Set of beginner questions.

[dinero]

I got my pickset from Southord yesterday. I bought my first padlock today at CVS (CVS brand--oh well.)

I managed to open it about 10 times in about an hour, but I am quite sure most of it was guesswork ('raking?'). I want to be able to feel each pin, and push them up nice and smoothly and click the top pins into place. But here are my problems:

1) I can't tell how many pins there are. The key has three indentions, so I thought three pins, but it actually CLICKS four times before it can turn the plug when I put the key in--so are there four pins?

2) I don't know how to tell when it's set, the only one I can be sure that is set is the frontmost pin, which i can see, and see the lack of spring tension when it is set.

3) I can't seem to find the binding pin ever. I thought it was the frontmost one for a while, then it stopped 'setting,' so I guess maybe it changed or something? (lol, impossible?)

4) The sounds are throwing me off. The only sound I can learn anything from is when I release the tension and here 'clicks.' Each click is a set pin dropping, right? Well sometimes I hear one and a VERY tiny one, is that one or two set pins? And, if I heard three clicks, yet it was still locked, is this proof that there are four pins? Is the fourth pin different than the other three in some way?

I'd love to get some insight on these questions. Thanks

[Josh K]

You can tell when a pin is set because pushing up will not be hard. It's not being put under pressure from the spring, so it should just bounce freely when manipulated with a pick.

The key may have three cuts, but one of the pins could be a 0 cut pin and wouldn't look like a cutout on the key.

[Solomon]

The key may have three cuts, but one of the pins could be a 0 cut pin and wouldn't look like a cutout on the key.

I agree with this. Either that, or you're counting the peaks instead of the valleys. I know I did that when I was a newbie.

Pure SPP is all about finding the exact right tension and rolling your pick gently to rest on the very tip of each pin, pushing very gently on them and taking mental notes on the feedback. When a pin sets, you should know exactly which one it is and when you get the lock picked you should know the binding order and be able to repeat it with relative ease. It takes a lot of practice, but so does anything else that's completely awesome.

Up until yesterday I got away with pretty sloppy SPP because I was working on pretty average locks, but I was very generously given a bunch of new ones, and they're all very high quality. I had no idea how sloppy my technique was until I got them! You have a good mindset, it's definately wise to get pure spp down before you develop bad habits like I did. It took a lot of willpower to stop going back to the way I was doing it before.

It's very rewarding to know exactly what is happening inside the lock, and to have complete control. I can't explain the feeling, but when you know exactly which order the pins set and can do it perfectly, it really is something else. If you just can't seem to pick a lock, take it apart! Take notes, play around with it until you get it. I started on a medeco biaxial yesterday and decided to get the hang of picking it minus the sidebar as a starting point, and I wasn't getting anywhere because I jumped right into it with way too much confidence. I considered myself to be a pretty good picker, but I had to swallow my pride a little and pick it one pin at a time to really get the feel for it. With the technique I was using at first, I was oversetting pins all over the place... and 5 of the 6 key pins have a deep serration cut into them so without proper control I never would have got it.

If I had my SPP down properly in the first place I would have gotten it much easier wthout all that repinning caper, so yeah... you'll thank yourself for getting that stuff out of the way as early as you can. Pin a lock up one pin at a time, newbie style. You'll learn a hell of a lot doing it this way... I remember saying the exact opposite not long ago, but I've been picking for like a year and a half and I really regret putting off such a simple thing for so long now. Pretty soon you'll be able to tell exactly what's inside a lock without any prior knowledge of what's in there, and pick it with real precision. Practice makes perfect. Happy picking!

[inverseentropy]

When a pin is set the top pin will be stuck above the shear line and the bottom pin should drop back down and can move freely. When I say move freely I mean that it is only the weight of the pin that needs to be overcome in order to raise it. To me, it is nearly impossible to feel whether I am even touching these pins from the bottom because they are so easy to lift (a pin probably weighs only a tiny fraction of a gram). There are two ways I tell that a pin is set. First, you can find the pin by touching it from the side (i.e. from the front) and then from that you can know where the bottom of the pin is and when you touch it there it offers no resistance. In other words, you can feel the pin from the side but it seems to not even be there when you touch it from the bottom. The second way to tell that a pin is set is to just press up until you feel the spring. If there is no springiness but instead the pin is fixed in place then it is set.

As far as hearing the clicks when releasing tension... you should do this every time you give up on picking a lock (if for no other reason than to say "wow, almost got it!") but don't get hung up on it. Sometimes two (or four) pins come down at once and it is hard to tell the difference. Also, every once and a while I think the clicks might outnumber the pins, maybe this only happens if there are spool pins. That reminds me - if you have spool pins (and a lot of locks do nowadays) then all bets are off. You should get a lock you can take a apart like a residential deadbolt or something so you can reduce the number of pins and know for sure which are spools. With all but two pins removed from the lock it is a lot easier to keep track of which ones are binding, which are set, and which are not yet binding or set.

The most sure way of telling how many pins there are is by putting something completely straight into the lock, pushing all pins up at once, and slowly pulling the tool out. The clicks will be easy to discern.