Corbin 1904 Cast Iron Unit Lock referbish - Before & After

Dean Nickel

I personaly don’t care if this degrades the value of the lock to others. But I find that the lock once it has been cleaned and refinished is a thing of wonder that these locks have lasted 100 years and still look and work great!

oldbiscuit

Halflock, There is a time and place for everything.I don’t care what the pusists think,That lock looks like a million dollars!! To many people try to strip or polish locks and end up with a scratched up shiny piece of junk. It looks like you were able to bring that lock back to it’s origional beautiful showroom condition ! Great job,keep up the Great work , Mark 😃

Paul Prescott

I second oldbiscuits comments. The lock in it’s uncleaned condition is hardly worthy of inclusion in a collection, as it could not be handled and inspected without making a mess plus I doubt it worked correctly. Well done.

Do you plan to mount the locks in timber blocks for display ?

Dean Nickel

I plan on building plastic mounts with a gap so you can see the inside plates if you wanted to see the date or model numbers as they are on the inside of the plate. This way I can just pull the dust cover and show how something works without dismounting it. Also a clear plastic mount will not stick to the lock as a wood mount might. Also plastic is easy to work with if you do it right with keeping it warm but not too hot.

A note on the history of this lock: I removed it off a door in Mercer Island, WA in 1996. The home owner didn’t like the look of the lock so he told me to “Throw that junk away!” so I asked if he wanted it recycled and he said that sound like a good thing. So it has been recycled in to my lock collection. I don’t get many this way but I have 3 to show for it. It did work and other than not having a key for it I didn’t find the one problem with it until I striped it down. On this lock you wouldn’t remove the inside knob unless you had a problem.

As of right now I have 37 unit locks in my collection and 1 that I need to return that I have borrowed along with a present for the loan of the lock for a picture tear down. I will be doing more picture before and after of the other unit locks as I get to them.