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Key organization

I recently moved and and now inundated with new keys. The place I've rented has two keys each for the front and back doors, as well as a mailbox key. I have a car key and two bicycle lock keys as well as a key for the locker at my gym.

I prefer to get rid of keys altogether and just use combination locks, but I don't have control over most of these locks, so it's not an option to switch for most of these.

Most of the time, I only need a subset of keys for anything I do; during the week, I only need house (I only use the back door so that also helps), bicycle and locker keys to go to work. Other times, I need the car key, but not the bike keys. I've been thinking about getting a valet key chain like this:
http://keychains4you.com/muvake.html
does anyone have experience with these? Do they work well and stand up to frequent use? Are there better solutions for this type of situation?

As a second question, does anyone have experience "shaving" the large plastic ends that so many keys (especially cars and bicycle locks) have these days? It's nice if the keys just sit together in a small, slim package, but these plastic do-hickeys force the keys to lie in a jumble. I'd really like to know what kind of tang there is and if it can be attached to something else. I don't have to many keys to experiment with that aren't a pain to replace, so I'd like to get some insight before I go down this path.

A

enine's picture

I'm still trying to figure...

anielsen wrote:

I'm still trying to figure out how the make my key handles smaller. Since I only have a limited number of keys to my bike locks, I didn't want to try and dissect them for fear of ruining them. The local locksmith says the keys are too new (these are the square laser-cut keys that replaced the bic-pen pickable cylindrical locks) and he doesn't have the equipment to duplicate them. I wrote to both Kryptonite and OnGuard to ask if they can make keys without the fat handles, but have yet to get a reply.

A

Are the handels plastic? I have found that a lot of newer keys have plasitc molded on the handle usually with a logo (mar maker for examle) and even the copies are made that way. Buy I found that holding the keys over a candle I can burn the plastic off (outdoors, very stinky) and make thin keys.

 
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