Door Hardware Keying Made Easy!

Keying Help Glossary:

Manufacturer: To find the door hardware manufacturer you are interested in, just sort the manufacturer column (to the right) in alphabetical order by clicking at the top of the column.

Cylinder Manufacturer: This identifies the manufacturer of the actual cylinder used for that brand’s keyed door hardware. Schlage and Kwikset are the most popular cylinder manufacturers in the door hardware industry.

Cylinder Name/Type: This is the name of the actual cylinder inside the keyed hardware. Cylinder manufacturers commonly manufacture more than one type of cylinder and therefore name them.

Key Code: This is the code that is held inside the cylinder. Most residential applications have a 5- or 6-digit key code.

Pin Length: Pin length is commonly described as, “the number of digits in your key code- 5, 6 or even more digits”. Pin length is determined by the number of “chambers” inside a cylinder. Each chamber holds one digit in the key code. For example: A Schlage C Keyway has a 5-pin length, which means there are five chambers, and each chamber is assigned a number corresponding to the key code. The first chamber would hold the “4” in key code 46251.

Applicable Pin Digits: Cylinders have the capacity to only hold a certain length of a key code (5, 6, or more digits). Some cylinders also have restrictions on which digits can be held in the chambers. For example: a Kwikset Cylinder can only hold digits ranging between 1 and 6. This means a standard Kwikset cylinder cannot hold data for a key code containing a 0, 7, 8, or even 9.