I was taking it apart in the car, using a piece of rolled up Canadian Tire money (5 cent denomination) as a plug follower
. (I was waiting with my wife and kid outside my sister-in-law's house for two hours and got bored.)
Not surprisingly when I tried to put the thing back together, the Canadian Tire money failed me and the top pins & springs dropped out. I was pleasantly surprised to find one mushroom pin, although I don't know which pin number it originated from. At this point, with no tools except for a knife, I decided to put the thing away and work on it later when I had more time.
Next day, at my Brother-in-laws birthday party, I again displayed great foolishness by deciding to put the thing back together sitting on a sofa, with half a dozen children running around the room. This time I had a pen and a pair of tweezers as well as the original 5 cent tender. Since I'm trying to spread the word about the value of lock-picking as a hobby, I decided to start by only putting back in two of the pins (not the mushroom top pin either) so that I could pass it around to a few coworkers etc that are slightly interested, and work it back up to the 5 full pins as they (and I) progress. Anyway, I put the 1 & 2 bottom pins into the cylinder, insert the key, rest it precariously on my knee, and then using the pair of borrowed tweezers I put number 1 & 2 springs and top pins back in place (using a pen inside the rolled up Canadian Tire money as a follower to keep them in their place.) At this point I was feeling really proud of myself. I picked up the cylinder (the one with the key in it on my knee) and gently put it into the lock without messing up the rolled up money this time, until it was in all the way, and rotated it so the pins were lined up with the top of the lock. At this point I thought I had it made, 100% done and ready to pick as soon as I returned to work and got the picks back from a coworker. Of course my daughter chose this time to get interested in something she could be potentially dangerous to herself and others, so I decided to put things away for a while. This is the point where things went sorta wrong. I tried to pull the key out of the lock. The cylinder started to come out with it. The key stopped moving. The cylinder stopped moving. Realizing something was wrong, I tried to push the key/cylinder back in. It didn't move. I gave up at that point.
When I had a chance to come back to it, I noticed that bottom pin 1 is unable to move upwards because it is hitting the lock's faceplate. It needs to move upwards for the key to come out. I'm not sure why it won't go back in, unless I put the wrong bottom pin in for pin 2 (although it was very smooth and flush when the key was in the cylinder) since the key is still fully inserted into the cylinder.
Outside of using a drill or dremel tool (neither of which I have) to just cut into the face-plate right above the keyway to give pin 1 room to move, is there anything I can do to fix this? Will this even fix the problem (since the cylinder is not going in either)
Not that it is likely going to be of any use, but here is a picture.
