Keynote

There are precious few sources for truly well-crafted furniture hardware that I am aware of.  The Brusso line has been around for a good while now and they do a nice job with their knife hinges.  However, if you want to hang a wall cabinet with keyhole type hangers or put a lock on a cabinet or box, elegant options seem to be limited or non-existent. While it is possible to polish up available lock-sets and do a bit of judicious modifying to make them presentable, the key is another matter. Usually the keys are made from plated pot metal which makes them difficult or impossible to modify.  Here’s a typical example:
You can see that the surface finish is mediocre and that casting seams are apparent.  The design of the key is also only suitable for certain styles of work.  If you try to polish this, you’ll quickly go through the plating, reshaping will have the same effect, and attempting to solder on more metal  will only melt the pot metal.

Recently a client requested a lock be retro-fitted to one of my Wall-Mounted Jewelry Cabinets (click here for an example) that her husband had purchased the year before as a gift. Installing the lock on the finished cabinet was stressful enough, but then, once again, I was faced with an unhappy choice of keys for the lock, as above. In the past I had been able to modify the key supplied with the lock and end up with something reasonable, but that was not going to be possible this time around.  I decided to make one from scratch as the functional part of the key was so simple.

First I chucked some 1/8″ brass rod into my drill press, lowered it down into a vise (which was clamped securely to the drill press table), grabbed a hold of it in the vise and then loosened the chuck. Now I was able to drill the necessary centered hole in what would become the end of the key shaft. I started with a very small bit and worked my way up using four successive bit sizes to the ending diameter.  Next I silver-soldered a tab of brass to the end of the key shaft.  The mating surface of the tab was arced to conform to the shaft using an 1/8″ round file. Then I made a wooden knob drilled for a snug slip fit to the shaft, positioned it and drilled for a fixing pin made from a brass brad:
The resultant key is much more suitable and my client was very pleased with the result. Sadly, that is not the end of the story.  A few weeks later, I hear back that the tab of the key has broken off in the lock! Well, I’m no metal-smith and this experience certainly proved that.  Luckily a world-class metal-smith lives and works right across the river from me, my friend Mark Read. I went to Mark for some trouble-shooting. First, he determined that I did not use silver-solder — the remaining film of solder was much too soft for that.  Then I got a nice little lesson in quality silver soldering. I’m very confident that Mark’s work will stand up well to everyday use.

Until next time
df