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  1. #11
    Join Date
    Jan 2014
    Posts
    34
    Country: UK

    Default

    Thanks. I really must write up a crib sheet.

    I find the dating tips useful, but the only way to be reasonably certain is to look at/for features that simply couldn't have been found before a certain date.

    In stately homes, of which I look after a few, the locks are often bespoke, & dating is impossible as the locks may have been replaced at any point - many show signs of vandalism, with wards cut away! I opened a C17 lock on a cabinet recently thinking, & telling the staff member, that we were going to be the first people to see inside it for hundreds of years. A fine brass lock, but alas some gibbon had got there before me, & despite a reasonable looking key it had only a trace of a ward remaining, with the other two completely ground away!

    I did a restoration on a nice, relatively modern rimlock last week, & again, only the case dimple wards remained. I added new steel pins & made two keys so that it at least would no longer take a blank!

    Thanks again for the advice, I *have* used it over the years!

  2. #12
    Join Date
    Jun 2009
    Location
    Edinburgh
    Posts
    259
    Country: UK

    Default

    The boom in plain brass rimlocks starts at the end of the 17c, when peace began to settle following 1688, then the Union. Brass was more available, and Abram Darby made sand casting improvements leading to cheaper mass production later in the 18c.

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