One of our customer was moving home recently and during the packing of the house found that the keys to an antique furniture unit had gone missing so could not be emptied of the contents, mainly nice glasses and ornaments.
I arrived and the brief was simple, open the unit on both sides without damage – simple!
Luckily, the locks fitted into the unit were not too difficult to pick open. After getting both ends open, making a very basic key for temporary use, the whole job was done in about 50 minutes allowing the customer to finish the packing.
Antique Cabinet (1) 
Antique Cabinet (2)
The temporary key would suffice until after the move then we could look at producing a better key for the locks or even replacing the locks totally.
This job proved fairly easy, but we have had jobs that should have been easy but have turned out to be a complete pain so you just can’t tell.
Whether the job is easy or hard, be assured that the last option on any job would be to cause damage to the locks and on an item such as this under no circumstances to the actual door or unit.
One thing to note however, the making of a key for any type of lock is time consuming and is not a cheap alternative to full lock replacement.
