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MASTER KEYING

One key that opens everything, and forty that open one thing.

A master-key suite is not a product you buy, it is a chart somebody has to write. We take your door schedule, decide who needs to reach what, and pin every cylinder to that decision.

£28 per cylinder, plus design · 1–3 weeks

Call 0161 496 0271
A brass escutcheon and snap lock, worn at the keyhole.
A worn escutcheon off a suite we still hold the chart for.

The second shear line

Slip a thin brass wafer between the key pin and the driver and the chamber acquires a second joint. Now two cut depths, 0.046 in apart — two increments of 0.023 in — both put a joint on the shear line, so two different keys turn the same plug. That is the entire trick, and it is why a suite is a chart and not a purchase: every wafer you add doubles the number of keys that fit.

shear line change key wafer fitted turns master key wafer fitted turns change key no wafer turns master key no wafer bound by 0.046 in wafer 0.046 in — two increments

The fourth column is the one that matters when you write the chart. A cylinder with no wafer has one joint, and the master key — cut the wafer's thickness deeper at that position — leaves the driver across the line. That is how a server cupboard stays out of the suite while sitting in the same building on the same blank.

A chart, six doors deep

Door Change key Opened by Grand master Bitting
Front entrance AA1 GM yes 4 7 2 6 3 8
Rear yard AA2 GM yes 4 7 2 4 3 8
Office 1 AB1 M-A yes 4 7 5 6 3 8
Office 2 AB2 M-A yes 4 7 5 4 3 8
Store AC1 M-B yes 4 9 2 6 3 8
Server cupboard AD1 — no 1 3 7 2 9 5

We keep the chart and you keep a copy. Blanks are restricted, so a key cut for this suite cannot be copied at a kiosk — and when somebody leaves, we rekey the doors they reached rather than the whole building.

Tagged keys on a rail, one tag per door in a suite.
One tag per door. The chart lives on the rail as well as in the file.

Who this is for

  • Landlords and letting agents — one key for the agent, one per tenancy, and a rekey at changeover that costs £45 a cylinder rather than a new lock.
  • Small industrial units — gate, yard, workshop and office on one grand master, with the stores on a sub-master.
  • Practices and clinics — everyone through the front door, almost nobody into the drug cupboard.
  • Anyone carrying more than four keys. That is usually a suite waiting to be written.
Send us a door schedule