Saturday, February 13, 2010

Spare Keys!















I've been working on getting spare keys made for the Shasta ever since we got it. On our first trip into the woods I broke our only key for the storage doors and was lucky enough to save the parts and get a blank cut at a local locksmith once we got home. For the main door we also only had one well-worn key, the problem has been finding a correct blank. The lock is the now un-obtainable Bargman L-66, it's really common yet impossible to find replacements for. I've seen a couple L-66 locks for sale where they were asking as much for the lock as we initially paid for the trailer. So over the winter I've been doing some desktop campering and was able to identify the correct key blank. I got one cut and it works perfectly. The blank is a called a "Curtis H5" and was used by Ford, Lincoln, and Mercury from 1938 - 1948, it also might be identified as a Taylor 125H and an Illco 1125H. I got my blank from eBay seller rfurtado1 who specializes in vintage automobile keys and helped figure out which H series key was correct. Some of the other H series Ford keys I looked into looked close but are too thick or have the edge of the groove on center which won't work.