I only ever seem to see these at Home Depot (It seems that Lowes and possibly others sell an almost identical lock under the Task Force brand referred to in this old thread:
http://www.lockpicking101.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=28042) and I haven't been able to find much about them anywhere online.
Outwardly the resemble a standard laminated 40mm Masterlock with the only notable external differences being a dome that rises out of the center of the top of the body and a brass colored cap on the entry to the keyway. Like other warded Master Locks the cap on the keyway spins fairly freely through the entire turn radius of the operating key, unlike other warded padlocks though this cap is the only part that contains the keyway warding. When opened the shackle looks like it only latches on the toe but there is a locking cut and latch on the heel of the shackle which remains concealed within the body even when the lock is opened.
The most interesting aspect of this lock, for me anyway, is that the key looks like a more common blade key with
very radical bitting but only three pin depths and wide pin spacing. The cuts range from no-cut, to roughly 1/4 of the key width, to 1/2 of the key width, never deep enough to quite reach the keyway warding. These keys even seem to be cut from blanks that are very similar in size and shape to standard blade keys.
I first picked one up when I was looking for locks to expand my practice collection and became quite intrigued when it didn't seem to respond to my attempts to pick it with the same ward picks that had so easily operated the other ward locks in my collection. Because I could find so little information on these locks I ended up buying several (they cost under $6 USD and can often be found in packs of two, keyed alike, for less than $8) to try to figure out how they work. My probing of the lock mechanism indicated that there were at least two levers which needed to be operated in concert to open the shackle but their exact placement eluded me until I pried the end cap off of one to examine it's internals.
The levers are located on opposite sides of the keyway, one at the very end of the keyway is operated by the back of the key as it is turned and releases the toe of the shackle; the other is roughly 12mm from the end of the keyway, is operated by the 'blade' portion of the key and releases the heel of the shackle. Because of the placement of the levers and the design of the warding standard ward picks cannot operate both levers simultaneously.
Through experimentation I determined that it was possible to operate the heel lever with the "L" shaped pick from my ward pick sets (I found that occasionally I was able to push on the toe lever with this same pick) but for quite a while I struggled to come up with a way to operate both levers simultaneously. Yesterday I finally hit on an idea that worked. Once I managed to place the ward pick so that it would operate the heel lever, I would push the 'handle' portion of one of my longer tension tools (single ended with a twist handle) through the wider portion of the keyway ward so that as I turned the pick it would press the tip of the tension tool handle into the toe lever. Seating the tension tool handle was very tricky and frequently forced the pick out of alignment but it did work on all four locks with some practice. This morning I did create a tool/skeleton key by cutting and filing one of the spare keys but I will omit the details of that to avoid running afoul of the rules on 'Advanced' topics, especially as this is my first post.
I hope this is useful to anyone else attempting to pick these locks (and their copies).
