Salt, sand and six months behind closed shutters
Homes facing the Salis, the Ponteil and the seaward run of the ramparts take the easterly spray head on. Salt settles inside the barrel, dust sticks to it, and a cylinder that turned cleanly in June wants a firm wrist by October. It is not the key wearing out, it is the barrel silting up.
At the Cap and up around the Garoupe, track sand and pine needles are added to the sea air. Service doors, garden gates and beach accesses, worked a handful of times a year, are the first to seize, simply because nobody exercises them between one season and the next. A gate on the chemin du Calvaire opened twice a year corrodes faster than a door used daily.
A Juan-les-Pins second home shut from October to Easter rarely reopens without a surprise. The leaf has moved, the seal has hardened, the keep has shifted by a few millimetres. The first turn of the key of the season is when you find out what winter did, and it is also when a tired key snaps off inside the barrel.
Get the diagnosis right before replacing anything
A key spinning freely and a key that will not go in are unrelated faults. In the first, the driver or an internal linkage has given way; in the second, it is fouling or a seized pin, routine on the gates around port Vauban. The same apparent symptom leads to two different jobs, which is why nothing is announced before the lock has been looked at.
At Les Semboules and La Fontonne, doors in the blocks built between the 1960s and the 1980s have moved with the building. Having to lift the leaf to lock, a top multipoint bolt that no longer engages: these are alignment faults. Fitting a new lock without reseating the keep and the hinges simply wears the new one out the same way.
Two habits make everything worse. Forcing a key that resists, because it snaps clean inside the barrel and extraction becomes a job in its own right. And soaking the lock in general-purpose penetrating spray: the oily film traps sea spray salt and the track sand of the Cap and turns light fouling into a full seizure. A dry lubricant is what the mechanism wants.
How does this service work?
Techniques, typical situations, standards and things to watch out for: it is all on our locksmith repairs page. This page focuses on what the service involves in Antibes.