Found this site last night. Lock picking has always been a bit of an interest for me. I thought of locksmith training but decided against it as I figured it would be too hard to find enough business in the rural area that I am in.
Anyhow, I made a pick and tension wrench out of the spring steel that comes on a cheap set of headphones. The pick tip that I made was a half diamond because that was the easiest to make out of the stock I had. Plus, at the time I made it, I had only found pictures of various pick designs, but hadn't found a description of what heads were used for what purposes.
I changed the locks in my house about a year ago and I had a spare Kwikset key in knob lock laying around so I decided to start playing with that. Well, after about an hour on the thing I gave up. I think I could hear 3 pins resetting when I'd release pressure, but darned if I can get the other two. I think it's because of the shape of my pick, (pushing up adjacent pins) but as this is my first attempt at it, can't truly be sure.
I'm not going to ask for advice here, as I know that there is a search tool on this board and I'll be darned if I'm going to get flamed on my very first post here.


Thanks to the moderators and site maintainers for what definately seems to be a first rate site. I do believe I'll be around a fair bit.