My nightmare (modified Yale)

[FarmerFreak]

To start off, you should know that the old classic Yale keyway is my kryptonite. I'm not talking about the cheap padlocks that use a similar but smaller imitation. I'm talking the classic Yale keyway. As an older coworker says "Made back when Yale actually took pride in their work."

A customer left this old broken lock with us. Since the cylinder is in perfect condition, as usual I set out to make it difficult to pick. Not realizing at the time that I was going to make a lock that I honestly can't pick.... as of yet. I have spent several hours trying to pick this to no avail. I'll get it sooner or later.





I like how the spring cap in this lock works, simple and effective.




I gave it my version of anti-bump pins. So pick gunning/bumping it is out of the question.


For good measure I threaded the bottom chambers, and added serrations to all of the bottom pins.

I have done all this before on aftermarket Sc1 keyways. It makes them extremely hard to pick. It takes time, but so far I have always managed to pick those.

[femurat]

you threaded the bottom chambers?!? so you were not joking in my tubular lock post

I think that the most difficult thing in this lock are the barrel drivers. They're easy to overset and even if you get a feel for them it's still difficult to understand if they're set or just in a false set.
I'm stating this due to my experience with the dom ix ht that has similar barrel drivers.

Have you tried a little more tension?
Did you pick this lock with the actual pins, before threading the chambers?

Good luck

[drop dead fred]

This yale800 series should have standard pins top and bottom, i picked loads of these,very easy if you live in england were brought up with them.

[jwhou]

I take it that your idea of anti-bump pins are those top driver pins drilled out and with a spring inserted. Are these internal springs then connected to those spool/serrated pins underneath them? How to you deal with their now being a shear line between the hollowed out driver pin and the spool pin as well as between the spool pin and the bottom pin? How does these anti-bump pin compare with just sizing the top driver pins with complementary sizes to the bottom pins ie.: short bottom pin, long top pin, long bottom pin, short top pin etc. thereby minimizing the throw that bumping and pick gunning take advantage of and having each top pin be a different mass and different spring compression so they don't all clear the shear line together. Wouldn't a better anti-bump pin be a pin in pin design where the internal pin is sprung to the outer pin but does not normally protrude out the bottom unless the outer pin suddenly moves up and the lagging inner pin then telescopes out obstructing the shear line. How about a bottom pin which is really a inner pin with a full diameter bottom section sprung to the hollowed out top cylinder of the pin such that any kinetic energy passes to the center pin which rises inside a hollowed out top driver pin thereby not imparting any kinetic energy to the top pin? The top of that inner pin would act as a stop for the outer cylinder for the spring to push that cyinder to, countersunked of course to present a good shear line during normal operation. Another approach would be to spring the inner pin of the top pin at all but allow it to telescope down though the driver pin till stopped by a flanged top, The holes in the plug could be countersunked such that the outer ring of the top driver pin can only fall into it so far much as the Masterlock anti-bump pin does, any bumping or impact will send the inner pin soaring but the actual outer pin remains stationary (no extra springs involved), if you don't flange the bottom, bumping might actualy send this central spike completely out of the hollowed out top pin jamming the bore, failing safe the lock locked and leaving evidence of tampering for insurance purposes.

[Evan]

For good measure I threaded the bottom chambers, and added serrations to all of the bottom pins.

I have done all this before on aftermarket Sc1 keyways. It makes them extremely hard to pick. It takes time, but so far I have always managed to pick those.

@FarmerFreak:

That does look like a pretty evil lock to try and pick... How did you cut that key, it doesn't look like a normal Yale key cut to spec on a code machine ? Did you hand file that one ?

~~ Evan

[Eyes_Only]

Awesome set up. I'm starting to do a similar thing with a lot of my locks too (threading the pin chambers and installing serrated drivers), but I've held off of doing that to all my locks cos I don't want to end up with a large part of my practice lock collection to be something thats way too difficult to pick.

[FarmerFreak]

I take it that your idea of anti-bump pins are those top driver pins drilled out and with a spring inserted. Are these internal springs then connected to those spool/serrated pins underneath them?

If I am understanding your question correctly. Yes, the internal spring pushes down on the bottom driver.

How to you deal with their now being a shear line between the hollowed out driver pin and the spool pin as well as between the spool pin and the bottom pin?

The top driver pin never crosses the shear line. Only the bottom driver does. Furthermore, when all the pins are fully at rest the top driver pin isn't touching the bottom driver. The larger diameter hole isn't drilled all the way through the housing. The fact that they aren't touching is what makes the anti-bump work. When you hit the bottom pin it transfers motion to all the bottom drivers, then they fly up and hit the top driver pin, again transferring motion. The bottom driver never crosses the shear line during any of this.

Wouldn't a better anti-bump pin be a pin in pin design where the internal pin is sprung to the outer pin but does not normally protrude out the bottom unless the outer pin suddenly moves up and the lagging inner pin then telescopes out obstructing the shear line.

In my tests, anytime all of the pins are resting together (touching). They can be bumped/pick gunned. That design hasn't proven itself to me like this current design has.

How about a bottom pin which is really a inner pin with a full diameter bottom section sprung to the hollowed out top cylinder of the pin such that any kinetic energy passes to the center pin which rises inside a hollowed out top driver pin thereby not imparting any kinetic energy to the top pin?

This would probably work. I'll keep this in mind. I'm not sure if I will be using it anytime soon as I really like the way my current design is working. But if I was modding a cylinder that had very small bible, this may be the way to go. Without resorting to Masters bump stop setup.

How did you cut that key

I cut it on an ITL9700 and turned on the "laser cut" option. The laser cut option cuts straight from one cut to the next without leaving the peaks between each cut. Considering the extra springs in the lock, I did this just to make it work smoother

Awesome set up. I'm starting to do a similar thing with a lot of my locks too (threading the pin chambers and installing serrated drivers), but I've held off of doing that to all my locks cos I don't want to end up with a large part of my practice lock collection to be something thats way too difficult to pick.

That's good to hear, and yeah it makes those serrated drivers something to really be afraid of.

[jwhou]

It's really cool to see someone actually experimenting with ideas rather than just blogging about the ideas.

If I understand you correctly, you basically have a top driver pin and a intermediate driver bin that is sized such that the top driver bin never enters the plug and of course a secondary spring between the two as well as the standard spring on top. Would the second spring even be necessary? If all three pins are resting on each other and the Newton's Cradle theory is at work then when the bottom pin is struck, the momentum is transfered through the intermediate pin to the top driver pin causing the top driver pin to move away but the as long as the masses are balanced, the intermediate driver pin should remain stationary. Have you tried your set up without the secondary spring to see if that's the case? The problem I see with going without the secondary spring is that chances are the top driver pin is of a lesser mass than the intermediate driver pin so the intermediate driver pin will likely still move upwards but perhaps the top driver pin could be hollowed out and filled with lead so that it's more massive than the intermediate pin especially if the intermediate pin has a titanium core making it very light, likewise you would want the bottom pin to be lighter than the top driver pin so that the only pin responding to the impact would be the top pin whose shear line doesn't enter the plug anyways.

Another problem that might make removing the secondary spring not work is that I found an article from MasterLock (on a chinese website no less) when I searched on high speed video of key-bumping which stated that there wasn't complete momentum transfer from the bottom pin to the top pin as in the Newton's Cradle theory, that both pins rose together rather than separate as the Newton's Cradle theory holds, so they believe that either the bottom pin stops at the shear line on the way up or the top pin stops at the shear line on the way down which is why they opted for a top pin with a narrower diameter at the very bottom. They argued that the triangle features of the bump key actually lifts the bottom pins hence it's not actually imparting momentum that's then transferred as a pick gun would but rather simply accelerating the whole pin stack up together. This means that bumping acts to set the pins very quickly such that the beveled false sets of the spool pins don't seem to be a factor, basically a very fast reverse pick. They also said that the reverse taper was to prevent the bore hole from beveling itself due to repeated bumpings and cited that the reverse taper left a tell tale ring impression in the plug's bore hole instead providing forensic evidence of bumping. This brings up an interesting issue, whether to simply defeat bumping or to provide evidence of a bumping attempt as well as defeat bumping.

Oh, and another question, with the threading, I was wondering if the pin would then rotate within the bore as it rose and dropped if either the pin or the bore was threaded, much as a bullet rotates in a rifled bore. You should be able to observe this by putting a mark on the top of pin in your threaded bore hole and raise and lower it with a pick while observing the top of the pin.

[locksmith911]

This is really an eye opener for those who think that [url]locksmith[/url] is a easy job....!

[sfi72]

Looks a lot like a lock i picked up on ebay a while back:

http://sfi72.com/hori_pins.jpg
http://sfi72.com/hori_plug.jpg

The bottom of the pin chambers in the plug were also serrated.

[FarmerFreak]

That's a nice fine sfi72. It's only missing the anti-bump pins.
Do you happen to know which brand of lock that is?

[sfi72]

That's a nice fine sfi72. It's only missing the anti-bump pins.
Do you happen to know which brand of lock that is?

"Hori" some kind of Japanese company apparently, doesn't appear to be very well known.

http://sfi72.com/hori_lock.jpg

[FarmerFreak]

That's a nice fine sfi72. It's only missing the anti-bump pins.
Do you happen to know which brand of lock that is?

"Hori" some kind of Japanese company apparently, doesn't appear to be very well known.

http://sfi72.com/hori_lock.jpg

Thanks. I have to ask. Have you picked it?

[sfi72]

That's a nice fine sfi72. It's only missing the anti-bump pins.
Do you happen to know which brand of lock that is?

"Hori" some kind of Japanese company apparently, doesn't appear to be very well known.

http://sfi72.com/hori_lock.jpg

Thanks. I have to ask. Have you picked it?

Haven't given it a good go in a while, but i tried for a few hours a couple months ago and it was a pain to set any of the pins. Even with some of the pins removed it doesn't get significantly easier, the pins get caught and the springs are rather strong so using light tension is hard.

[HirosStorageUnit]

man oh man do I love old locks.