ARCHIVE 2003-2013 Introduce yourself HERE if you are new. :)

[BazookaMedic]

I would obviously like to introduce my self. I am new to this site but i llike the looks of it already. O.K, about my experience. I have had two previous years of lockpicking experience. I think i'm getting pretty good at it. I do practice everyday though. More recently I have been making my own picks. Thanks to the helping suggestions of the people on this site I managed to make a set that is an exact reproduction of some southord picks. I like lockpicking because it gives me an opportunity to improve on my visualization skills. And if i can think up of something, it is usually easy to try out and i might be siting on patent pending material. My favorite pick is a half diamond or a shalow hook. Most of my ideas and experiments are conducted with those. And thats me hope I enjoy my stay.

[radioactive]

Hello everyone,

I am a total newbie to lock picking. I discovered this site via the LSI Guide which I found on the Make magazine website. I have always had an interest in lock picking, but never pursued it. I never knew the sport/hobby existed until now.

After reading the LSI Guide, the MIT Guide, and perusing the forums here, I was hooked. I made a few picks and a tension wrench and purchased a Kwikset lock to practice on. I am currently working my way through Digital_Blue's Beginner's Lockpicking Exercise. I didn't have any problems using one or two pins. I have been working on three pins the past couple of days. It is much more challenging, but I am getting better.

This stuff sure is addicting. Is it a bad sign when you find yourself staying up way too late picking, loosing track of time, and sneaking qucik picking sessions whenever you get the chance? What about "I just want to open it one more time before I stop?"

I look forward to participating in this site.

[iNtago]

Welcome new members!

As long as you read the rules, read the new users section, search, respect other members, don’t pick locks you relly on, and don’t use this site to steal stuff, we’ll be nice to you

As a little helping hand
Mit Guide
Lsi Guide
Pyro’s Guide to Pick Making

Have fun,
INtago

[Romstar]

Hello everyone,

I am a total newbie to lock picking. I discovered this site via the LSI Guide which I found on the Make magazine website. I have always had an interest in lock picking, but never pursued it. I never knew the sport/hobby existed until now.

After reading the LSI Guide, the MIT Guide, and perusing the forums here, I was hooked. I made a few picks and a tension wrench and purchased a Kwikset lock to practice on. I am currently working my way through Digital_Blue's Beginner's Lockpicking Exercise. I didn't have any problems using one or two pins. I have been working on three pins the past couple of days. It is much more challenging, but I am getting better.

This stuff sure is addicting. Is it a bad sign when you find yourself staying up way too late picking, loosing track of time, and sneaking qucik picking sessions whenever you get the chance? What about "I just want to open it one more time before I stop?"

I look forward to participating in this site.

Glad to have you!

Sign this guy up as the poster guy for how its done. He's read, explored and started developing his skills.

He made his own picks, got a pratice lock, and even waited before he waded into the LP101 forums.

This is the prototypical guy we need right here!

Glad to have you Radioactive,
Romstar

[Stray]

Well if the LSI guide got onto make then y'all might get quite a few more hits. They were on AOTS just before haloween so they pretty well known themselves (well by anyone who watches G4 or what ever that channel is now... plus if they have it Hackaday will probably have it on their site soon too) Free Publicity.....

[TTranV]

Hey guys hows it going, I just joined and I have to say im really new to this stuff. I started off just looking at lock picks and now im thinking of ordering a set too, then I found this site which looks amazing. I'v always wanted to learn this stuff, and now I think i'll actually pursue. Ill be checkin out guides and posting

[squizy]

G,day cobbers, just found this site, read the rules and if jack ain't ya aunty I've joined up. I had no idea that there was anyone out there with my interests at heart, an old army mate of mine was a dab hand at pickin, but I never got the jist of it. So now that I've seen the light, give me a heavy and I'm gona start from scratch and make me own picks and ava go at pickin.

Besides what else has an old aussie barsted got to do with his hands otherwise/ Don't answer that. I'm gona get lost in all these pages of the good oil. Have a bloody good day!!

[klown]

Hi. just wanted to introduse myself. I am a 28 yr. old factory worker from Kentucky. I have had a interest in lock picking since a small bay. I use to watch a lot of Magnum P.I. and MacGyver. Started used the usually paper clip and bobby pins. Until I was about fifteen and ordered a pro set from keymart (cheapest I could fine). My dad always had the same curosity that I did and showed me how picks worked from a homebrew set he had created. Recently I started making the Bogota picks and they are great of course it was trial and error, but my third set turned out just fine. Though they are a little big for some keyways and I plan to make a smaller set. I mainly just wanted to say that I really enjoy this forum and I think it is very responsible for the admins to provide special access to the more advanced forums. I have a link to a great download of a lockpicking video that I would love to share. If a adminn reads this and would like I will P.M. them the link and let them decide if it suitable for public use. Well that's about it for now and I look forward to meeting with each and every one of you.

[lunchb0x]

hi, my name is brendan, i have been a locksmith for 5 years now, i am interested in all the different aspects of security, i livein australia and am p;aning on ,oving to america with in a couple of years.

[janderson10]

Like everyone else here, I am new and this is my first post. I have always been interested in lock picking, and didn't realize that there was a site like this dedicated to the hobby (I didn't even know it was a hobby).

Earlier today, I went through the LSI guide with a Master Lock luggage lock and two paperclips. After a couple minutes, I felt the lock move a little bit. I noticed that the front pin was moving loosely with no tension. After another 30 seconds the other pin popped and it opened. I couldn't believe that it actually worked!

Well, I'm hooked now. I'm ordering a pick set and some practice locks. This is really addicting!

[UWSDWF]

Welcome everybody,
For all thoes new to the site and lockpicking, LP101 is a great place to start.
Take a look at the new users section, first and don't be afraid to ask any questions just remember to try a search before posting.

If you're looking for locks to pick, buy some but, DO NOT PICK LOCKS YOU RELY ON
I repeat DO NOT PICK LOCKS YOU RELY ON, they can and will break, then your house/car/safe/chasity belt is vulnerable or unable to be opened (think: emergency situation).

Cheers,
UWSDWF

[AlgisLt]

Hello mates.I am new at lockpicking.

[monocultured]

hi all.

i've been lurking here a while, and thought it was about time to do an introduction. it goes on for quite a bit, but it does explain where i'm coming from on the subject as well as outlines my current ambitions.

i'm 28 and live in gothenburg, sweden. i'm doing the last year of my mfa at valand school of fine arts (university of gothenburg), although i have a previous ba in photography.

i first stumbled onto lockpicking some ten or fifteen years ago when a friend of mine downloaded a ascii-manual on the subject from a bbs. i didn't follow up on the information then (leisure suit larry & civilization took up most of my time), but found my way to related topics via hacktivist gatherings in london and sweden thanks to my political media activism starting six years ago (web & radio journalism at the time).

since spring i've spend some time in the metal workshop at uni to make my own picks, using templates from this forum and others. i've been attempting to pick locks that i have keys to, but haven't sprung for a stand-alone lock yet. i've managed to bind four out of seven pins of the best/assa cylindrical lock (i think it's the best 1e mortise) we have in our studio, but give up after twenty minutes and go make a few new picks instead. i've managed laptop combination locks and got my workplace to not trust them anymore (i work in a camera/computer store).

the picks i've made are coarse and quite horrendous; i'm clearly lacking the patience to make anything as nice as the high-end picks many of the forum members have painstakingly produced. that said, i'm always willing and eager to improve, but since i don't know anyone who is of the same inclination in town, i often lose focus and work on other projects instead (with full time art studies and working to support myself it's easy to jump from one project to another).

the obvious reason for my interest in lockpicking is the technical challenge and the excercise of mechical visualisation (something that i have no talent for, so i enjoy all the practice i can get), but since i took up this interest a while back the social and philosophical implications of lockpicking have been in the back of my mind, and i would like to have your input on the subject:

the interpretation of locks as externalized morals; i've seen the comment "keeping honest people honest" both here and elsewhere, but it's true of many subjects (drm, cctv, rfid-tagging, etc), and i would like to make visable the assumptions that govern our behaviour towards each other, as well as our understanding of personal responsibility.

locks bring together two aspects of externalised morals which makes the subject quite unique: it's a "black box" phenomena to most people, while at the same time it's a completely mechanical process.

a "black box" is an unknown function that acts on input to produce output. an everyday parallell that might not be totally apparent is any website that requires a login; you know what you need to do to get the results, you understand what is required of you, but you don't know the actual process governing it.
(which, starting with the actual functioning of your computer, via the software running on it, via the ip-protocol, via website encryption, via database table lookup, and so on, might be understandable on principle, but not factually by any one person (well, save for a few ubergeeks maybe))

to most people, a lock has this funtion. if you have the correct key, you'll open the lock. if you don't, you're not going to open it. if it's jammed it might help to wiggle the key or pushing the door in, in case the bolt is sticking someplace.

the physical aspect of locks is what makes this interesting. people in general have an excellent understanding of the physical functioning of the world around them - we are animals after all, and know what "balance", "gravity", "weight" and "friction" is instinctivly (through practical experience to be sure, but it's hard not to aquire such experience, so we might as well talk about it being "instinctive").

although many physical things are "black boxes" to most of us (i really couldn't explain to you in detail how a washing machine works), a mechanical lock has the position of being both something physical (that is a part of our direct exeperience) as well as a black box, which in combination has the function of enforcing a certain behaviour (externalised moral).

for example, a gate is something physical and represents an externalised moral, but there's no mystery to it (no black-boxiness). you can climb it, you can ram it, and so on.

and to contrast, a retina scanner would be a black box, but we do not have the same relationship to it as we might to a gate (or lock) because all the functionings of it are so abstracted that we are left only with a user approach to it (correct input=correct output); there is no physical relationship to it's actual functioning (although there is to it's funcion).

mechanical locks are objects that we should understand as being physical attempts at enforcing morals, and thanks to their physical nature they blend in as a given, as something unavoidable; as power made manifest.

in short, mechanical lockpicking (just like any other skillset) is an empowering excercise, and a symbolically powerful one.

it has been pointed out by many others that using lockpicking to gain access is almost always not the fastest or most reliable method, but the value of understanding how it is possible to pick a lock is far more liberating than knowing which end of a battering ram should point forward, simply because the lock no longer is a mystery, and the feeling of responsibility and internal morals takes over where previously there was a sense of resignment.


anyway, this is an ongoing project which right now looks like it will end up as either a gallery exhibition or a public talk on lockpicking coming spring, but i hope to keep it up as a pasttime after it's conclusion. if nothing else, i need to practice my patience and do something with my hands & head.

if anyone has any comments or questions, or knows of any groups in gothenburg (or sweden in general), i would be much obliged if you'd get in touch.


cheers : mateusz pozar : www.monocultured.com/blog

[shadowlanc17]

I' looked at this site for a long time now. Finally decided to register. Great site

[supersteph]

hello,

i'm new. and from the sounds of it - a rare breed?

yes, ladies(lady?) and gentlemen, a real, genuine, bonafide girlfriend - who has been known to pick a few locks.



and apparently if i post 100 times in the next 6 months i get free locks, or something. so i'll be seeing you all around.