new guy in town

[fragapick]

ok, still haven't gotten the yale open yet, picks are rounded off and i lubed it up with some silicon spray...the pins are on the right side of the lock instead of the top or the bottom, i have gotten all the pins down, but obviously they aren't set as the lock doesn't open. i'm still quite the beginner to say the least and was wondering if raking is harder to do than it seems and if there is a way to "read" keys by looking at the height of the ridges in the keys....thanks for helping once again

[randmguy]

fragapick I apologize...You may have interchangable cores on your dorm rooms. What this means to you is that you would probably have two shear lines that you can hit when you're single pin picking. Yale's web site has some excellent exploded drawings that you can look at that will give you a better idea of what you're dealing with.

http://www.yalesecurity.com/library/partsmanuals/yale/pdf/42250.pdf