Guides
Six things worth knowing about an old lock, a few minutes each.
What is inside a bronze mortise case and why it is repaired rather than replaced, when a door will not lock because of paint rather than hardware, whether a key can still be cut for a lock nobody sells any more, what a shopfront needs to satisfy an inspection, which keys to sort out in the first month after a purchase, and why an ordinary padlock does not survive by the water. Written for these streets and no others.
Aug 2026 · 7 min read
The Lock on a Shed by the Water: Why an Ordinary Padlock Does Not Last Here
Down by the marina and along the tracks a padlock spends its whole life outdoors in damp air off the strait, hanging in the open with its keyway pointing at the sky. The one from a bin has a plated body, a plated shackle and the thinnest spring in the yard. What survives, and why the hasp matters more than the lock.
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Jul 2026 · 7 min read
The First Month in a Martinez House: Which Keys to Hand Out, and to Whom
On an older house here the goal is not one key that opens everything. Some of this hardware will never share a keyway with the rest, and some of it should not. Three rings rather than one, what goes on each, and the locks that cannot join any of them.
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Jun 2026 · 8 min read
What to Put on a Downtown Storefront So There Is Nothing to Argue About at Inspection
A shop on Main Street with offices above it and a back door onto the service alley has three or four doors between the public and the street, and the rules about them are mostly about getting out rather than keeping people out. What tends to get written up, what an inspector signs off without comment, and what each door costs.
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May 2026 · 7 min read
The Key to the Old Lock Is Lost: Can a New One Be Cut
There is nothing on the rack at a hardware counter that goes into it, and the machine there has nothing to copy from. That does not mean the answer is a new lock. It means the key gets made from the lock rather than from another key, and which of the three ways that happens depends on what is behind the keyhole.
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Apr 2026 · 7 min read
Twenty Coats of Paint: When the Door Will Not Lock Because of the Painting
The bolt comes out, the key turns the whole way, and the door still swings open. Nobody touched the lock. What changed is that the last coat took the clearance the bolt needed, and the coats before it took the rest. Where paint collects, how to tell it from a door that has dropped, and what comes off.
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Mar 2026 · 8 min read
Inside a Mortise Lock From Around 1905, and Why It Gets Rebuilt Rather Than Replaced
On the older streets above the courthouse the front door does not have a round hole through its face. It has a cast bronze box let into the edge of the stile, with a cover plate held by two screws. Everything that can go wrong in there is behind that plate, and almost all of it is repairable.
ReadOpen 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.