My *first ever* lock was a Union 3 lever...
This was during the days of scrounging around tool suplier's websites looking for photos of tools I could make - There weren't any guides back then about lever locks and it was mostly trial and error.
Cylinder locks came after, and the first one I picked was a Tricircle 265 padlock, opened by agressive raking. I used a half diamond pick I made out of a soft hacksaw blade and a wrench made out of a piece of random metal. Very rough, but it worked, for a while anyway haha.
It depends really - if a lock has a small pin next to a big pin, and followed by another small pin you have to try very hard not to touch the big pin, yet still lifting the small pin behind it. Even a simple lock can be made hard this way.
More expensive locks are better made, and the tollerances are much lower. You get less 'feek' and I've found it's veyr easy to unset some pins by accident. The more expensive the lock, the better the tollerances... As a general rule anyway.
Nice work on your first lock.
