American Lock Series 50 (includes the 50, 51, and 52)

[blake1803]

Does anyone have experience with this lock? I've been looking through American's literature and from what I can gather, it's very similar to their other solid-steel padlocks with the one exception that it's non-rekeyable.

It's a 5-pin lock and from spending a few minutes with it already I feel it's safe to say it has the same security pins as American's other 5-pin locks -- but I'd love to hear from anyone who has dealt with this specific lock just in case there is a difference.

Any advice on picking it? The bitting doesn't seem too brutal but I'm having trouble finding a tension wrench that wont slip into the bottom of the keyway at an angle that produces no tension. Since I'm applying extremely light tension, this becomes a problem as the tensor will have a tendency to slip -- I haven't been able to produce so much as a false set, yet!

[cryptonic]

blake,
put another tension wrench in the bottom of the keyway. as for getting a false set if you use too light of tension you won't be getting the plug to false set on the serrations or the spools/mushrooms. all i can offer for advise is don't use too light of tension (which is a little counter indicative of what you are supposed to do i guess) and the famous double tension wrench. american's are really bad because the wrench slips. luckily even if you pick it after the wrench has slipped, you can remove the tension wrench and replace it with a better bite and still spin the plug (ie the pins won't re-set or atleast this is true with the 5 that i have)

hope it helps
cryp.

[blake1803]

cryp:

Thanks. I did end up picking this lock a couple of times not long after my post (this was one of those threads that got lost for a little while as the board was experiencing problems). I still can't do it consistently, though. I absolutely cannot get the false set without raking, either.

The keyway's a pain... I don't remember it being so bad on the Brinks shrouded lock which if I recall correctly used an AM7 key, but that was some time ago. Ah well. Practice, practice, practice...