by Phastor » 14 Nov 2012 12:20
So a friend gave this lock to me the other day for me to play with. He replaced it because the shackle pops off completely when it's opened, but otherwise, the lock functions. Other than opening a dead bolt for a friend who locked himself out of his place, this is the first lock that I have picked outside of those provided by Foley Belsaw when I was taking their courses. I didn't know anything about it. I quickly learned that this lock wasn't like the others.
After about an hour of fiddling with this thing and unable to open it, I noticed that after I thought I had all the pins set, the plug was turned more than the other locks had been if they were simply bound on a normal pin. I figured this must be because of spool pins due to their smaller, inner diameter, which must have allowed for more rotation if all the regular pins were set and it was just binding on them. I looked it up and found that this lock does, in fact, use spools.
Great. I've only worked with a handful of cheap locks and suddenly I find that I have been trying to open a lock that was beyond me. I did a little more reading on how to deal with spools. Thirty minutes later I learned that pins 3 and 4 were spools and I managed to set them. At this point, the lock was still binding on something unknown, but I could randomly prod or rake it and it would eventually open. That wasn't enough for me. I wanted to know what it was binding on. It took me another four hours to finally figure out that pin 2 was also a spool. It was driving a short pin and it was right between two long pins. I wasn't getting the feedback from it that I was from the other two. I think it was because my half ball pick was too wide and short to reach it properly. I was able to set it though after I knew it was there.
So, after about six hours, I managed to get this thing open without relying on chance. My question is, should it have taken me this long?
On a side note: I only have three picks that were provided by Foley Belsaw. The hook was too large for this lock, and I think the half ball may have been, too. I had a really hard time feeling the individual pins with it.
