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How Construction Keying Works | Video

How Construction Keying Works


Have you ever heard the term "Construction Keying"? Or PK Balls and wondered what they were? No problem, this video will walk you step by step. Construction keying is when a contractor would have one key that is going to open many different projects at the same time. It makes it really easy for them in terms of key management, but as soon as they are done doing construction and they hand the customer the key for house and they put it in the lock and they turn it, it is going to lock out the construction key and then the homeowner key is the only one that is going to work on it.


This is done by using locks that can accept and use PK ball bearings. Quick-set uses a number 4 for equivalent master pin size and Schlage uses the number 3 master pin size.


To make things clearer I’ve created two basic keys: the construction key is cut to a five and then all ones and the homeowner key is just cut to all ones. If you insert the homeowner key, you’ll see that it is all pinned to number ones. But, if you put the construction key in, you’ll see that all cuts fit perfectly but the first one that is a number five.


With the construction key inserted, put a PK ball that is equivalent to a number 4 master pin. As the homeowner key is cut to a number one and the construction key on the first cut is cut to a number five, there’s a difference of 4, which will allow this PK ball to work.


We are going to slide the cylinder into the lock here. You’ll see it works perfectly fine if you take out the key and put it back again. When the construction is done and the homeowner is given their key, and they were to stick in their key, what is going to happen is that since it is a number one cut and the construction key was a five cut, the homeowner key is going to push the PK ball next to the top pin and what is going to happen is that it is going to push the PK ball into the little hole job off to the side. You’ll see that the homeowner key works perfectly well but the construction key doesn’t. So, this is how you do construction keying.

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