Yay! Yale owned :)

[Quin]

Sorry for the shameless self plug here but I only have a diamond pick and wrench lent to me my a friend and both are too big to fit in a yale properly. I've also only been doing this a week.

I've been trying this yale lock all week and tonight I mastered it. Picked it 8 times in a row (yup, not reverse raking but simple picking).



I'm very happy now and I can't wait to get my tools so really start playing on it

Thank you this forum for all the excellent guides, it got me to the point I can laugh at Yale now Yay! hehehe

[Chucklz]

Don't laugh too hard, or else another Yale will come and bite you. Or even worse, some cheap 4 pin master padlock will totally laugh at you for a while.

[lockpickroy]

Congratulations on getting the Yale!
it sure feels good to open a lock that has been giving you trouble

[marso]

congrats

[Chris]

Nice one!

BTW in that Yale you opened, which stacks have mushroom pins and how did you defeat them?

I found that the thick wards in my Yale seriously limited the space to work in. Improved matters by making a half-diamond pick out of thin brass sheet, bought from the local model shop. The brass is thin enough to clear the wards and doubles the work space. I guess an experienced picker wouldn't need to do that, but at the moment I need all the space I can liberate inside the plug! The down side is that the brass is soft and bendy, but I'll use it as a pattern to make one out of something tougher.

[jason]

I've found them on 2 and 4. Try varying the tension to beat the mushrooms. PM me if you want more info

[Chris]

Thanks for the info Jason. My Yale barrel had spools on stacks 1 & 3. The lock was fitted new to my front door in May 1997. (Have recently changed it and backed it up with a Chubb mortise lock). Nobody else here seems to have found spools in Yales - only mushrooms. Maybe Yale tried spools for a short time before adopting mushrooms. If so, I'd be interested to know the history of the modification, and why they changed to mushrooms.

[The Key Maker]

Think thats quite standard for most Yale models, i taken loads appart and they have ALWAYS been in 2 and 4 pos. I tryed rekeying it and putting them in other positions but as a Safe Locking Mechanism (hardest to open) goes, 2 and 4 seems to be most effective!

Maybe there is some other reason

[Ivan]

Just a guess - but at two and 4 on a 5 pin cylinder you would be evenly spreading them through the cylinder. Or it may just be that someone thinks tidily

[jon2000uk]

Yales and most 5pin high security tumblers that have spool pins have them in positions 2 and 4, and really should not have a spool pin in position 1 as it can de-centralise the keyway and make life very awkward to fit a key in the lock, this is basically the same reason that they never have spools as all 5 bottom pins.

Jon

[Chris]

jon2000uk says "Yales and most 5pin high security tumblers that have spool pins have them in positions 2 and 4."

That's weird because the reason I dismantled my Yale was to find out why I had so much trouble setting pins 1 & 3 - and that's where I found the spools. I was abroad when it was first fitted to my front door, and although I was charged for a "new" barrel, I'm beginning to think maybe it wasn't so new after all! If Yale spools are always fitted as standard on stacks 2 & 4, then someone else must have tinkered with the lock before I got my hands on it. The main reason I changed the lock was because the key often took a couple of attempts to get it to enter the keyway.

[Denis]

Some history information:
Yale was the inventer of the most used locks of today.
He got the idea from the old egypts, whe used the gravitation instat of springs.
That was in 1865.

[mightymouse]

I see everyone seems to think that Yale have ditched using spool pins in favour of mushroom pins a few years back. I dont think this is the case; I purchased a replacement Yale cylinder in in Feb 04 and found two spools in it when I took it to bits. Adds to the mystery I suppose...

[Chucklz]

I wonder if it matters what factory produced the locks, or what model etc. Or if they simply ran out of one kind of security pin one month or something.

[technik]

i have a window lock that has semi mushroom pins in it. When i say semi imean it has one indented ring around the bottom of the pin, s its like a serrated pin, but with only one indent. It has these in all 5 positions. I've only picked it once (the wards are really good in the lock, very hard to get pick in an mkes me often wonder if im even touching the pins, or just pushing against another ward!) I bought it for $20 AUS, and i've bought lock for more than that with much less security on them, so i was suprised after taking t apart the securty features it had. My brother came over the other day, and had ago at picking He picked my lockwood rep. cylinder in about 5 mins ( i was shocked, it was his first time!) He then took one look at the window lock and sed 'im doing tha one' I replied ' no way, ive never picked that lock, i'll give ya 10 bucks if you can." and what did he do? he bluddy picked it. I said 'oh you fluked it" and he picked it again! not risking that he couldn't repeat the process, he stood up, got his $10, and left.

I was ANGRY! I got the lock that night for the first time, and havent tried since. Actually, might have a go now! Cya!

Technik