In other words, can anyone just decide to open a locksmith’s shop tomorrow, or do you need some kind of licence to do it? On the one hand, it’s a typical blue collar job, but on the other hand they have tools that can give them unauthorised access to other people’s premises.
This is yet another case of it varies by state or even locality. Most states don’t regulate.
There are certified and bonded Locksmiths, but if you don’t know what you’re looking for, these mean little. As with most things in life beware bait and switch deals.
As to the tools, I have most of the tools a locksmith has and have installed, rebuilt and rekeyed quite a few locks. The few tools I don’t have I can buy legally online.
Not sure about pick sets but most locksmiths don’t actually use these, at least for most work.
The YouTuber The Lock Picking Lawyer has all sorts of tools he sells. You’d think they are illegal but apparently not (and since he is a lawyer I am willing to bet he checked).
Weirdly fun videos to watch too. You would not think so but they are.
I won’t link anything here except his YouTube channel…I am not trying to push sales. All this can be easily Googled.
About ~46 states allow possession of lock picks, and you can generally use them if the lock or location is your property or you have permission to do so. Either they make it explicitly legal or do not mention it.
About 4: NV, OH, VA, MS don’t strictly state it’s illegal, but it may be a prima facie situation - if you are detained and have tools on you, you may get charged even if there is no evidence you intended to use them nefariously. In other words, it’s probably not a good idea to include them in your everyday carry items. In the other 46 it would only be an issue if caught in the act or with evidence.
Some states put strict requirements on licensing if you do it for money as a professional locksmith, and in the 4 mentioned above a license is a good way to show likely innocent intent. Presumably a conviction would also cause you to lose your license permanently.
Most consumer grade locks are not hard to pick (with some notable exceptions) but can be fiddly, for the most part a professional locksmith does not pick locks with a tool and a tension bar. And criminals are rarely debonair safecrackers compared to someone smashing a window.
Interesting! How do they typically open locks when the customer has lost the key? Or is this actually a rare task for a locksmith?
Now you’ve done it! I have yet another creepy thing I can think about. LOL
Simplest is to just drill it. Most mass produced residential locks don’t have anti-drill pins.
Yeah, I was quite disappointed on one occasion when I had locked myself out of my house and hoped the locksmith could just pick the lock and let me back in, where I had a key. But he either wasn’t any good at picking or he just wanted to charge me for drilling out the old lock and selling me and installing a new one.
Locksport is a growing hobby and competitive sport that the Lock Picking Lawyer often speaks about.
Back in my teens I read about the basic principles in some book and tried it on the door locks at work. It wasn’t all that hard, and I didn’t pursue it, but it looks like one of those mechanical pastimes that, like watchmaking, would be fun to get into if I had but world enough and time.
Could have been a scam (i.e., forcing you to buy a new lock plus pay for the installation).
Yes, I recently saw on YouTube this BBC investigation of locksmith scammers, who might initially quote a low price (like 49 pounds) but then grossly inflate that by drilling out the existing lock and charging to install a replacement.
Eh.
When I ran the condo we had ~150 front doors. Old people lost keys all the time. When somebody lost their keys we called the local reputable locksmith. He’d drill through the Home Depot lock in a couple minutes, install one about like it, and hand the customer their new keys and a small bill all in about 15 minutes.
For them to pick the lock, open the door, remove and disassemble the lock, and make a new key from what they find inside, or rekey the lock and also make a new key to match, that was more like an hour.
When new front door locks are $30 and skilled labor is $150 an hour, locks are disposable goods. Like so very much else in our society.
Labor: expensive. Parts: cheap.
Probably one of the more common things they do, maybe behind getting people into locked out cars.
Lots of different lock designs, necessitating different techniques, but for our purposes the vast majority these days are pin-tumbler locks. Pins of various length under spring tension are preventing the lock from turning, and your key has teeth of matching depth for the longer and shorter pins and allows the pins to line up properly and allow movement. Most North American residential doors are these type (other common ones on padlocks and such are tubular pin and wafer tumbler locks; mechanically very different but conceptually a similar idea).
So lockpicking involves adding proper tension as in a key slowly turning while probing individual pins to get them to line up in the chambers. Especially lower quality locks can be opened by using a “rake” instead of a pick, rapidly pushing the pins back and forth hoping they’ll fall into place. Or else a specialized “bump key”. These take advantage of poor tolerances, fancier locks also have specialized features like “security pins” that get stuck more easily.
Door locks often have these features (get more if you pay more) that don’t make them impossible to pick but make it take longer, increasing the chances of criminals being detected but also cutting into a locksmith’s business hours. Thankfully they’re almost always brands Schlage or Kwikset so you can buy a few very specialized tools designed for them. They’re also designed to be easily rekeyed by keeping the body but replacing the small lockway where the pins are. So they can destroy that part with drilling that cheaper part. Or if you are getting your house rekeyed they have access to the interior already and can just unscrew the knob and work on it in the truck.
Locksmiths have to be licensed in Illinois, and if you look up the licensing infractions, there are probably as many locksmiths on there as there are nurses, barbers, and beauticians. In the locksmiths’ cases, the most common thing is that they lied about their criminal record. D’oh.
I knew a woman in my old town in Illinois who, after she got married, they worked in her husband’s family hardware business for a while, and at some point, IIRC in the 1970s, they found out that they had some tools that they could no longer legally sell to the general public.
When I worked as a locksmith we were discouraged from picking customer locks. Success rates are low in the field no matter your personal skill level, and if you don’t get it right away, it tends to look like you don’t know what you’re doing to customers who don’t know any better. So we went right to replacement. We’d make the new lock work with your existing keys if you wanted. But picking was always a waste of everyone’s time.
The only thing we actually picked manually were the box of random cylinders the shop had collected over the years that we didn’t have keys for, that we could work on if we didn’t have anything else to do.
In Texas, locksmiths must be licensed to accept payment for locksmith services or advertise as a locksmith. It’s legal to own and carry lock picks, but using them for a crime or while suspected of criminal intent allows them to charge you with violations related to them.
When I had bought my first house, my wife and I locked ourselves outside in our pajamas when we were taking out the the trash the first time. We borrowed the neighbor’s phone (great way to meet the neighbors) and called a locksmith. He tried picking the lock for about 45 minutes with a normal lever and hook, then offered to pay for a smashed window instead. Most of the windows it had were louvered windows with aluminum frames between each louver, so that really wasn’t an option without a fire axe or taking out a large window. So I asked him to try for about 15 minutes more, then we’d talk about other options. He finally got in after about 55 minutes.
So the locks I’d installed were pretty good ones, I’d figure. Of course, after living there for a few weeks I had figured out three non-destructive ways to get back in that worked in about 30 seconds. That wasn’t really all that hard, as it had two sliding glass doors. I can get into my current house non-destructively with a screwdriver or a sheet of aluminum, but it takes a few minutes.
My dad took a course through the mail after retiring from the service in the early 70’s.
The books had confidential printed on the first page. Dad wasn’t supposed to share the information or sell the books to anyone.
The course came with tools and lock cylinders.
He never worked in a shop. I remember he rekeyed several locks. His biggest accomplishment was picking open a security 4 drawer file cabinet. He worked on the lock during his lunch break. It finally opened after a week of trying.
He bought the file cabinet and made a key. I inherited it and still have the coins and stamps dad collected and stored in it.
Or you could have duplicated every key and just charged them for the duplicate.
What I might expect a pro to have are electric pick guns that will open a lock in seconds, decoders for all the various common types of locks, etc.
In my case, the guy did try it for a while, and I didn’t get the sense at the time that he was scamming me, only the he wasn’t very good at picking.
If the only key is lost, it certainly makes no sense to pick the lock.
My previous house had high-security Medeco brand locks. They claim to be un-pickable which is probably just marketing for “much more difficult to pick than ordinary locks”. They combine the ridges in normal keys with the ridges in different parts of the key being cut at different angles.
The special cutting machines and key blanks are restricted to licensed locksmiths. The keys bear the inscription “Do Not Duplicate”, not that a non-licensed locksmith would have either the blanks or the machine. To get a key duplicated you have to present an ID card showing you’re the authorized owner.
This is the sort of thing where licensed locksmiths come into play.