Lever lock key

A lever lock key is the key with a round shank and a bit at the tip that opens lever locks, the traditional kind. As it turns, the bit lifts thin plates inside the lock, called levers, until they let the bolt slide.

You can recognise it by its size and shape: long, heavy, with a toothed bit at the end. It turns up on old doors, gates, patio doors and the street doors of older houses.

The trouble is that most of these locks offer little protection against modern techniques, and spare parts are getting harder and harder to find. In many cases the door can be converted to a euro cylinder without replacing it. We explain this in lever lock to cylinder conversion.