Are you happy doing it and are you happy with the living you are making from it?

Just looking at my options and your advice is most welcome… 🙂

Don’t bother with locksmithing.
I enjoy it, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a good job the wife earns enough to cover the bills!

When I’m busy it’s frantic, not enough hours in the day but I can go 3 weeks without a single phone call.

Excusing those that have trained in it propperly and are passionate for it

Both of those careers sound like midlife crisis what can i do grass is greener over there jobs.

All i can tell you having had friends in similar situation dont sign up to franchises offering free / cheap training – the only ones making money there is the franchise. They own you !

It’s hard to see how anyone can make a decent (IT middle management level – obviously) living from driving instructing – even fully booked for 40hrs per week at £20 per hour it’s not exactly the path to riches. Andy you’d probably get fat(ter).

Geoff when was last time you booked a driving lesson ? I paid 25 an hour 10 years ago !

Dont go down the driving instructor route. It’s crap and very difficult to make it pay.

Average in Edinburgh is £25/hr. But there are a load of muppet newbies who are determined to work for nothing. I say one yesterday offering 10 * 1 hour lessons for £99. That’ll hardly cover fuel and car costs.

You’d struggle to fit in 40 lessons in a week as folk want to have lessons at night and at weekends, and they like to cancel on you at the last minute, and then there’s roadworks everywhere and last but my no means least other drivers – if you think they hate cyclists you should see what they’re like with learner drivers.

Geoff when was last time you booked a driving lesson?

Put it this way – I don’t have to worry about whether or not I can tow proper-sized trailers 😉

I suspect we should really have glupton’s take on it though TBH

Edit: Oops he’s already here.

Looked good on paper eh george ?

It looked better than what I was doing prior to moving into driving instruction. Probably OK if you dont have a need to make a living wage out of it.

I would not encourage anybody to pursue a career in driving instruction. Been doing it for 9 years and i’ve been going to college then university for the last 3 years so that I can quit the instructing. Negatives are it can be shit hours, last minute cancellations and no shows, increasing fuel costs. Every time a factory closes there are a number of new instructors who appear. Obviously lured with the apparent riches, which are not there, and they usually fall by the wayside. I know instructors who have been doing the job for 20 / 25 years and they have commented on the decline in the available work. This is partly due to the increase in the number of instructors, however, the number of provisional licence applications has apparently seen a decrease of about 20%. Out of curiousty I searched the DSA website for instructors and there are over 40 within an 8 mile radius of my home in Armadale. Granted, I know about 9 no longer teach but there were a hell of a lot more who do teach who chose not to be included in that particular register and I was one of them. The only reason I’m still doing it part time is that I have 10 pupils and it helps cover my bills while I’m at university.

My uncle is a driving instructor and over the last few years his work has almost completely dried up, going from a steady flow to fits and starts.

Wife was a driving instructor. it didnt physically pay to make it worthwhile. As said before no shows and clients saying theyre skint was always an issue, but fuel costs and also if you contract to a driving schools means you have to pay them. When she went independant with a couple of friends, they got buisness but was never simple with long unsociable hours and a pitance to show for it. She has now retrained as a qualified dental nurse and couldnt be happier.

My brother went down the driving instructor route years ago. Did it because he enjoyed driving, and soon found out there’s not a lot of driving involved, except when travelling fair old distances to peoples houses only to find they’re not in, hungover, sick, etc.

He jacked it in in the end and went on the dole because it paid better, despite working 70 hours a week.

Sorry to hear about the negative driving instructor experiences. You’ve told me enough to put me off for life.

@flatfish – Did you start the locksmithing self-employed from the off or were you employed.

Do you market yourself? How you do you cover 24hr callout?

I’m thinking, if I did go down that route to add in pseudo-security services such as key-holding and alarm installations…

over 40 within an 8 mile radius of my home in Armadale

That’s a really startling statistic…I thought there wouldn’t even be 40 houses within that radius. But I guess you must be in W Lothian, not Skye or Sutherland!

I started of fitting roller shutters and steel doors. The firm I worked for had a locksmith side that fascinated me but I was treated like poo and told to get back in my box when I said I’d like some training for the lock side of things as the “locksmiths” wouldn’t travel more than 20 miles from bristol so it was up to me to cover further afield. Without training!
I was offered a job as a locksmith, with training, if I carried on fitting the odd shutter here and there.
After a couple of years or so, both of us locksmiths went self employed(separately). We cover each other for holidays and days off, charging each other a small nominal amount plus Materials for any work we do for each other.
It works quite well that way as you’ve got cover almost all the time.
Neither of us try to do the 2am on a sunday morning type jobs as it’s too much hassle with pissed up dickheads.

Your best off working for somebody else for a couple of years in this game as you learn so much more “on the job” than the MLA can teach you in their expensive two day courses.
I had a chap phone me wanting a job, he had done the first part of his locksmith course which taught him to take a lock apart and re-assemble. They relieved him of £1700 plus vat for something that I could teach him in half an hour.

I’ve got to agree with all the other comments about the Driving Instruction.

I’ve been doing it since March 2008 and its not easy to make a decent buck. It’s crap hours and a nightmare being out there in the dark and rain with a beginner pupil.

But apart from that I love it. It suits me as I’ve been very lucky to have a House passed down to me by Mum and the hours can be tweaked to suit riding and days off.

I could not afford a mortgage on it though as its simply too unreliable on the income side. The unsociable hours also played a big part I’m me splitting with my Girlfriend.

At the moment, I’m also doing some classroom teaching occasionally, and the odd bit of Fleet and Instructor Training which can be more reliable income.

Flatfish – have you thought about training others? I mean as a business for yourself, not me…

The course i’ve seen is £760 (incl.certification and 2 nights accom). I’d be interested to hear what you think if you don’t mind…

http://www.locksmithtrainingcourse.co.uk/?kw=locksmith%20training&fl=389906&ci=10599611761&network=s&gclid=COz_sIOk1LQCFaTMtAodNFkAJQ

double post 😳

I have ben on the MLA, introductory course to locksmithing, their workshop and hq in Woodford Halso is quite intresting if small, their courses are so very expensive as well, but seemed well taught, also been on a private one, limited stuff taught, and the chap teaching us didnt like you to have any previous knowledge.

Talk to any one involved in locks and they will tell you they mostly work in the same way, a key and a bolt, whats the hardest part is learning the dexterity and methods of overcomig the security, then actually getting paid at the end of a job.

Oh and there are so few advertised jobs for trainees, or apprentices out there.

The content of the course seems ok but the timeframes are extremely tight.
Picking a 5 lever BS deadlock takes a lot longer than a couple of hours to master.
They probably have perspex cover so you can see the internals of the lock being picked.
Try doing it by feel alone!
Could take you hours, with a customer getting really impatient whilst looking over your shoulder.

as a joiner , have worked many years ‘getting into locked properties– on call is the worst, but anyone offering a 2 day course in something is suspect do you not think ?

I do not profess to know every thing about every lock, and after a lot of experience would not call myself a ‘locksmith’– its a trade of its own — any one can paint, but a professional does a professional job !

You can certainly learn how to use the lock picking and NDE tools in a couple of days – but to get good at picking locks takes practice, a lot of it.

I do it as a hobby 🙂

A bit like how you can learn how to braze in a day, but it takes a long time to become a good framebuilder.

I thought they just drilled the locks rather than picked them – but maybe that’s just cylinder locks.

At a previous employer, we did have an MoD Safe cracker come and open all the old MoD safes where people had left and no one could open them – he just drilled them all rather than try and pick them.

Depends – you can also profile locks to make a copy. But with Euro locks, often easier to just break them in half and fit a new one.

But if you can pick it in 10 minutes without destroying it, that’s better than spending an hour drilling it and fitting a new one, I think is the logic. I don’t know – I hang around on lockpick forums but don’t do it as a career or anything.

@flatfish.
do you pick locks on most of your calls or do you have to drill them or even more old school impression them?
I went in to locksmithing with my mate when I was young we both worked for the same guy and master different skills, my mate is great at picking locks and I master key impressioning .
we where mainly city based in london and we really enjoyed it until we went self employed and being honest didn’t pay especially when other cocksmiths where just ripping customer off by drilling every lock out and charging ridiculous prices.
We then worked for the met police and customs for a few years until we both started family’s’ now and again one of us gets a call from family or or a old account client when theres a emergency but other then that our locksmithing days are over

Depends on the job.
I’ll always try the non-destructive way first .
If the customers had keys stolen and wants locks changed anyway, I’ll use a cylinder snapper if I can.
Shim it if it’s a night latch.
Pick it if the doors slammed behind.
Dynamite if I don’t like the customer. 😉

As I said near the start of this thread, I’m not making a living from it so I do the school runs and be a house husband with locksmithing as a paying hobby. The wife keeps me in the bikes I’ve become accustomed to. 😉

I’ll use a cylinder snapper if I can.

Can you recommend a good anti-bump, anti-snap cylinder make?

I was thinking of buying a Yale Euro-lock for the Patio doors I’ve just installed in the workshop (as it’s not an anti-snap cylinder lock).

An interesting forum, by the way, is:

http://ukbumpkeys.editboard.com/forum

The Yale anti snap euro’s would be as good as any I could recommend.

10 year guarantee is confidence.

gazza100, “Out of curiousty I searched the DSA website for instructors and there are over 40 within an 8 mile radius of my home in Armadale.”

You should try being a wedding photographer – you can pretty much add a zero to that number!

Another random lock question – I have one of these on the house:

Installed several years ago – I assume it’s vulnerable to bumping? If so, what is the best fix?

NB I also have Chubb deadlocks on all doors, so the risk is pretty small.

AFAIK there’s no way to make a lock more bump-proof – deadbolts are the answer. I certainly changed my attitude to locks once I got into lockpicking.

So I assume it’s a 20 sec job to bump that Yale then?

I haven’t seriously got into bumping – if I can’t bump it in 10 seconds then I go for the picks. Also possible to use mica on that kind of latch – a bit fiddly but doable.

Interesting thread here on bumping:

http://www.diynot.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=87520

I wonder how rife it really is?

The Yale Deadlatch is what I have on my front door at home. Read into that what you will.
Deadlock in conjunction is your best option.

The PBS1 CANNOT be shimmed.

I have that Deadlatch and a 5 lever Chubb, so I’m not really bothered. Just curious if there is a quick fix for the Yale.

I’ve not tried bumping a PBS1. I’ll have a go on mine tomorrow and report back.

I’ve not come across any stories of scrotes bumping locks in the bristol area for what it’s worth.

The PBS1 CANNOT be shimmed.

Ah okay, we have something similar on our front door from ERA and it can be with some faffing about to get the small catch first.