This is a bit of a downgrade in difficulty from my last lock, a Sargent 8200, with six challenging pins.
This little lock is a five wafer cam-lock. I opened her up and counted them myself. To tell you the truth, I was expecting to see some pins. I opened a cabinet some time ago for a hall director at my old university and it used pins (only 3). I just learned most cam locks use wafers and wafers are all the rage. I also only used paperclips this time. Even used some duct tape for the handles, felt like MacGyver. Boy, I loved that show. I also had a hard time gripping the thing, so I actually installed the lock on a cardboard box. Made matters easier.
I haven't seen a wafer lock before, so I was interested when I peered inside. No top pins or anything, just wafers. I thought, what about the shear line though? So as I stared down the hull of the lock I could see raised grooves at every 90 degrees. Ah, so cool. And because each wafer sticks out at the top and bottom, the wafer has to stay at just the right height in order to avoid hitting the grooves at the top and bottom. It looks like if I took the face off the cylinder I might be able to see the spring system, although one time I took a clasp off a pin tumbler and could never get it to go back on, so I'm a little wary.
Never really looking at the lever system before, I found two notched discs in the packaging that varied how far the cylinder could turn when using the key to turn the lock, either 180 or 90. Simple, but I was amused. Of course, when picking the lock, it wouldn't matter if you had the 180 disc in as it would still stop at 90, at least until you picked it a second time (because there are grooves at every 90 degrees).
Looking at this site:
http://www.fortliberty.org/locks/secrets-of-lock-picking.shtml I think I can see how it looks inside. Funny though, it's not a double wafer exactly because I only had to pick one side; however, the wafers did stick out both ends of the cylinder. I didn't exactly let out a hooray when I saw all the army stuff on that site, by the way. I was, however, coveting the lock books they advertised. Someday . . . someday I will buy you.
