Rusmin Corbin Mortise Cylinders

[ElbowMacaroni]

Ok, I got a batch of five of these things, and having a tough time of picking them. Any tips other than the expected practice practice practice?

Thanks!

[FarmerFreak]

I don't know what locks you have been picking, but the Corbin Russwins are of a higher quality than most padlocks...or the kwiksets of the world. So plan on tighter tolerances. They tend to have spooled drivers, and some keyways can be difficult.

Cool! Good to know, I have a few of these on the way from a liquidation sale. Should be fun!

-EM

Looks like you got what you were asking for.

As already stated, C/R cylinders rate up there with Schlage and Sargent in quality. Three things make them challenging: (1). Restrictive keyways (most of them are paracentric. (2). Factory use of spool drivers. (3). Tight tolerances. I have best success with these cylinders by using top of plug tension and smaller dimensioned picks. (I use Rytan Mini Blue picks, which are about 20% smaller in overall dimension than their standard configuration counterparts).

I pulled this from the other thread because magician59 is spot on.

I could also recommend the use of some of locknewbie21's picks. Now that I have some I can attest to how good they are. On these locks they work pretty well because they are smaller than HPC picks. I haven't tried the Rytan Mini Blue picks, you could give those a try as well.

One last thing,...patience patience patience, and practice practice practice I know you already knew that, I just couldn't resist.

[FarmerFreak]

I'm not sure why I didn't mention that you could always shim the lock from the back to take it apart and take the pins out of 3ish pin chambers. Then practice on that for a while and then add more pins, practice and add more pins again until the lock is fully pinned.

Somehow I think you already knew that though. You should probably do that on at least one of them though.

Good luck, have fun.

[ElbowMacaroni]

Yeah, the keyways are evil...