Sargent Lever Handle - How to Disassemble for No Key Rekey

what's up y'all we're going to step away from the residential locksmith starter series for a minute because i'm working on a bunch of sergeant lever handles this is actually a franken lever it's a lsda lever attached to a sergeant chassis i'm going to talk about that in a minute but we do have a bunch of these and i've been able to take a few apart and decode keys for the most part worked a bunch of them but there are still some one-offs and i have not been able to pick any of these that i've run across so i figured i'd do a video showing that you can take the sergeant brand lever handles uh this is like the seven line or the 6500 line grade two lever handle very common on interior doors for the most part in buildings and also very common for locksmiths to come along and switch them out when the the lever starts sagging because that's one of the biggest problems with them is the lever will start sagging on the sergeants they do not have a clutch mechanism in this particular style so after a lot of use they just get all wonky and you end up having to replace them in this case again i have taken apart quite a few of them there we've got a bunch of cylinders here i just took this one apart and made a key for it hoping that it was that missing number key that fits a certain section of this building however the key i made didn't work the other lever that i pulled off that i thought should have so i'm going to do a video on taking these apart in case you run up on insurgent lever handle and can't get it picked yes you can take them apart so let's get started on it so let's move this guy out of the way so how i know this is a franken lever is because of several things number one the chassis spring mechanism here while it was used across several manufacturers uh sergeant was particularly notorious for it number two the discussion here the this trim having it rounded like that tells me that that is the sergeant shape i don't know which uh what do they call it and the the shape of the lever handle is very uncommon for a sergeant it's more likely to be something like that also the little grippy thing on the inside is made differently everything including see how that cylinder it's got that gap around it what they did was they took one of these sergeant regular cylinders and and then a lever handle from an lsda or something and put it in there while that will work because the face of the core here is smaller it won't work in reverse so if you tried to take a standard key cylinder has a bigger front plug face core whatever you want to call it you can see it does not it doesn't go through there so you cannot take a standard cylinder and use it in an original sergeant lever handle obviously without modification you could take the core out and run it around on a belt sander or something and make it work but it's just it kind of throws it off a little bit so you don't you don't really want to do that just replace it with something else so let's go ahead and take this guy apart i was hoping to not have to do this but since we do we're just going to video it here and let me move this out of the way again this one this one should have been the key nope not that this one should have been the key for this guy but it doesn't work uh there was one other master pin in there that knocked down the third position to a 10 but that's like 2 to 10 which is an 8 max which sergeant does have a really deep max and 9 max according to that anyway but i don't think they would maybe use that i don't know i could cut that down and it may work but let's take it apart and find out just for video purposes here so once again let's move this guy spring clip that holds the chassis together take that off take your chassis off and this is why i mentioned in the schlage a series video video i'll put the link up here to that how the a series was kind of the one that taught everybody back in the day that you know once you learn how to do this on that uh you can pretty much take apart any chassis like this now again we do have some issues with ookie ookie grease old factory grease that's dried and become hard so that does cause some issues with these guys so it's actually i guess in a good way make sure and hold over here the springs will kind of not jump out like the a well but you just want to be careful that they don't go anywhere so i'm going to cup it and then just take it off so kind of just like the a series you have very similar parts this goes under that this goes into this notch right there and then this peg goes into that hole which pushes down when you push this knob in or the the interior thumb turn button what are we doing all right when here push that down it pushes that in and that's how everything gets locked so let's go ahead and yank this guy out just like that and that stabilizes it so that this is one of the main things that really keeps it in not even the retainer uh but it it you can see how right there this this part is blocking the retainer when you turn the key it lets that retainer push forward so one one good and bad thing about the sergeant locks is number one you can pop this off it's not easy to do because there is a cap in there that kind of holds it holds it on just like that once we get it apart we should see it so it's not as easy to do but you really don't need to worry about that you can get real forceful and maybe pry it out of the way but for the most part you do not have to worry about that because once we take this guy out it lets off enough pressure for you to be able to poke the retainer now on regular surgeons anyway i'm not sure about this franken lever by any means let's see frankenliever may be different than [Music] actual sergeant levers i'm gonna push that down and hope like heck it gives enough okay let's give it a whack ah there we go a little whack and it flexes enough to be able to pop this guy off all right and then we see your regular sergeant core there we're gonna go ahead and put this back on here's an example of that hardened grease so yeah icky icky stuff right there while i'm here i'm just gonna start hosing it down little by little because this guy's going back in you a use even with the wrong handle on it so put that in put that in and this will drop down notice i'm not using the springs yet because with these you can just kind of kind of drop everything into position like that like it's supposed to be and then angle it up where do our springs go make sure your springs seat on those little round circles just like that and then i'm going to push it in and let it sneak in this place over the little tab that's right there just like that make sure everything stays and push in [Music] and down down down down down i'm going to hold this in position and give that a turn make sure our springs are correct just like that good and then re re-chassis cover it here and we're going to grab our spring usually with this little spring mechanism i'll put the short leg in it's just easier to do this way short leg and then come in make sure it goes on the other side of that flex in bump and boom so once again give it a test yeah it looks like it's working okay we are good now let's figure out why this guy was not working surgeon cylinders can be a little tricky to shim uh and also the clip you can't do like we did with other cylinders you know regular clips you can just kind of push it around and off but because it has this e-clip that goes down in there you kind of have to go straight off typically for that for lack of better tools i'll grab a pair of pliers or something and then just wiggle and push it off all right we're going to grab our shim shim maru which is right here we've got a ln blank which fits all the l key ways and a shim so taking sometimes it's really really difficult to get your shim in there because certain cylinders actually were really tight tolerances so what i'll do is i'll come in and i'll narrow the shim a little bit on one end this one's bent but i'm gonna go ahead and continue to use it uh oh yeah yeah yeah we got some markings there give that a little squirt and let's get to shimon these have been all particularly hard to shim but let's hope not for this one all right i'm just past that's one of the problems when your shim gets bent it makes it hard to it keeps crumpling on you okay there's five i may end up having to redo this shim yep nothing's not gonna that one's not gonna work out i'll show you with a regular unmodified shim it's just a lot of surface area to go in there this one actually seems to be a lot easier than the other ones were okay so there's six there's five and there's four and [Music] there was three two and one let's wiggle wiggle wiggle i'm kind of putting turning pressure on it here yep there's two and one okay grab our hollow plug follower again you could take this this off it just you know just clips in but it's totally not necessary with the hollow plug follower all right let's see what we got here see why this guy didn't work it really should have unless they just have a bunch of oh wow oh wow we have a bunch of master pins here yeah okay let me get my little plug deal so that we can investigate this where'd it go a little plugged out plug holder and we're going to check this upper for the master pins that may have stayed in the upper chambers i've got my hand down here to catch them oh yeah this one's this one's heavily master keyed okay that was number two and it certainly doesn't match any of the other keys i can already tell so far so unless this was just re-keyed and somebody didn't clear the upper chambers and left old master pins in there then we have a whole different master key here okay so well some of the cuts are the same those front two okay let's get this over on the other bench so that i can see what i'm doing here careful careful careful don't want to lose any all right so these were the initial ones and then this was the secondary key right here that ended up being all the classrooms so it's actually that doesn't matter me showing you this because i'm literally i'm literally re-ken everything we're just trying to find keys to save me a little time and again three three seven that was the last one so we're gonna check those those two front ones one more time with the three and the three this is where it's good to keep your space and depth oh that's got mesh pins in every chamber good space and depth keys are very handy for these situations so we're just gonna take these guys off we definitely have a three and a three we definitely have a really thin wafer right there oh come back another wafer right there and then this guy uh do we have another no no make sure we don't have a stacked pens all right we got three three and three so we'll go three three and then down here at the end three all right and then this looks like five and five to me so let's go down to five five and six pretty dang close we're gonna say five and five i think six will be too deep let's check it though yeah five and five so so five and five and then that third position was even deeper we're gonna say it's a seven to match that other seven nope that's six okay six and this was definitely a seven with a 4 master wafer in it making it a 10 and then that third position only goes up to 7 so so we're going to say plus we're gonna say one to make it a seven this looks like a four so we'll go seven there too maybe nope eight oh i was in a sixty hold on seven key right there yep so three plus four and then this guy is definitely a oh they were all over the place with this nope yeah they were all over the numbering system with this thing weren't they yep so three to nine would be six and then uh this one right here we determined was a seven drop you back in there this guy will be a 9 as well so and nine would be another four wafer right there and then uh looks like we got a one another one wafer so that would be a six after we add that up or seven yeah we're gonna say seven so we got a two right there let's check that seven seven yep seven is the third one there is a one and then three with probably a five wafer in there so we'll say eight or nine yep it's a nine so yeah there's no rhyme or reason to this whole whole system that they got there for sure three to nine is six so seven nine seven seven nine seven nine seven nine i bet you anything that's the master since obviously an idiot set this whole system up so if we go cut seven nine seven nine seven nine that's that sounds like a key seven nine seven nine seven nine that just honestly sounds like some something somebody would do for a master key system but if we compare it to all the other ones nine zero uh i don't know why that had a a i just it doesn't make any sense to me i mean it could very well be the three three six five five three and seven nine seven nine seven nine is a change key but i'm taking a wild guess that that it's uh that that's the master key so i'm gonna go ahead and cut this guy and see how it works another master i got like five masters so far seven nine seven nine seven nine huh okay i think we are done with you uh if the keys that i've made so far don't work literally this is probably uh a large percentage of the operating keys so so even if it doesn't work on others and i guess i'll just have to take them apart but you can see this guy was the last one and these two doors were side by side and they were in what it would be considered like an office area nothing and then over here nothing these were all a whole nother key that uh don't really have uh master pins in them necessarily there's like one or two master pins but they don't coincide with any of the masters that i've cut so far so there you go y'all had to do a sergeant deal or you know put it back together put your clip back on dupe i put it back in the in the lever handle but honestly i have to re-key these so i'm not going to put them back together right now but you put it together just like you would any other believer put it in turn the key push in and then let it go and it sneaks into position even with a franken lever uh and then these guys up here let's see here just that okay those were the first two i took off yep nope nope nope and then all these uh really i hadn't taken a lot of them apart but because the key works so really i'm just going to be dumping everything that's in them out and re-keying everything setting up a whole new master key system so that's it on sergeant lever handles in case you run up on one yes you can get it off by taking it off if you can't pick it which is pretty hard i honestly sergeants are one of the harder ones to deal with fosho so in case you need to know and run up on one of these guys yep you can certainly take out the chassis and then just push the retainer after that retainer quote retainer guard or whatever you want to call that little center pivot is out of the way thanks for watching this video hopefully you've uh will be able to utilize that information if you ever run up on a sergeant lever handle and i can't get it open i'm tired of cutting various keys for these guys i could have sworn like i mentioned on saturday morning live that this the ones that had this this tin cut at the tip which is very common coming out of the schlage are the sergeant factory masters when you order mass sergeant was one of the ones where you could order master key systems and they were very very happy with this tin cut on the end however come to find out uh none of the tins none of them worked in any of the other locks and it actually ended up being this low-cut guy that fit a large variety of them so we're going to get all these chains and these keys will be no good after that get them re-keyed to a whole new master key system and move on with our life once again to yet another job so thanks for watching if you have any questions or comments on this video or any other ones you know what to do we'll catch you next video you

Channel: SE Lock and Key

Views: 14,837

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Id: mUv1dQtB_lA

Length: 24min 18sec (1458 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 26 2022