise lock, and replacement parts for that lock haven’t been made in decades.
Ray removed the broken piece with an extractor, picked the lock open and cut a new key by code on the van’s machine. The lock stayed in the door.
The result
The door was open in under twenty minutes, the original hardware is still on the house, and the owner has two new keys on a ring.
“Locked myself out at 11 p.m. in a thin sweater. Ray was there in twenty-five minutes, got the door open without a scratch, and told me the price on the phone first.”