picks and locks

I am always looking for a new skill to learn. It’s usually something technical, something work related, but the levels of anxiety in today’s world demand something more meditative. I’ve watched a lot of YouTube finding strange solace in my mechanics restoration videos. But I’m not building a machine shop any time soon.

Then I stumbled on LockPickingLawyer. He picks locks. Easy locks, hard locks, ancient locks, techno locks. And he blows through them with amazing ease. And then, most of the time, he guts them and shows off their innards. Now, mechanical bits like this have always interested me — how does the interplay between tiny components make a lock lock? Or more interestingly, unlock? So I decided to try my hand at picking locks.

There’s a great Canadian company called Sparrows that has a bunch of material for locksmiths and amateur pickers alike. And it’s not very pricey, really. That’s a pretty good criterion for a new passtime that may or may not last. So I got some stuff.

I got a couple of cutaway practice locks. Part of what’s difficult (and fun) about picking a lock is that you can’t see what’s going on. You can only hear and feel it. When you’re starting out that’s a hell of a hurdle to get over but a cutaway lock lets you see the pin positions and correlate that with what you’re feeling. I got two — one with normal pins and one with serrated pins. Serrated pins are a kind of “security pin” — the serration will generate what’s called a “false set”. That is, it will feel like the pin is clicked into position to unlock the lock when actually it’s just been trapped by one of the serrations. It feels subtly different than a real set but you need to experience it. A couple hundred times.

So those are fun. Heavy, small, brassy. Industrial feeling. It’s ticking my boxes. Then I got a pick set, just an assortment of basic picks and levers. Now I have enough to try picking.

Well I opened the practice locks pretty fast. Being able to see in the window is a pretty big advantage but the early victory is a great moral booster. So I grabbed a real padlock I had handy, a little 4-pin Master brand padlock. No window to look in, you just gotta feel and listen. But only 4 pins so it’s not a long reach or a weird angle. Should be easy, right?

Turns out it kind of is. Ten minutes for the first pick and I literally shouted out loud for joy. Giant rush from that. Was it a fluke? Five minutes on a second pick. Under two minutes now. The lock went from a giant looking obstacle to far too easy in an evening. I should note that these are the locks I used on my airgun cases until just now.

Yeah an evening. You don’t need to see what you’re doing, so this is something you can fidget with while watching TV, listening to an audio book, whatever. It’s almost meditative as a puzzle but the buzz you get at the solution is huge. Part of it’s puzzle and part of it is the physical feedback: the pop, the sudden release of the lock tension, the shift as the shackle opens. These are all rewards.

Take those where you can get them folks.