10 Most Popular Office Cabinet Keys In Vancouver
As Downtown Vancouver’s oldest surviving Key Store, we have a lot of office and retail customers who rely on us for both Key Duplication and On-Site Locksmithing Services. One of the most frequent calls is about duplicating office furniture keys or finding lost key replacements for filing cabinets, desk drawers and so on. So here’s a quick list of the Ten Most Popular Office Cabinet Keys we typically find in Vancouver and what to do if you lose them.
As always, if you have any questions or comments, please call or text me at 604-363-2760 or email me at alex@locksmithvancouver.com. Our Gastown Key Store is located at 555 West Hastings St on the bottom floor or the SFU/Harbour Centre. We are right across the hallway from the BC Liquor Store.
Our regular Key Store hours are Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm. Our Port Coquitlam location at 2345 Rindall Ave is mobile only and is not a Key Store. We will be open during the Christmas Holidays season except for the statutory holidays when the Harbour Centre/SFU will be closed.
Ten Most Popular Office Furniture Key
While this is not an exhaustive list and not in a particular order, the ten lock brands for office furniture we encounter most often in the Downtown Vancouver area are as follows:
- Steelcase
- Hon
- Herman Miller
- Wesko
- Global
- Teknion
- CompX
- Hafele
- Knoll
- Haworth
We’re not experts on office furniture and design. Just their locks and keys. So this article will not discuss each brand nor list out the pros and cons.
However, we can group them into categories based on perceived brand quality, general price points, and ease of getting new keys and parts.
Group #1: Expensive but with lots of Product Support
We suppose this is like the upper tier of office furniture in terms of price, quality, and support. If you are ordering from this group of office furniture brands, you are most likely not ordering it online or from a catalog. At this price point, you are probably working with a professional office designer like Heritage Office Furnishings and ordering in bulk and for a unique aesthetic.
In other words, everything in this group tends to be pricey. For example, a Herman Miller Aeron office chair retails for about $1800 CAD. Likewise, a Steelcase Leap v2 office chair retails for about $2000 CAD. These are not your run-of-the-mill office furniture brands. On the other hand, they are considered among the best office furniture you can buy and they come with 10 year warranties and plenty of aftermarket support like spare parts, etc.
Generally, the brands I would lump into this upper crust would be:
- Herman Miller
- Steelcase
- Hon
- Haworth
Steelcase
From a locksmith’s perspective, the first 3 have great local support – especially Steelcase and Hon. We can usually find a local distributor or retailer with spare parts in stock. As a result, turnaround can be fairly quick.
Steelcase key and cylinders have key codes starting with the letters “FR”. Depending on the code, they use one of four keys in the Chicago family from AP1 to AP4.
We cut a lot of Steelcase keys at our Downtown Key Store. Like hundreds of them each year. If you lose the keys, you just need to tell us the FR*** key code and we can have a copy ready for pick up shortly.
It should be noted that newer Steelcase office locks use a modified key blank with a dimple on the side. We have yet to see a client bring in such a key blank for duplication; thus, we don’t keep those special key blanks in stock. So, if you are planning on buying a newer Steelcase product, please contact us and we can start stocking the proper key blanks for you and whomever may need them. If you don’t know what the dimpled version looks like, just call/text me at 604-363-2760 or email me at alex@locksmithvancouver.com and I’ll send you a picture of an example.
Hon
Hon keys and cylinders are also very popular in Vancouver. While the company makes office chairs etc, we see a lot of their filing cabinets in Vancouver particularly in Law Offices, Government Buildings, and other Professional Services.
Hon keys and cylinders have key codes starting with letters like “T”, “E”, and “R”. I’m not exactly an expert on Hon naming parameters, but these letters seem to be related to the age of the filing cabinets.
We also cut a lot of Hon keys at our Downtown Key Store. For this brand, it’s important to find a Vancouver locksmith with the right key cutting technologies. This brand has an enigmatic “X” cut depth that can throw off some of the less capable key code machines.
Herman Miller
Herman Miller parts can be a little harder to find, but they have a great website and there are a lot of American-based web stores supplying parts. You just may have trouble finding the part number you need if you don’t have any of the manuals that came with the office furniture.
Herman Miller keys and cylinders have key codes that start with the letters “UM”. They use a really common keyway and can accept 3 different types of key blanks with the same/similar profiles.
Haworth
From this list, we generally find Haworth to be a bit troublesome. Mostly because their most popular key blank that I’ve encountered in Vancouver does not have a generic version carried by Ilco – North America’s largest key blank manufacturer.
The BD829 key blank they use is hard and expensive to find. We can get it for our clientele, and we keep a very small stock of it in our Downtown Vancouver Key Store. So, please contact us if you need any in decent quality.
Group #2: Not too expensive and readily available
The other six lock brands generally fall into the category of not being too expensive and their keys are generally available. We make the distinction between keys and parts because at this price point, part support tends to be poor. If you need a new locking mechanism, you may need to buy a new piece of furniture as the factory does not make spare parts for aftermarket sales.
This in contrast to brands in Group #1. There, the prices you are paying in the former group practically demands that spare parts be available for purchase to extend the longevity of said products.
We never recommend clients deliberately lose their office furniture keys to test our competence and knowledge of Locksmith. However, if you have one of these 6 brands, there is a very good chance we can copy an existing key or make a new one for you based on the key code.
CompX
The exception to this rule would probably be CompX which is a gigantic supplier for aftermarket keys and locking mechanisms for office and other commercial products like washroom paper towel dispensers.
If you request a Vancouver downtown locksmith to install an aftermarket lock on your piece of furniture be it residential or commercial, there is a very good chance that he/she is going to use a CompX product.
Those with some spare time and a morbid curiosity, can browse through the company’s online catalogs. For the rest of you, just know that CompX products lines are composed of:
- National
- Chicago
- Fort
- Timberline
- ELock
- Pearl
- Regulator
- Steathlock
- Stock Locks
Any locksmith in Vancouver worth his/her salt has used a product from one of the first four brands multiple times in their career. Personally, we’ve seen the other five brands at the distributor’s display stands before. Never in real life, probably due to their high cost and very specific use-case scenarios.
With the exception of Fort and Chicago tubular keys, we can duplicate almost any CompX flat keys at our Downtown Vancouver Key Store. For tubular keys, please give us a call and we can recommend someone that still has an ACE key machine still in operation. Our machine broke down like 10 years ago and we have not been able to find a reliable replacement since the manufacturer went out of business.
Group #3: Fugget About It
This last group of office furniture brands and locks are pretty much the rest of the brands you buy at large discount stores and online. These brands include:
- Ikea
- Richelieu
- Uline
- Staples
- Grand & Toy
- Chinese brands on Amazon
- etc
Basically, all of the brands use proprietary key blanks or key blanks that are just not sold/stocked by our distributors or specialty key providers. You can easily tell by the key code stamped on the keys. They are usually a 3 digit code with no letters.
If you are in need of more keys or need replacement keys, we recommend you contact the manufacturer directly. However, they can be difficult to get so best of luck to you!
Final Thoughts
Even though the Commercial Office Space Vacancy in Vancouver is still high compared to the pre-COVID days, there are still a lot of clients of offices open for business. This means that there are still plenty of office keys and locks floating about.
If you need keys duplicated or have lost the keys for the office furniture, please contact us for new keys. If all else fails, we can install a sliding locking bar to secure your filing cabinet or a spring loaded push lock on desk drawers. In this time of economic uncertainties, we recommend upgrading and reusing vs complete replacements.
For any questions or comments about deadbolts or any hardware, please call or text me at 604-363-2760 or email me at alex@locksmithvancouver.com. Our Gastown Key Store is located at 555 West Hastings St on the bottom floor or the SFU/Harbour Centre. We are right across the hallway from the BC Liquor Store.
