Practice Lock Advice

[spoolspanker]

I purchased one of those clear 5-pin practice locks with all the pins being spool pins.

That turned out to be very loose and really easy to pick...too easy.

Anyways the question here is what would be best to practice with? I saw that Medeco (Mortise?) locks are made so you can take out individual pins and practice with one or two, and put different types of pins in there.

I also saw this practice lock floating out there:



Advice or comments will be appreciated

Thanks!

[Satan130]

I'm the official new guy, so take everything i say with a grain of salt, but I've found that a good a way as any is to go down to your local home depot/osh/whatever and find a door lock, and just disassemble it.

you achieve the same affect, and you know it is a good, or at least decent lock.

I don't know how much practice locks go for, but i can't imagine this being any more costly

[spoolspanker]

thanks for the advice satan

[keith82687]

One thing that seems to be popular (especially if you're in a smaller town where people are alot less suspicious of younger/inexperienced lock pickers). Give your local locksmiths a call and let em know your interested in picking up locksmithing and ask if they have any old locks they have cut off or that they dont need. I tried this recently in Birmingham AL and with success, however, I had to call 12 locksmiths =P

[ridinplugspinnaz]

A $10-15 Kwikset deadbolt is cheap, gives relatively good feedback, and is dirt simple to rearrange the pins in, owing to the fact that the bible is capped off with a removable metal clip (this way, you don't have to remove the plug). Most people will go a long way learning the rudiments of picking just with a simple lock like that.

[spoolspanker]

Thank you, I ended up purchasing a Schlage deadbolt. I took it apart and working it with only 4 pins in.