You have just signed the lease on a unit the previous tenant ran for a decade. The landlord handed over three keys, the back door wears a padlock nobody can open, and nobody can say how many front-door keys are still out there.
Losing a master key exposes every door it opened, and a commercial rekey brings that exposure back to zero. The locksmith first works out which level the missing key sat at: a single change key affects one or two cylinders, while a master reaches every lock in its group. Only the affected cylinders are repinned, which keeps the rest of the system intact and the response proportionate. Where a keying chart exists the work is precise; where the chart has been lost, the visit begins by reading and recording the existing cylinders so the new plan starts from facts rather than memory.
Sound familiar?Hamilton
Commercial Rekeying · Hamilton
Scene 1
The last part of the assessment is practical: when can the work happen, and in what order. A retail shop may prefer the hour after closing; a restaurant, the mid-morning lull; a warehouse, the gap between the last outbound truck and the night shift. The locksmith also asks about deliveries, the cleaning crew, the alarm monitoring company and anyone else who holds a key and needs a new one before their next visit. From this comes a sequence, typically the doors staff use least first and the main entrance last, so there is always a working, lockable way in and out while the cylinders are being changed.
Scene 2
Where the business already runs on interchangeable cores, the door hardware never comes apart. The control key goes into the figure-eight core, turns a few degrees, and the whole core slides out of the lever or padlock in one piece. A freshly combinated core goes in the same way, the operating key is tried, and that door is done. The old cores travel back to the bench to be repinned for another opening or held as spares. This is what makes cores so well suited to businesses with steady turnover: a single control key, kept in the manager's safe rather than on a ring, is all it takes to change a lock.
Scene 3
Rekeying changes who can come in; it never changes how people get out. Every exit door and every door on the way to one is left opening from the inside with a single motion and no key. On a door with a panic bar, the outside cylinder simply controls entry, and the bar keeps working exactly as before. Once the locksmith has finished, walk the exit routes yourself, push each bar and turn each thumb-turn, and make that walk a habit at the start of every season so a new deadbolt or a helpful padlock never creeps onto an exit.
What shapes the quoteBuchanan Lock Services
FeesSame any hour
Between tenants is the ideal moment: the departing tenant has handed back their keys, the new one has not yet received any, and the unit is empty for the work. The incoming tenant then starts on keys nobody else has held, and the landlord's own master or emergency key is set up at the same time. Where a lease has ended in dispute, the locksmith asks to see the paperwork before changing locks on a unit that still holds a tenant's goods.
A small-format interchangeable core is a small figure-eight cylinder that slides out of the lever, deadbolt or padlock when a control key is turned, with no tools needed; larger doors sometimes use a large-format core with a different profile instead. A manager keeps the control key in the safe and a few spare cores on hand, so a missing key means the core is swapped in moments and repinned later. For a business with frequent staff turnover, it turns a call-out into a routine.
There is no fixed interval. Rekey on events rather than on a calendar: a key not returned, a lease change, a break-in, a renovation crew finished, or a key count that no longer matches the register. Businesses with a good register and a restricted keyway often go years between rekeys because nothing prompts one. A yearly check of the register against the keys on the hook is the habit that tells you when the time has come.
HamiltonOntario
Commercial Rekeying · Buchanan, Central, Chedoke Park, Cootes Paradise, Corktown, Hamilton Beach, Hopkins Court, Hopkins Survey, McDonald Court, North End, University Gardens, Waterdown, West Hamilton, Westdale, Pleasant View Survey
Every square is one home in a hundred.
On-site assessment
You have just signed the lease on a unit the previous tenant ran for a decade.
(289) 203-1527, open 24/7.
On-site assessment preferred · (289) 203-1527, open 24/7
