About
A town whose locks were made to be opened.
Mount Wanda drives to any Martinez door, day or night. Downtown that often means a bronze case that turns halfway and stops; on the porches, a door whose only key left with an owner two sales back; above the shopfronts, an office that changed hands on Friday; down by the water, a shed padlock untouched since winter. Levers, springs and a key machine travel along, so a case worth keeping goes back into its door that afternoon.
4.9 / 5· 143 reviews from Martinez and central Contra Costa
2011
Answering Martinez doors since
24/7
Somebody picks up
90 days
On the labor
Keep it, or retire it
I have worked this van around the strait since 2011, and the call I never hand to anyone else is whether an old bronze case stays in the door or comes out. Most of them stay.
Kept is not the same word as secure, though. On a back door, a shop door or an office door I will still tell you to add a modern cylinder, even after I have the old one turning sweetly again.
Leo Bandini
Owner · 22 years around the strait · with Mount Wanda since 2011
One shop, one strait, and nobody above it
Mount Wanda Lock Works has been answering doors in this town since 2011, working out of a van staged near the old center rather than a counter with opening hours. The name belongs to the hill standing over the south side of Martinez, and it was chosen for the same reason the van never leaves the county: the thing that has stopped working is screwed to a leaf on Main Street, on the Alhambra Heights slope or in a yard down by the water, and no door of that kind can be carried anywhere.
What sits behind the number is worth stating, because the results above the map seldom do. There is no franchise agreement here and no parent company in another state. Nothing is owed to a lock maker or a carmaker. Nobody writes your address on a pad and sells it on to whichever van bids first. One 925 line, one person deciding where that van goes next, and the technician on your porch is paid by the same business that named the figure you already agreed to.
Loaded for a leaf that carries three locks at once
A door in the old center is commonly three eras of hardware fixed to one piece of wood, so the shelves have to answer all three on the same trip. Lever springs, spindles, escutcheons in several finishes and blanks for keyhole profiles that left the catalogs generations ago, for the cast bronze bodies downtown and up the slope. Long keepers and screws that reach framing instead of trim, for the seventies rim bolts that drifted out of line decades back. Aluminum deadlatches, hookbolts and closer parts for the shopfronts around the courthouse. Keypads and unit cylinders for the rented flats near the station, with the machine to cut the override blank that is still lying in a kitchen drawer. Exit devices for kitchen and cafe back doors, stainless hardware for the gates and boat sheds where salt air finishes plated metal inside a season, and both cut blades and proximity keys for whatever is standing in a county lot, at the marina or on a Morello Park driveway.
The scraper kit earns its space alongside all of that, since on a fair number of doors it is the repair itself. So does the bench: a key machine, a file kit for reading levers off a lock whose only key is gone, and a working surface that sets up beside the leaf mean a case can be stripped, re-sprung and refitted where it hangs. That is the whole difference between a door finished before dinner and a door propped open for a week while somebody chases a part that no store within fifty miles has stocked since the sixties.
The Case Comes Apart First
Four rules that do not change between a Main Street shopfront, a Victorian on the Alhambra Heights slope, a rented flat by the station and a steel man-door in a yard by the water. Ninety days on the labor, showing on the receipt as a line rather than offered as a sentiment.
- Cut into the leaf when the house or the shopfront went up, around the turn of the century
- The bronze body in the edge
- Added in the seventies, four screws driven straight through the paint of the day
- The rim bolt screwed on above it
- A keypad or a shelf deadbolt fitted above both, usually by whoever owned the place before you
- Whatever went on last year
The order a Martinez call runs in
The figure closes while you are still on the phone. It comes off the list printed on the pricing page, the $89 visit is a component of that figure rather than a line added underneath it, and the clock gets counted out in the same breath: $45 for an arrival between 8pm and midnight, $85 between midnight and 7am. Two items refuse to work that way. Master key systems and access control are walked and listed on site before any number is named, because an opening count guessed down a phone line is how a quote turns into a dispute.
A text reaches you before the van moves, with the technician name on it and a window drawn from wherever the van is standing that minute: roughly 10 minutes from the old center to a downtown address, 18 as the average across the eight neighborhoods, 27 out at the south edge in Virginia Hills. At the door, identification goes against the address, or a registration against the plate. Then the sequence, which rarely changes. Paint out of the stop and the keyway. The body out of the edge and opened on a cloth. The keeper moved until the bolt drops straight through. Hardware discussed only if any is still wanted once all of that is done. You turn the lock yourself before anybody packs, payment is by card or tap where you stand, the receipt arrives broken into lines, and the ninety days on the labor sit on that receipt as text rather than as something said at the curb.
The sentences that shrink the invoice
A bolt that leaves the lock properly and still misses the keeper is a paint and alignment fault, not a dead mechanism, and saying so converts what could have been a hardware sale into twenty minutes of scraping and a keeper shifted an eighth of an inch. Three doors answering to four different keys is a rekey at $27 to $44 a cylinder, not a shopping trip. A bronze body from downtown can be washed, re-sprung and put back far more often than it needs replacing, and when it goes back, the knob, the plate and the hundred-year-old cut in the leaf are all still where they were.
Some jobs get declined during that first conversation, which is cheaper for everybody than a van in your driveway. Garage door springs, cables, panels and opener motors belong to a different trade and are named as such in the opening minute. A few makes lock key coding to a dealer tool, and hearing it before dispatch beats hearing it afterward. Safes carrying relocking devices, and restricted keys that are cut only against a registered card, get called what they are. One claim in particular never gets made here: an old lever body is repairable, which is not the same word as secure, so on a back door, a shop door or an office door a modern cylinder goes on and is recommended out loud.
Where we work
Martinez and central Contra Costa, any hour
Pick your area for its own arrival time and the jobs we run there most.
FAQ
What people ask about the shop behind the van
Is this an independent shop, or a call center that sells the job on?+
Independent, and it works Martinez and the towns around the strait and nothing further. Calls to the 925 number land here and nowhere else, the van that turns up belongs to this business, and there is no third party taking a slice in between. The reason the question is worth asking is that a phone search here returns a good many results that are not locksmiths at all: they name a harmless-sounding starting price, pass the address to whoever bids for it, and the invoice that appears once the door is open bears no relation to what you were told.
How long has this van been working Martinez doors?+
Since 2011, and the list of jobs has not changed much in that time: lockouts at any hour, rekeys, bronze mortise bodies stripped and refitted, shopfront and yard hardware, and car keys. Leo Bandini has been around the strait for twenty-two years altogether. Most of what those years are worth turns up as pattern recognition rather than sentiment, such as knowing before arrival that a downtown leaf has given a quarter inch of its gap to enamel, that a seventies rim keeper went into trim instead of framing, and that the keypad above both was machined for a door standard that arrived seventy years after the door did.
Can I walk in somewhere and hand a lock across a counter?+
There is no counter, and it was left out on purpose. A counter has to be paid for: rent, somebody standing behind it, and a drive across town made by you at the worst possible moment of a bad day. All of that ends up inside somebody's price eventually. The van stages near the old center instead, which puts a downtown address about 10 minutes out, the waterfront and marina 13, Alhambra Heights 15 and Virginia Hills 27 at the far south edge, averaging 18 across the eight neighborhoods. Key cutting, lever work, cylinder pinning and fob coding all happen at your curb, off the bench that rides with the van.
Who pulls up outside, and how do I know it is your van?+
Somebody whose name reached your phone before the van left. The text names the technician and gives the window, and holding it up against the person in front of you takes about four seconds and settles the question of who you are letting near your door. If what arrives does not match what was sent, sending it away and calling the 925 number back is the correct move, and nobody here will argue with you about having done it.
What if my lock cannot be opened without wrecking it?+
That gets said out loud before any tool comes out of the bag. Most of what comes up in this town opens without damage, and an old lever body in particular is usually a picking and cleaning job rather than a casualty. Where a cylinder is seized, already broken inside, or built to a standard that defeats picking, you are told what drilling would do, what would have to go on the door afterward and what that costs, and then nothing starts until you say go. The figure settled on the phone does not move because that conversation happened. On a cast bronze case the drill really is the last resort, since once it has been through the body there is no putting that century back.
Open 24 hours, 7 days
Say whether the key meets a keyhole or a cylinder, and the rest of the call is quick
Martinez and the towns around the strait, around the clock. What sits in the edge of the leaf decides the work and the work decides the number, which is settled on the phone with the $89 visit and any late hour already inside it. It reads the same on the receipt. Ninety days on the labor, a rebuilt bronze case covered the same as a new lock.