Your purse was taken from the back of a chair at a restaurant. The cards can be cancelled by phone tonight, but the house keys were in the side pocket beside a driver's licence that shows exactly where those keys fit.
When a key disappears, cutting yourself another copy solves the wrong half of the problem. You can get in again, but so can whoever finds the original. A same-visit rekey turns that around: the locksmith works through each cylinder the missing key operated, fitting new bottom pins on a conventional lock or resetting a homeowner-rekeyable one through its own procedure, and refits the lock to the door. The lost key still slides into the keyway but no longer lifts the pins to the right height, so it turns nothing. You leave with fresh keys cut on site and the same locks you already had.
Sound familiar?Collison Heights
Lost Keys — Same-Visit Rekey · Collison Heights
Scene 1
With the cylinders read, the locksmith can say whether the whole property can live on one key. Cylinders from the same keyway family accept the same blank, so they can be pinned to the same combination. Where the front door is one family and the garage entry another, the choice is to keep two keys or swap one cylinder for a compatible one during the visit. Five-pin and six-pin cylinders, and homeowner-rekeyable types, each have their own limits on what they can be matched to. A minute of comparing keyways before the work begins is what makes a single ring possible afterwards rather than a near miss.
Scene 2
Some newer residential locks carry a small slot beside the keyway that lets a homeowner change the key with a learn tool, but only while a working key is in hand. When that key is the one that was lost, the locksmith uses the manufacturer's reset tool instead: the cylinder is pulled from the lock, seated in the reset fixture, and its internal sidebar and wafers are returned to a blank state. A new key of the right blank is then inserted, the learn tool sets the cylinder to it, and the lock goes back on the door taking the new key and rejecting the old one.
Scene 3
Whatever became of the lost key, it stopped mattering the moment the last cylinder went back on the door. It still slides into the keyway, because the keyway did not change, but the pins inside no longer line up with its cuts, so it turns nothing. Whoever finds it in a snowbank in April, or already has it in a drawer, holds a shape that fits your lock and does nothing to it. That is the whole purpose of the visit, and it is worth pausing on: the worry that started the day has a definite ending, and you can watch it demonstrated with the old key in your own hand.
What shapes the quoteAshburnham Lock Experts
FeesSame any hour
Winter is a normal time for this work. Cylinders come off the door and are pinned in the van, out of the wind, and go back on with a dry graphite or PTFE lubricant that sheds moisture rather than holding it the way oil does. A cleaned, dry-lubricated cylinder is less likely to freeze than the gritty one it replaced. Keeping a storm door closed over the main lock helps through freeze-thaw weeks.
When the hardware itself is the weak point: a plug worn oval, a cylinder eaten by salt from a driveway-facing door, a light knob lock on an exterior door, a keyway with no blanks left in supply, or when you want a different style, a heavier deadbolt or a keypad. In those cases a new lock keyed to match the rest of the house is fitted in the same visit. Everything else is rekeyed.
Different brands often mean different keyways, so the same key blank will not enter both. The locksmith has two routes: replace the cylinder in one lock with a compatible one so both doors take the same key, or rekey each to its own new combination and give you two keys. Which suits you depends on the hardware and how much you want a single ring. Both are decided with you on the doorstep.
PeterboroughOntario
Lost Keys — Same-Visit Rekey · Peterborough, Cavan Monaghan, Otonabee-South Monaghan, Ashburnham, Byersville, Claraday, Coldsprings, Downers Corners, Greenhill, Jackson Heights, Kawartha Heights, Westmount
Every square is one home in a hundred.
On-site assessment
Your purse was taken from the back of a chair at a restaurant.
(249) 494-7410, open 24/7.
On-site assessment preferred · (249) 494-7410, open 24/7
