The cylinder, the mechanism, or both
The cylinder holds the secret of the key and comes out with a single screw on the edge of the leaf. A key dropped in the château park, a set left in a locker on the Berliet estate, a tenant handing back a flat at Bel Air: in all three cases replacing the cylinder settles it, and the mechanism stays exactly where it is.
You go into the lock itself when the mechanism is what fails: a bolt that no longer throws, bent linkage on a multipoint, a faceplate pulling out of the timber. In the nineteen-sixties and seventies blocks at Les Alpes, many flat doors still carry their original lock, and the spare part no longer exists in any catalogue.
The choice is made at the door, not on the phone, whether that door is a flat door at Les Alpes or a courtyard door in the old village. Centres are measured, the cylinder length either side of the leaf, the thickness of the door, the state of the frame, and the itemised quote is presented before anything is taken apart. On a door that closes badly, adjustment comes first, or the new lock will take exactly the same strain.
Old Village doors and the other ways into a house
In the streets around the church, solid timber doors have often kept their original ironwork. It cannot be matched from a standard catalogue: either a modern lock is adapted to the existing joinery, or the visible parts are kept and the mechanism behind them renewed. Which of the two applies is decided after a survey, and nothing is forced onto joinery that will not take it.
The sheer amount of low-rise housing shifts the demand. Gate, garage door, service door, garden access: these count as much as the front door and are rarely fitted to the same standard. In the housing plots of Manissieux a single house commonly carries three or four different cylinders, and therefore that many keys on the ring.
On a Manissieux house, that is where keying to one suite starts to make sense: one key for the front door, the garage and the pedestrian gate, while the service door keeps its own. Each opening is measured separately, because cylinder lengths almost never match from one leaf to the next. The survey lists the openings before anything is ordered.
How does this service work?
Techniques, typical situations, standards and things to watch out for: it is all on our lock and cylinder replacement page. This page focuses on what the service involves in Saint-Priest.