What to do?
A few weeks ago I decided I wasn’t busy enough with work and other commitments and I needed a new project for whatever spare time I had left. I’ve restored antique mortise locks in the past for fun and wanted to do something similar but not exactly the same. You can only polish so much brass or craft so many springs from scratch before you get bored and want to try something else. I eventually decided I would restore a key machine, with a very loose interpretation of “restore”. I decided I wanted to try to bring it as close to “factory original” while staying reasonable. In other words, I’m not going to throw all the money in the world to make it perfect, but I am definitely going to leave it better than I found it, cosmetically and functionally. The question then became, “Okay, but which key machine?”
Well, the newer stuff was out of the question because there are A LOT of electronics involved and that is certainly not my forte. A lot of the older, obscure stuff was also out of the question because there was a risk that if I got a majority way through and realized that a critical component was no longer available for sale or couldn’t be readily sourced, well, the entire project would be a complete waste of time. Then it dawned on me: go with an HPC 1200.
Few machines in the locksmith industry have achieved the success, longevity, and respect of HPC’s 1200 —better known today as the HPC Blitz, Original Blitz, or simply “the Blitz”. Since its introduction in the late 1970s, the 1200 has undergone only minor refinements while maintaining its reputation as a virtually “bulletproof” tool. Renowned for its speed, precision, and reliability, it remains an indispensable mainstay in the toolkit of professional locksmiths worldwide.
With all this in mind, and given the amount of servicing literature available, I quickly realized the 1200 would indeed be the best bet. Even after all these years, the 1200s are still everywhere, from locksmith shops to locksmith trucks to institutions, so there are are a lot of people that could both enjoy a project like this as well use some of the information from it. And, given the 1200’s success, HPC has made practically every single component that they produce for them available for sale through distributors, so if I have to replace parts, I know they’ll be available through my suppliers. What HPC doesn’t produce for the 1200s, such as the motor or capacitor or relay, those parts too are also readily available, but from other sources. Suffice to say, the 1200 is a safe bet for a first time project in this area.
What to buy?
There have been a few different versions of the 1200, so to speak. You have the Code-A-Key, the 1200 Blitz, the 1200 Switch Blitz, and the 1200 Punch, but when people think of the 1200, they think of the 1200 Blitz. The predecessor to the 1200 Blitz was the Code-A-Key, which was manufactured by LaGard. I will discuss the history of both the 1200 Blitz and Code-A-Key and the changes and all of the good stuff in the next article but I quickly zeroed on those two machines and decided to buy one of each.
I made a post on a locksmith Facebook group that basically said, “If you’ve got an HPC 1200 that’s in bad shape, doesn’t work, looks like hell, I want to buy it.” Probably within 2-3 hours I had deals done for 2 machines that, together, cost me $750 total. For perspective, a brand new HPC 1200 Blitz right now retails for just over $6,000, so if I make both machines fully functional while only investing maybe another $750, I would be thrilled.
As far as the age of the machines, using the serial number on the Blitz, it was likely produced between late 2006 and early 2007. The Code-A-Key is harder to say because it is missing the date code that was inked on them but both the seller and I agree that it is likely from the late 1970s or early 1980s.
What is the plan?
With the machines in hand I figured I would:
1) Restore the 1200 Blitz, and using lessons learned from that,
2) Restore the Code-A-Key
While both machines a very similar, they each have distinct features that don’t make a restoration apples to apples. For example, the hand crank assemblies’ gearings are different between machines – which is why the 1200 Blitz can dial and cut a key faster than the Code-A-Key, hence the name Blitz. There are also cosmetic differences, such as the card lens between the two models being completely different. That said, they do share a lot of the same components so once I get to to the Code-A-Key portion of the project, I can readily source a lot of parts brand new from the factory, but not everything.
What is next?
More articles, which will be very sequential in nature. In the next article, I’ll give a history of both machines before breaking off into a series on the 1200 Blitz, where I’ll perform an inspection of the machine as is, a full disassembly, repairs or replacements (as needed), then I will do a complete reassembly and finally a re-calibration and final testing. Once that is done, I’ll move on to the Code-A-Key. Stay tuned!