Locksmith and Door Hardware Glossary
The terms that come up when a lock, a door or an opening is being specified — explained plainly, without the sales language.
Terms in the glossary
ANSI Grade
ANSI grade is a durability and strength rating for locks and door hardware, set by the ANSI/BHMA A156 series of standards. Grade 1 is the highest, built for the most cycles and the heaviest use; Grade 2 is a solid residential upgrade; Grade 3 is builder-grade and the minimum accepted for a home.
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Anti-Drill Plate
An anti-drill plate is a hardened steel insert inside a lock, or over its face, that stops a drill bit reaching the parts that release the lock. It is a physical property rather than an electronic one, and it is one of the things that separates a high-security cylinder from an ordinary one.
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Anti-Pick Pins
Anti-pick pins are security pins - commonly spool, serrated or mushroom shaped - fitted inside a cylinder so that picking produces false sets instead of an open lock. They make picking slower and less predictable rather than impossible, and they are one of several properties that define high-security hardware.
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Why the grade and the mechanism matter
Two locks can look identical and behave completely differently, because the differences that matter are inside the hardware rather than on its face. These entries exist so that a specification can be discussed in terms of what a product does rather than what the packaging calls it.
They are reference pages, not sales pages. Where a term has a limit — and most of them do — the entry says so, because a lock that is described accurately is easier to choose than one that is described generously.
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