Smoking

[motorhead]

I bought a used Foley-Belsaw course on ebay and got to the lesson about impressioning, and they say one tried and true technique is to smoke the key so you more easily see the impression marks. But everytime i smoke a key it just seems to dirty the lock and make it more difficult to impression. So I ended up cleaning the key and using a magnifying glass with proper lighting, and this made the impressioning process a success. I guess my question is has anyone on here had success using the smoking technique to impression a lock? Maybe im doing something wrong, but it just seems to dirty up the job....

[fixer]

The trick to impressioning is to prepare the key blank prior to starting.

There are 3 ways commonly used to prepare the blank, left, right or peak. By this I mean file the top edge of the blade to a point.

i.e.

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File the surface smooth and then the wafers will leave a mark on the shiny surface as you impression.

Try impressioning wafer locks before you try pin tumblers. Don't be too aggressive with the file, you can take another swipe to take more out, but it is tough putting it back if you take off too much

[vector40]

Varjeal (in his impressioning tutorial) seems also to disadvise smoking, most of the time.

[Shrub]

Motorhead,

Please search the site before posting, your posts keep asking questions not only already answered but already answered RESENTALLY,

The smoking of keys was disscussed no more than 2 weeks ago to quite some depth,

SEARCH

[capt.dunc]

it would also help to know what type of lock. smoking is the way to go for warded padlocks and warded door locks. plasticine on a specially pre cut key for bs lever locks. and keen eyesight for wafers and pincylinders, they can be improved by knife edging as stated by fixer.