You must buy a kit for each brand of lock in your home.
Rekeying door locks to be the same.
Rekeying techniques and key styles vary from one manufacturer to another.
If the locks are.
In many circumstances rekeying your locks makes more sense than changing your locks.
Again your locks must match.
If you re lucky they ll all be the same brand.
You can re key a lock like a pro at a fraction of the cost.
For example if all the locks on your house are schlage you can rekey all of them to fit the same key.
If you open another case of the same locks they will also have matching keys but will be different from the first case.
Replacing a lock usually means that the entire lock body will be different.
When should you rekey.
If your key fits into one lock but won t go into the other it means their keyholes or keyways are different and they cannot be matched.
Keep in mind that in order to match 2 locks or more for one key the locks has to be of the same brand or to share the same types of keyholes.
What the lock makers do is match the keys for door locks within any particular case of product usually 4 per case.
For example if all of your locks are of the same brand or have the same type of keyhole but use different keys you can have your locks rekeyed to operate from the same key.
It is a much more costly process than rekeying the lock but it does have its benefits.
Instead re key all the locks for one unit to have the same key and keep 1 different key for each unit.
Re keying kits are available for most lock brands but they re not interchangeable.
A rekey kit for a single lock typically costs between 12 and 25.
Since most homes have multiple doors with multiple locks re keying can get expensive.
The main difference between replacing a lock and rekeying one is that you are now going to be using an entirely different and potentially brand new lock.
Rekeying your lock is a great option when you need to change your lock but do not need to replace the hardware.
It s a more cost effective way to maintain high security.
Past keys will not be able to open your new lock.
When lock sets are packaged in a case of 6 or 12 then there will be sets of 3 or 4 that use the same key.
Rekeying locks to match keys if all of your locks are in good condition and you don t expect to be replacing all of the locks at the same time there is still the possibility that a locksmith can change the pins in your locks to match a single key.
The process changes the inner core of the lock leaving the outside hardware in tact and requiring a brand new set of keys.