American Lock Series 50 padlock - my 1st breakdown

[Squelchtone]

WARNING: 400Kb Images Ahead! =)

I've had this lock for 5 years, it was in use until I started picking a year ago, and it's one of 2 locks I own that I cannot pick yet. It sits on the coffee table and taunts me all day and night.

I got curious as to why it's so hard to pick. and yeah, you're about to see why. This is my first time taking apart a lock to this level of detail. This should be fun!

I will explain each step of the breakdown to the best of my ability:

Here's the front:



Here's the back:



Here's some nice dremel cutting wheel marks. The internal hex screw was seized solid and turning it turned the round thing on the bottom of the lock. I had to cut a line with a dremel so I could put a slotted screw driver in the groove and then turn the screw.



That didn't work. I had to drill the screw out. (For those who don't know where the screw is/was, notice lower part of screw assembly in the hole where the shackle goes, this is where I had to drill) =(


The following is some of the parts layed out around the lock body:
The black soda tab looking thing keeps the cylinder inside the lock by using the square tongue on the side and the screw I removed on the other side. It's pretty thick, so I doubt you could pry the cylinder out of the lock.



Here is a look inside the lock to the part the cylinder engages and turns in order to allow the 2 ball bearings to move and release the schackle. I could not get this part out, but I did notice that there is a return spring below the outer washer:



Here is the cylinder. I was expecting to see a metal cover over the stacks, but to my surprise there wasn't one. It took me a couple minutes to figure out how to get the pins out.



Here's the other side of the cylinder. Notice the 6 holes. This lock is tough to pick and they only used 5 stacks; I can only imagine if this lock had all 6 pinned. frickin insane.



In this photo, I inserted the key and I tilted the cylinder to allow the key pins to slide out.



Here are the key pins lined up against the key. The key always looked fairly easy to me, so I never understood why I couldn't pick this lock. That is until I saw that every single key pin was serrated!



At this point I decided to pick up the cylinder and pull the key out. That wasn't the hottest idea. Now the driver pins are in the keyway and you can't turn the cylinder. This next picture shows how to easily push them down and rotate the cylinder. The cylinder should be rotated 90 degrees out of sync with the top holes or the stack holes so we can slide it out and not mess up the driver pins or springs.



At the end of the cylinder (not the side where you insert the key) you will find a copper c clip. To remove, get a needle and run it inside the groove beneath the c clip. This will rotate the clip until one of it's teeth is in the keyway. at that point pry up the sewing needle and the clip will pop up. Take another object like a pick and pry up the other side. The clip will look like this, just use some needle nose pliers to pull it off. be careful to do this on a desk or solid surface, otherwise the core might slide out and all the pins and springs will pop out and fall all over the place



Now, going slowly, push out the cylinder core one pin stack at a time. You will see/hear pins popping inside as you do this. Remove them one and a time, and turn the core stack side up so the spring falls into the chamber. Place these next to the corresponding key pins.



Here is a close up of all the pins and springs. I cannot believe they put that many serrated pins in here, and 2 spool that have serrations on them. Wow!



Finally, here are the parts I took out. I did not drill out the schackle retainer, my main interest was in checking out the pins in this lock.





I hope you found this educational and interesting. I will be making a cutaway of this lock, as soon as I can fix that drilled out screw. =)

Squelchtone

[Krypos]

holy shat. if there were any more security pins in there...itd be a government issue lock. i mean seriously! who needs THAT kind of security??!! (answers self...me)


i am amazed. truly astounded.(sp?)

nice job, well cept for the part with teh dremel. but yeah. good luck making a cutaway. and where can one buy an american lock like that?

[Kaotik]

holy shat. if there were any more security pins in there...itd be a government issue lock. i mean seriously! who needs THAT kind of security??!! (answers self...me)


i am amazed. truly astounded.(sp?)

nice job, well cept for the part with teh dremel. but yeah. good luck making a cutaway. and where can one buy an american lock like that?

You might try checking out an Army Surplus Store, they sell all types of things that are issued, some new some used.

The reason I say Army is my uncle retired from there and they gave him many of these locks over the years. If all else fails I will ask him if he has any more left I can have and I might be able to send you one or two.

[mh]

Nice pictures, thanks!

(They also give me a reason to buy a bigger screen some time soon )

I guess this thread would fit into this index as well:
viewtopic.php?t=13478
(there's another American lock in that index, similar serrated pins, if you like to compare...)

Cheers,
mh

[Squelchtone]

nice job, well cept for the part with teh dremel. but yeah. good luck making a cutaway. and where can one buy an american lock like that?

hey thanks, and yeah, I feel like a total hack for that dremel job, but it was 1:00am and I wasn't going to bed without taking a look inside. I blame the beer.

And if you want one of these, I swear I bought it at Home Depot here in Massachusetts about 5 years ago. Back then I didn't know about locks, but that one looked beefy and it worked to protect my storage unit. I wonder if they still carry them, I'll have to call.. hang on..........


yup.. just called, and they have an A50D (keyed differently) $11~$12 at Home Depot. I

I bet I know where you're going tonight!

Squelchtone

[Squelchtone]

Nice pictures, thanks!

(They also give me a reason to buy a bigger screen some time soon )

I guess this thread would fit into this index as well:
viewtopic.php?t=13478
(there's another American lock in that index, similar serrated pins, if you like to compare...)

Cheers,
mh

Hi mh,

Thanks, I only have an old Olympus D-510 2.1 Megapixel camera, so it's not the best for close ups, but it sure likes to take huge pictures and I don't have Photoshop to rescale them.

And do you mean to suggest that not everyone runs Windows at 1600x1200? They looked ok on my screen when I posted them .. =)

Thanks for the link by the way, I've seen it before, but it's a good comparison of pins. Did you see key pin 1 on mine? it's either dirty or the serrations are not as deep so it doesn't bind when inserting the key.

I put pin stack 3 back in and reassembled the lock. I put a needle through the spring and inserted it into the hole, throught the hollow core and into the stack, the spring just slid down the needle into it's hole. Trying to put it in by rolling it around inside the core didn't work well at all. , but I had to do that for the top pin.

I'm going to pick this lock all week with just 1 or 2 pin stacks until I can get a better feel for serrated pins and then I'll swap 1 out for one of those spools and see how that feels. Then I'm adding more pins until all 5 are back in. I think that's the best way to get confidence in picking this lock.

Just with stack 3 back in place, I noticed that I'm over lifting the key pin past the shear line, so I'll be trying a hook with less bend on it. And even with only 1 pin in the lock, I'm still catching the serrated pins and you instantly know it when you do.. I'm glad I did this.

Squelchtone

[lockedin]

yup.. just called, and they have an A50D (keyed differently) $11~$12 at Home Depot.

Not my Home Depot

[dmux]

wow look at those pins

i am in the us military and the standard is American 5200 series to secure pretty much everything except arms

5200 used on connexes, equipment and gates.

[Squelchtone]

wow look at those pins

i am in the us military and the standard is American 5200 series to secure pretty much everything except arms

5200 used on connexes, equipment and gates.

I can see why. I wonder if these locks like the one I took apart can be easily bumped. always better to have something that resembles a real key versus sticking in pieces of wiper insers bent to a hook shape..

speaking of the lock, I was just holding it and look what decided to fall out.

wish there was an edit so I could add this picture to the original post.



man I have to oil this lock up..

going hiking in the morning, time for bed. nite all.
Squelchtone

[mh]

I don't have Photoshop to rescale them.

I use imageshack.us for hosting my pics. They can automatically re-scale them.

Thanks for the link by the way, I've seen it before, but it's a good comparison of pins. Did you see key pin 1 on mine? it's either dirty or the serrations are not as deep so it doesn't bind when inserting the key.

They seem to be real experts on pin shapes, and actually put effort into selecting them for each keycode.

What I don't understand why they don't make one extra step and select top and bottom pins so that all pairs have the same length - to prevent decoding.
Maybe that's a Swiss thing (KABA) only...

mh

[p1ckf1sh]

And do you mean to suggest that not everyone runs Windows at 1600x1200? They looked ok on my screen when I posted them .. =)

Notebook user. 1024x768. I could have used a mouse with a horizontal wheel.

I thikn I'll have to find a Firefox extension to downsize huge images by default.

You don't even need Photoshop for resizing. Google for "Irfanview" that's nice image viewer and alows to clip/crop/resize pics quickly and easily with good resampling routines. Also, hosting your pictures on photobucket gives you the option to resize images once they are uploaded. I tend to do the following:

1) Make pic
2) get pic to computer
3) crop the interesting parts (often with closeups there is a lot of blank area etc.)
4) resize the remainder of the pic to width 800, heigth automatical
5) save as jpeg with best quality
6) upload to photobucket

This gives image inserts in postings that still fit even MY miniscreen (1024x768 is tiny by todays standards, i know) without horizontal extensions and make for easy reading. Also, it save quite some spaceon the photobucket accounts.

Until I have not had a complaint that my pics were too small or details blurry etc.

No offense made regarding your pics though, just thought I'd point out how I do that. Might want to give it a shot yourself.

[HeadHunterCEO]

holy shat. if there were any more security pins in there...itd be a government issue lock. i mean seriously! who needs THAT kind of security??!! (answers self...me)


i am amazed. truly astounded.(sp?)

nice job, well cept for the part with teh dremel. but yeah. good luck making a cutaway. and where can one buy an american lock like that?

These locks are as common as dirt and most lock shops carry the popular sizes.

they will also sell you the retainer and corresponding screw to replace the one that was damaged.

[Squelchtone]

[
What I don't understand why they don't make one extra step and select top and bottom pins so that all pairs have the same length - to prevent decoding.
mh

I was thinking about this, and I think I figured out what you mean. If the top pin is always the same length, then someone who makes a decoder... would basically have something like a key cut down all the way to the highest possible position, then pin by pin, you put the decoder key in and push a stack up until it stops, then the offset is the known top pin length, and voila subtract that known value and you have the key pin length.

hardest part is machining an attachment to a cut down key... something that would push a wire into the lock, and then bend 90 degrees and up into each key pin, and on the outside of the lock, have markings on that wire that would have 1,2,3,4,5,6.. on them, and you'd know the kind of pin in that stack.

but hey I'm no decoding expert, so maybe my idea is all bs.

Squelchtone

[MacGnG1]

i know this is an old thread but it was brought up in chat just now.

if i do drill the retaining pin or dremel of the round button on the bottom is there a way to replace it?

[cheesehead]

the big question is: did you pick it? (if you did and I missed it, forgive me, this thread doesn't fit on my monitor... ) I've got a couple americans in my collection - they are some of my favorites!