wearing out pins on a masterlock?

[yawhcihw]

So I've been relentlessly picking at this #1 masterlock of mine and I've been having good success. Looking at my Peterson picks though, I thought at first that I had scraped the blueing off the ends of my hooks and rake from all that use. Turns out it's just brass dust, ostensibly from the pins on the master or my kwikset practice lock...

am I really wearing down the pins that badly that they'd dust up my picks, and if so, is that a bad thing for both the lock and my picking technique... i swear i use [i]really[/] light pressure on the wrench...

[Varjeal]

The answer to all your questions is, YES. Hehehe...it has little to do with your turning pressure and lots to do with your technique. Sounds like you've been doing a lot of raking on this lock.

It will happen eventually, but if you've only been picking for a short period of time, you're probably raking the pins pretty hard.

The reason why myself and others advocate the use of seperate practice is locks is for partially that purpose. You can practice picking the lock until it's worn right out, and you don't have to worry about locking yourself out of somewhere important. Also, you could take your kwikset apart and examine the pins with some type of magnifier to see how serious of damage you're doing. If you see excessive signs of wear and you find the lock cylinder beginning to malfunction, then it's time to change the pins. In that case you may want to change both the springs and the bottom pins since they will be showing the most wear.