You are reading a single comment by @jsabine and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@jsabine
No idea about the security aspect beyond it suddenly being more expensive if you lose your keys and need to replace your locks, but my gut feeling is it makes no difference at all, as a thief isn't going to pick your lock, and even if they do, they won't know that the second one is pinned the same.
I've got my back door and garden gate on one key (and if I'd chosen a different cylinder from the same manufacturer could get padlocks as well), my front door (two different locks) and several padlocks on another key, and four Squire D-locks on a third.
As Steve/Pragma says above, the Squire 6-pin cylinder was available for padlocks and D-locks, and I can't see any reason in principle why it couldn't also be made for door locks (Euro, oval or Yale-type cylinders at least) though I'm pretty sure Squire don't offer this.
Cost for keyed-alike is generally about a fiver more per lock, but you generally can't get them from discount suppliers. (Eg when I looked at the Squire Urban Paramount, it was RRP £55, available from Parker for about £33, and available from Pragmasis/Almax for about £45 or £48, plus a fiver for keyed alike. I wanted four, so that was going to be about £80 more.)
What does save money is being prepared to learn a bit about how locks work and then take them apart. My front door locks and padlocks are Ingersoll - I've bought all except one of the door locks on ebay, taken them apart, and moved the levers around to match an existing key. Similarly with the Squire D-locks I've got - bought on ebay for £20 each, and I've taken them apart, shuffled the pins, and now I've got three Urban Paramounts and a Paramount Plus that all work on the same key.
You do need to be a bit lucky with the locks you get hold of, and really logical with working out which pins or levers should go in which position, but there are generally only going to be four or five different sizes of pin for a given cylinder, so the range is restricted, and you can tell which is which from the keys you have. You can even leave out pins/levers if you need to - makes the lock a bit less secure, but an attacker won't know. (A couple of my Squires now have five pins in the cylinder, not six. The extra risk is marginal.)
I must admit, I'm really pleased to hear the good words said about Squire above - I've had a couple of the old Paramounts (which I think were just rebranded as Urban) for years. One of them's resisted a twisting attack with a length of scaffold pole (props to the Hardie Secure wall anchor as well), while another caused the fire brigade a bit of grief when my ex lost her keys and asked them to cut her bike free.
On another note, what would the panel suggest for a really, really lightweight lock? Cafe lock, basically: I'm happy to make major compromises on security for this but if I'm out on a long ride would like something a little better than the pound-shop cable I currently have. Bike may be out of sight, likely to be next to nicer ones, unlikely to be in a high-risk area or unattended for more than 20 mins or so.