Cutting ABUS Keys in Bulk

Not everybody buys one or two keys at a time. Some people need 1000 in one go. Some need 10 000!

It’s not uncommon that customers need hundreds or even thousands of keys made, either identical keys or different keys. At We Love Keys, we don’t shy away from large quantities. Here are a few case-studies showing what we can do, and why some people might need so many keys.

The Angling Club

An angling club in the north of England needed to secure an entrance to their lake. People—and animals!—were getting in who weren’t supposed to be there.

They needed a padlock that was weatherproof, along with 1000 keys for their many members. The padlock we provided met the following criteria:

• Weatherproof: Since the padlock will spend the next few years dangling out in the elements, it needed to be a plastic-coated weatherproof padlock.
• Robust: If 1000 people will be using it on a regular basis, the padlock needs to be able to withstand many uses a day.
• Coded: In years to come, when the padlock eventually breaks—alas! not even ABUS padlocks last forever—, it will be possible to provide a replacement padlock that suits the existing key code. This means that the club won’t need to buy thousands of new keys.

We provided a quote for 1000 keys and, once the club had accepted, we got to work. Within a week we were ready to ship the order.

The Charity Treasure Hunt

One of the nicest charity ‘gimmicks’ we at We Love Keys have come across is the treasure hunt. It’s not really a hunt, as such, because everyone knows where the treasure is. But not everyone can get to it.

Every participant is issued a key and gets the chance to test it in a padlock which is attached to a ‘treasure chest’ filled with expensive prizes. The catch is that only one person’s key actually works.

We were approached by a charity wanting to arrange this event, and they told us what they needed: a padlock with 500 keys, only 3 of which work (two for the organisers, one for the potential winner). Here’s what we supplied:

• ABUS discus padlock: Discus padlocks are circular, not square, and they look quite nice on a lockable box. As in the angling club example, the padlock was robust enough to withstand more than enough attempts to open it.
• Five different ‘types’ of incorrect key: To make it less obvious who is the winner and who hasn’t won, we made sure that there were five different types of key in the mix. Each type of key has a different set of cuts in it, though none of them works.
• Three working keys: The discus padlock already came with two keys, which we could give to the organisers. The problem is that the original keys are marked with the ABUS logo, and our 500 incorrect keys weren’t. As such, we ensured that the key that would open the padlock looked exactly like any one of the other 500 copies.

The Mobility Scooter

The nation’s largest mobility scooter rental firm was in need of 10 000 Mesan keys for its enormous fleet of scooters. It rents its scooters out to the largest supermarkets and retail parks in the country, and, as you can imagine, keys easily go missing if your products are dispersed nationwide.

We agreed on a quote and a lead time, and the client sent us a lock to test the keys in. Then we got to work.

Cutting 10 000—ten thousand—keys is an awful lot of work, but one we did not shy away from. Within just over a month, the keys were with the customer.

How do you even count 10 000 keys?

Fortunately, there’s no need to actually count any keys. It’s much more accurate to weigh the keys. You just need to count, say, 50 keys, weigh them, and thereby work out exactly how much one key weighs.

The weight method ensures that, even with 10 000 keys, you’re unlikely to be inaccurate in your counting.

If you’re also looking to get keys made in bulk, feel free to get in touch:

• Call us on (+44) 020 7608 0809.
• Upload a photo using our photo upload tool.
• Send us an email on help@welovekeys.co.uk.