Symptom first, part afterwards
The fault described most often in Vence is seasonal: a leaf that rubs from November to March and turns docile again in spring. The solid timber of the old-town houses takes up damp, a hinge drops a fraction, and the bolt ends up resting on the keep instead of entering it. The lock itself is frequently blameless in all this.
The other signs are plainly mechanical and ignore the calendar: a key that spins freely, meaning a broken cam; a soft handle, meaning a worn spindle or spring; a top locking point that no longer catches. On the tracks below the baous you can add the motorised gates, whose control boxes take rain and track dust the year round.
A lock gives warning long before it gives up. A key you have to hunt for, a point that snags, a door you push with your shoulder: caught early, these are adjustments. Left until the following winter they end in a full lock-out on the doorstep, on an evening of arrival, with the house full and the keys useless.
Adjust the door before blaming the lock
Fitting a new mechanism to a misaligned door settles nothing: it takes exactly the same strain and wears at the same rate. So we start with the play of the leaf in its frame, the plumb of the hinges and the position of the keeps. In village houses where the frame is bedded into stone, that adjustment is more often the whole answer than people expect.
Replacement is the right call when the case is distorted, when parts fail one after another, when the model is out of production — common in the small blocks built around the Grand Jardin — or when the lock has taken an attempted break-in. An attacked mechanism stays compromised even if the key still turns in it.
Upkeep amounts to very little: a dry lubricant in the barrel, never oil or a general-purpose penetrating spray, which hold dust and turn grime into a seizure; the faceplate and keep screws checked for tightness; a look at the play of the door. For a house closed through the winter, that check belongs to the day it is opened up again.
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 Vence.