Need a pin kit for lock picking

[corey2444]

I am new to locksmithing. I've purchased a very good hand pick set, a brochage manual gun and a southord electric. So far I only have a couple locks to practice on.

I have some kwiksets, I also plan on buying the most common and uncommon cylnders to practice on.

What I would like to do is buy pin kit and rekey these cylnders so I'm not getting use to picking the same couple of locks. This way I get practice on rekeying as well, and in the future I will be using the pin kit.

Doing searches on the internet gives me some choices of universal .003 or .005.. Which one of these is recommended? Also which model is prefered? since I'm not really on a tight budget, I dont really want to buy something I'm going to replace months later.

[vitti]

before buying more pins, just take the pins out of the ones you have and re-arrange them. Violla, new lock.

Also, home depot and lowes sell pinning kits for about $10 that come with a plug follower, kwikset KIK tool and tweezers and enough pins for I think 3 locks.

It's not a bad price for what you get when you consider you'll spend about that much on shipping for any kit you order online.

[corey2444]

That's a good idea. But what do most locksmiths use for pinning kits in their van? .003 or .005? Also what brand?

[freakparade3]

.03 is the most common. If you get a universal .03 kit you will be fine.

[linuxbz]

Foley-Belsaw sells a universal pin kit with 130 different sizes of pins, 72 of each size, including mushroom pins and springs. It's $160. Most pin sets these days are .003 graduations, because that means you can get within .001 of any target pin length. If you found a bargain on a .005 set it would probably be close enough for most locks.

You can download a F-B 2008 locksmithing catalog at: http://www.foley-belsaw.com/locksmith_catalog_download.html

I'm taking the F-B course now and I don't have this kit yet but it's on the way.

Incidentally, if you don't need the box you could get a refill kit for $99, but fishing through all those little plastic bags would be a real pain.

[Brianpojo56]

It's really all personal preference. The .005 kit used to be the industry standard until they came out with the .003 kits (now it's kind of a toss up between the two). The .005 should serve your purpose and then some, but the .003 kit has a little bit more accuracy and versatility as it usually has some shorter bottom pins to choose from (i.e. shallow cuts in those cheesy Lori Brand pot metal rim cylinders that look like a slightly smaller Schlage keyway).

On a side note: the college I work at is all on a schlage master system so the kit that I use there is just one of those little clear plastic tackle boxes with just enough bins for all the schlage bottom pins and all the even numbered schlage master pins. 'course I keep a .005 in my truck for side jobs
So you could just get a refill kit or individual pin sizes to suit your needs and either find or make a kit to put them in.

[mkultra23]

I would go with a LAB Smartwedge .003" kit. This is what most locksmiths are using. I myself use the Emerald Wedge and think its great. It is color coded making it much easier to identify correct pins and includes master pins for all your master keying needs. They also have compact universal kits that you can fit in a backpack and pretty inexpensive. The pins are always precise in their dimensions and this company makes pins that go into the locks of many manucaturers including Assa V-10 side pins so you know they are well made. I visited the factory in Connecticut recently and it's a really small company (every lab pin ever made was colored in one modifed industrial washing machine) , very nice people and was the first company to mass manufacture pin tumblers. They are all machined from massive coils brass wire on around one hundred screw making machines that have been modified by LAB. These THE pins to get for standard pin tumbler locks. Make sure you get .115" diameter pins in .003" increments as you will have much more flexibility in pinning than the .005" if you want to do IC start with the A2 incremental set (23) with .111" diameter.

[mkultra23]

fishing tackle box sounds like a good idea. Those pill containers with a chamber for each day work great when you need to KA a bunch of locks.