Thread: Getting a key for a screen door

You should be able to buy a new barrel with keys at most hardware stores, my local stocks them.

Just a moment...

Looking at the handle, I would say that there is a broken spring in the plates. It might be time to buy a new lock.
Just a moment... or Just a moment...
If you do not have a key for the existing lock, you will need to remove the handles and then break the cylinder so you can remove the rebated lock. Fitting of the replacement is fairly straight forward following the instructions.

If you can get the barrel out, should be able to take it to a locksmith to have it rekeyed.

Not wishing to derail the OP's thread ... but is there a trick to getting the barrel out. I had this same issue a month or so ago when replacing a broken screen door lock. Had to resort to cutting it off with a thin blade angle grinder (damage to existing lock wasn't an issue as an entirely new lock was going in). Hope the OP doesn't have this issue.

Twosheds

Originally Posted by twosheds

Not wishing to derail the OP's thread ... but is there a trick to getting the barrel out. I had this same issue a month or so ago when replacing a broken screen door lock. Had to resort to cutting it off with a thin blade angle grinder (damage to existing lock wasn't an issue as an entirely new lock was going in). Hope the OP doesn't have this issue.

Twosheds

The simple way to remove it requires the key in the barrel, rotated so the tongue is in the barrel body. Remove the screw from the door edge that holds it in place and it then just slips out.

If you do not have the key, I have had success by slipping a thin piece of flexible shim material along the body and using it to 'lift' the tongue into the body to get it to slide out.

Are they a universal fit?
It's a new rental I've just moved in to, when I put the maintence request in I'm just gonna ask them to provide the parts or re-imburse me and I'll do it myself.

If it's a rental I'd leave it to the landlord or contact a locksmith to come out and do it for you then send the bill to landlord

Landlords responsibility, if you do it there's a chance that you will be held responsible for any fault with the lock or door and they take it out of your bond

I'm not a locksmith, so I just break them if they won't come out easily. It's covered in this video in the 'Snap and Crack' segment, which video also covers other ways that are too sophisticated for my primitive approach to fixing complicated things. I use vicegrips rather than spanners, but even pliers or multigrips would probably work. Remove Screen Door Cylinder - without a key - YouTube If you look at the barrels you'll see that there's a bridge on one side of the cam and that's the bit that breaks easily as it's much thinner than the rest of the barrel.

Snapping and extracting the barrel might be the easy part.

The next step, which is the whole point of the exercise, is fitting the new barrel. Make sure you read the instructions, because not all barrel replacements are the same and some require the handle or striker or snib, or the Sun and Moon and Jupiter and your chakra, to be correctly aligned for the lock to work. I once spent an embarrassingly long part of an increasingly frustrating afternoon trying to fit what I thought was a simple barrel replacement without reading the instructions as I'd installed plenty before and thought I knew what I was doing. Clearly, I didn't. This became distressingly apparent when finally in desperation I read the instructions that came in the barrel packet. Turns out there was something like 35 or so possible combinations of the alignments (that wasn't in the instructions - I just worked it out later) of the various bits and I'd probably tried only about 10 of them, repeatedly. Only one could work.

If it is only barrel and key you need I have a few here
if you are close to Alex/Maroochydore pm me with a phone number and you can have one.