Any lockpicking hobbyists here?

In My Humble Opinion
1

We just bought a house*, and the previous owner (a bank) didn’t do a great job keeping track of all the keys. When we closed, we were handed a fistful of keys, several of which don’t go to any of the doors, and none of which open the detached garage. The garage has a large window and everything looks fine in there. We assume the opener is broken, but if we find it isn’t, that’s gravy.

We’re doing a major renovation on the house, so we don’t need the garage right now, but we’re going to want to get in there eventually. With this in mind, I’ve decided to pick the locks.

I ordered a beginners’ lockpick set, and have been watching a bunch of lockpicking videos online. The first thing I’ll say is that those videos are like potato chips. (This guy in particular is like the Bob Ross of lockpicking. Can’t stop watching his videos.) Of course, these guys make it look easy, so I should be able to breeze through that door, right?

It seems like there’s a pretty sizable hobbyist community out there. I don’t want to go down the rabbit hole of a specialty message board, but I bet someone here has dabbled.

Anyone here ever picked a lock? Anyone have a set of lockpicks? Anyone consider themselves a lockpicking master? Anyone have any bets about whether I’ll get into my new garage without a sledgehammer?

  • More discussion of the house and the renovation in a different thread, I’m sure. I wish we had a subforum for discussing major renovations of old buildings!
2

That’s something I just couldn’t get into.
flees

3

I wouldn’t exactly call it a “hobby”. :wink:

4

I gave it a try after reading Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman, but it was hard and I gave up quickly. A locksmith should be able to get into your garage without a sledgehammer. He/she will charge you some money of course, but compared to the other expenses of home ownership, that’s going to be a drop in the bucket.

5

I tried it a bit, and for similar reasons - though I had access to both sides of the lock via another door and ended up just replacing it. I proceed to use that lock to practice basic picking - started with only one pin, then two, and so on. I generally suck, partly because I only have one homemade pick and a couple improvised and really not very good torsion wrenches. Also partly because I don’t practice much at all.

But after my first bit of practice, I could reliably open two old deadbolt locksets and a couple padlocks. The new deadbolt locksets I installed in my house defeat me, as they’ve got a wicked hi-lo-hi-lo-hi bitting and I invariably overset pins. Not that I tried very often.

Your toolset is considerably better than mine. I think you should be able to get in.

6

I’ve always found locksmithing to be interesting. A while back I got some templates from the internet and made a few lockpicking tools from hacksaw blades. I also made a tension wrench from something (I think an old ikea allen wrench).

I can open a Kwikset-type doorknob/deadbolt, but it takes me a long time to do it and it’s at least half luck when I manage to open it. I could probably improve if I practiced, but I I lost interest. I figure I could get in my house or help a neighbor if the need arises.

7

At a place I used to work, the night shift guys were taking tools that we all had to use and locking them in their toolboxes. One guy in particular, who was a real a**hole in every way. I used to pick their locks and get the tools out. Then they built a hurricane fence cage for their roll around tool boxes, and locked it. I picked that lock, picked his box lock, put all his tools back in upside down and locked everything up. Drove ‘em crazy I did. Nah, don’t know nuthin’ about it, can’t prove it was me. I was in church at the time…heh heh.:rolleyes:

8

I seen a show where it showed a lot of locksmiths that weren’t that good. Quite a few had to bust the lock out. A few showed great skill, and were still able to pick the lock though, but most were pretty damn pathetic.

I 've always been intrigued at how a good locksmith could get into homes and cars by picking the lock. I never could get the hang of it. Never had any desire to do anything illegal with it, just thought it was a neat skill to have if you could do it with ease and not much time passing.

There are supposed to be lockpicking guns which vibrate all the pins at once, that I think has some fair success on some locks, without having to put in a lot of time to develop the skill. Anyone ever try one of those out? It’s been about thirty years since my interest, and don’t know if those ever caught on or not.

Only thing I got really good at was the Slim Jim for getting into cars since it didn’t require too much skill or time to learn it. Back in the seventies and eighties (and earlier), they were a lot easier to get into, by either pushing up or down near the key hole. I got plenty of calls of friends locking their keys in the car. Managed to open up all of them except one that I remember giving me trouble.

Being able to open up safes is also fascinating to me too, if you can actually do it with finesse, and not blow the thing to Hades to get her open. I inherited my dad’s old safe, only problem was he has Alzheimer’s now, and nobody knew the number. But the good news was, he left the door open ajar. I just thought it was a neat looking safe, and wanted to use it.

So I take it to the local locksmith, immediately set it up on his desk, and ask him if he could get me the combination to it. He slowly starting turning the dial, and shining a little flashlight into a little pinhole of the locking mechanism on the inside. He wrote a number down. Turned it again, wrote another number. Did this four times. Crazy thing takes 4 turns left before you get to the first number. Three turns right for the next, two turns left for the next one, than another turn right until dial stops. He managed to do this in about 5-7 minutes, I guess. He didn’t even bother to try it himself to see if he got it right, he just wrote down the number and said that would do it. He was right. Reasonable on price too.

9

I’ve had mixed success at it. Certain types of locks are borderline useless and easy to pick without any special tools. I once picked a steering wheel lock with a piece of house siding remnant. Never tried using real tools. When I was a kid I picked a bunch of bike locks and switched them around at a school bike rack.

10

Your basic home door lock is pretty easy.
Take one of the tension wrenches and use it to try and turn the lock. Then take a pick, stick it all the way in push up slightly and and rake it toward you. As each pin is raised to the correct height the lock will turn more and more. Keep tension on the wrench.
Lather, rinse repeat until the lock turns and opens.

11

What Rick said- don’t put too much pressure on the tension wrench though, that bcan prevent the pins from moving.

With the right tools, it’s a little scary how easy a lot of locks are to pick I was introduced to it by a friend at an event, who taught a workshop on it basically to educate people on how useless a lot of locks are.

We had a group of about 10 people, and by the end of the half hour workshop everyone had opened the big padlock the guy running the worskshop used to have on his garage, and several of us opened his old house lock. I don’t like using a rake tool though, I find a simpler pick easier to control.

I’ve only played around a bit with it, though I did get a proper set of picks so I can test how easy a lock is to open before using it on anything. Some are unnervingly easy, often the really big impressive looking ones.

12

I don’t know about Chicago, but here in the U.K. you’d have to be very careful to not take those tools with you anywhere as that would be classed as going equipped for burglary and could put you in serious trouble.

13

My uncle used to make his tools from the hardened steel bristles from the old style street sweepers. I think most of them are plastic now but used to be right after a street sweeper went by your street you could find quite a few of them.

14

When I put in the order for the lockpick set, it asked me to agree to their “terms and conditions.” The legal geek that I am, I clicked to read them first.

I was expecting the standard stuff: privacy policy, returns policy, shipping policy, etc. But theirs was – I guess unsurprisingly – largely about the legalities of buying lockpicks. The bit that caught my eye was that there’s a federal law against having lockpicks sent to you via USPS unless you are a “bona fide locksmith.” So I paid the extra $5 to have them sent UPS.

15

Any legal onus regarding shipping would have been on the shipper, not you. So, if they were serious about not breaking the law (if indeed there is such a law), you wouldn’t have the option of choosing USPS, they would make you.

It’s certainly legal to have and use lockpicks for your own locks, but, yes, I’d be careful carrying them about. Cops are not known for their whimsy.

16

I was a locksmith for a few years and I was one of the better lockpickers at the shop.

Even for the highly skilled, lockpicking is at least 15-20% luck. Sometimes you can open a complex, high-end lock with multiple added “secure” features in under a minute, sometimes that $20 Kwikset piece of shit is unpickable; you never really know. This is why the shop policy was only try picking the lock for 10 minutes, tops. Most of the time in a lockpicking situation you’re going to have the client standing right over you watching, and if you try for more than 10 minutes, you look like you don’t know what you’re doing.

Besides, in most lockout situations, picking the lock is the least effective solution. Since the call was going to cost the client an hour’s labor anyways (which was $124), it was generally much faster and easier for everyone to just drill it out and pop in another cylinder (rekeyed to match). Personally I always tried to pick it first, for a few minutes anyways. When you’ve done it a lot you can usually tell within a minute of messing with a lock whether you’re going to be able to open it or not.

17

I had almost the exact same problem when I bought my “fixer-upper”. I found the fastest way in was a sledgehammer to the door knob. 2 seconds … in. Then a little money to replace the lock and the splintered door jamb. Pick the lock and you still have to replace the lock unless you want to pick it again.

18

DCnDC, in your experience, are older locks easier, due to being more worn out and the pin easier to get to rest on the cylinder?

Also do you know if any are skilled enough to get into locked safes, without taking drastic measures, or is that just more stuff that movies are made of?

19

^^^
I guess I answered my own question. I went looking more for it after I asked you. Here’s one I found on youtube that was challenged to open up a safe with a stethoscope. Took him nearly 2 ½ hours, but still impressive!

20

The Sellers signed that they handed over all keys. then they handed over (1) set & admitted all the neighbors had some. Cue an impromtu reduction in sale price by $500 & a recommendation BY HER ATTORNEY to have a pro change all the locks. Done and Done.