Hudson Drawer lock

[starhackt]

My first real post, I have been lurking around reading here for awhile though.

Anyways, I work for a student loan company and we have a fire safe by 'Fire King' with a Hudson drawer lock. They asked if I could open it for them but I'm not sure how to go about opening it. I believe it has a security pin as I noticed that if I push on one of the pins while releasing some tension off of the torque wrench, the plug moves opposite the direction to unlock it. Does anyone have any experience with these locks? If it comes down to it, we will just order a new key but I would like the challenge of doing it myself. Pics attached

[Josh K]

Call a locksmith.

[Schuyler]

Oh, he can do it. Here's the deal - tell the folks you're working with that it's entirely possible to break locks when you pick them, but you should be able to do it. It's not complex, and though it's possible, I would be surprised if there's a spool.

If this were a lock on a door I would have the same message as Josh, but on a filing cabinet? I say go for it, so long as you understand that at the end of the day you might end up ruining the lock. (and you probably won't, but it IS a possibility).

However - those markings should tell a locksmith exactly what they need to know to provide you with a key for the lock. So what this comes down to is: Do you want it done right? Or do you want to have fun doing it?

And I mean that seriously. A lot of the first installed locks I picked were in very low-risk situations where the people were friendly and wanted to see if I could do it and I felt like taking on the challenge.

So, if you go for it - good luck! But, calling a Locksmith will get it solved pretty quickly.

[Squelchtone]

I disagree with the 'its only a file cabinet, whats the harm in telling him how'

There are social security numbers of students in those cabinets.. I'd rather help him break into a Coke machine, because only Coke cans and some dollar bills can go missing, in the case of student records, and having college loans myself, I'd feel uncomfortable telling someone how to get closer to that information.

imho,
Squelchtone

[Schuyler]

If it's a question of ownership, fine, maybe a picture with a coworker or something? I don't know, it's a filing cabinet, hard to establish ownership over the internet. I didn't get a lot of malintent from his post and it genuinely reminded me of a lot of situations I found myself in when I first started to cross the gap from never touching a lock to working seriously to help people with their locks. You'll also note that I didn't provide any picking advice, just encouraged him to (if his story is legit) give it a shot.

[MacGnG1]

the company he works for has enough money to hire a professional.

this is our hobby, not our profession.

[rontgens]

When I originally saw this I was going to say, just tell your company to get a new key/call a locksmith. Partly because the lock is in use, you say you have permission but how do we know? Because you posted a picture of a lock?
I guess we are more mistusting when someone has a low post count and when the lock 'looks' so simple to pick that if you'd done even the smallest amount of practice at home then you could almost look at a lock like that and it would open.
If you're using paper clips or improvised tools you 'could' wreck that lock purely by not knowing what you're doing.
My advice is research/practice and when you can open most locks that you see on your travels then you can use your skills wisely when someone you know owns the lock says 'Hey, I give you permission. I don't mind if you break anything.'
To which I'd say 'you sure you don't want to call a locksmith' answer 'I'm sure'.
The information is all over this forum mainly in the sticky threads.

[starhackt]

To answer the questions regarding legitimacy of my claim, I do have permission from my boss and he does not care if the lock gets wrecked in the process. It is a cabinet that needs to be thrown out but they want to check the contents first. My boss knowing about my hobby in locksmithing gave me permission to do this. As far as SSN's, well I work for a student loan company so I come across personal information on a regular basis, so it wouldn't be anymore different to look in this cabinet than looking at the letters I mail out, it's part of the job. I have signed a confidentiality agreement regarding non-disclosure of personal information(also I had to have a background check for this). I didn't take the pictures to try and prove legitimacy, I took them to show as much about the lock/cabinet as I could. If need be, I'll take a picture with the coworker or even give the number to my company/boss for validation if need be. But if this is what it would require to get help from you all, I request that it be an admin that I message/pm the information to since I don't think it would be wise for me to give out my work's/boss' contact info for the world to see.

Yes we could call a locksmith but we have a vendor that we just order the keys from if it comes to that. We may still get the key but as I stated before, I like the challenge and would like to solve this puzzle before they dump it and I don't get to play with it anymore

[Schuyler]

You can do it

Tension is going to be your biggest problem in such a small keyway. Make sure you are using a wrench that gives you as much space to work with your picks as possible, otherwise you are going to be oversetting pins immediately upon entering the keyway. You may have to file down an existing wrench or make a fresh one from a street sweeper bristle or something similar.

Again - I'd be shocked if it actually contains a security pin, but if so, know that when you false set, the lock is nearly open. The only way to false set is by having all of the other pins set first. Because the interior of a spool pin is so thin, the plug can't kip over and get caught in it until all the rest of the drivers have cleared the shear line. In a lock with only 1 or 2 spools this acts like a big landmark. Lighten up your tension, test each pin until you find the one that is counter rotating the plug, and firmly push it upward until it sets. If the lock swings open at that point, awesome, if it doesn't, hope is not lost. If the bottom of the spool pin is a slightly wider diameter than some of your other drivers it could cause them to drop back down. However - now that the spool is set, all you have to do is reset those drivers that you already know how to pick, and the lock will open right up for you.

Good luck, and folks can chastise me if they wish, we all work off our gut when we offer or deny advice to newbies.

[darklighterz7611]

To be fair its not so much the legitimacy of your claims but the fact its in use, and in use for confidential security reasons.

Firstly i would recommend that your company gets a new key/ gets a lockie out (its not fair for us hobbiest to take away jobs issued from a large company who have the money). Then when its open since the cabinet is being thrown out then why not just ask your boss if you can get the lock off it after its open? Then you would have got all the help you needed here.

folks can chastise me if they wish, we all work off our gut when we offer or deny advice to newbies.

Even though i do believe in this guys story I dont think this info should have been given out in this thread (regardless of the intentions) the knowledge you gave is very very easily searchable on this forum, the fundamentals of lockpicking a simple post telling him to search the forum would have suffice. I however stand by it being removed first.

On a side note im pretty sure we had these cabinets in my old job and there was a sweet bypass we used to get them open in times of need.

[Schuyler]

As I said, people are welcome to chastise me

[darklighterz7611]

lol, i deffinately wasnt chastising you there, I dont find anything wrong with what you posted here (especially because this guy has been a member post active or not for a year) everything you told him he should have already known or was just good practical advice.

My only criticism is that i feel when we start crossing the line for some and not for others the line gets blurred. &This forum already gets enough complex and argumentative requests on locks in use that they dont own.

If these people knew how to use the search feature this just topic will give them a false impression of how this forum works and that if they keep nagging someone will help them............I guess we're lucky they cant search

[rontgens]

I certainly wouldn't chatise you Schuyler and I'm a strong believer that everyone has to start somewhere. If starhackt is persistent then I'm sure he'll have that lock open soon...After my first lock picking experience I got hooked and bought my first real set of picks and tried to figure out what I just did to open the lock in detail.

[Schuyler]

I appreciate what you're saying there darklighterz. And I think the nut of it is that it's such a blurry line to begin with, whether on the forum or otherwise. I remember when I first started picking I was so excited by it that I was happy to share it with anyone and everyone. One day on a bus up to Vermont a guy asked what I was doing and I told him I was just practicing picking some locks. He seemed like a nice enough guy and we did some picking together on the ride up. We talked a lot, I didn't know much about picking at that point, just the bare bones basics, hadn't even started tackling security pins yet. When we got to White River Junction he was changing buses and as he got off he laughed and said something to the effect of "Man, this was great, I can only imagine the places I'm going to be able to get into now."

It was mortifying. I didn't even know what to say and to this day I feel awful that I was that open with him about it. The info I shared was simple, and available freely if he ever thought to seek it out, but I was the guy who showed him how easy it could be. Put picks and locks in his hands and had him try it out.

So, yeah, I agree completely that even when we can say "well the information is so readily available, why not share it with this random dude," we should still tread carefully. I'm usually happy to call out sketchballs and urge caution, but for whatever reason, be that his prior lurking or amicable posts, or reasonable story I felt comfortable answering his questions.

Anyway, this is all to say - I agree with what you're saying and hope that if people do search for this they'll recognize how reticent we are to share even simple information with people who come out of nowhere asking about specific locks/techniques.

[starhackt]

I understand the reason behind the hesitation and I apologize if this has been repetitive. I will make sure to search next time. I thought I had the very simple basics down as I have opened all my padlocks, cabinets, and dead bolts at my house but when I did this one I was having trouble, thus the post. I agree, I would rather help a small business and have them hire a locksmith especially since times are difficult. However, I'm a few pay grades too low to make purchasing decisions for a medium to large sized company where job cuts are happening as well. I hope I didn't cause anyone too much worry, grief, or annoyance. I am an honest person and this is purely for the challenge of intellect and dexterity (for however much this is worth when it comes to the internet ). I will let you know the end result and I hope to talk to more of you in other threads

I also appreciate that even though you all were cautious to tell me anything, it's nice to find a forum for once where everyone doesn't just jump down your throat when one posts a question

Thanks to Schuyler for going out on a ledge to help a stranger, I promise you I'm not that guy on the bus