Padlock in the oven!

[horsefeathers]

Bake at 350 degrees for 3 hours or until golden brown. Serve with a nice red wine.

or some fava beans and a nice chianti....

[DaveAG]

When I last disassembled a solid brass padlock I did the following:

1.) Sand the edge that has the top of the pin stacks. You can then see them fairly clearly

2.) Place padlock in vise and use a punch to knock the caps in slightly

3.) Drill through (slowly) Because you've punched in the caps slightly the drill won't wander around and you can use an ordinary drill or dremel rather than a pillar drill.

At least in the lock I attacked there were thin brass caps then a pin then the spring and two more pins, so I had no risk of drilling into the spring. Your lock may be different.

[Shrub]

OR........its time to step up in our world! Get a freaking door lock dude, no sense in blowin up your house if the door is unlocked......Right?

Errrm dude, if you dont understand whats being talked about, shut up (unless i missed a smiley of course),



Heating a brass lock and then dropping in ice water will in some circumstances on some locks pop the covers out of the lock without you needing to grind or drill them out,

Its true a dead heat sinking into a lock is not only damageing to the lock but also wont do any thing, you need a blow lamp as said and get it very hot very quickly then drop it in,

If the lock is gogin to succumb to this method it will show signs of it working on the first time, if it doesnt work after the second time give it up and break the drill out,

Oh and yes you have heard it before as its a recconised method

[nekret]

if you are trying to explode a padlock, I think you may need to upgrade your equipment. A oven will not get the lock hot enough, and ice water is not cold enough.

I am not even so sure that this will work even with a torch and liquid nitro. If you do decide to go this route, make sure you have a way to remotely drop the glowing red hot lock in a big pot of liquid nitro. I am not sure what would happen, but its probably not going to be pretty, or safe!!

Mythbusters!!


I think there are better ways to go about breaking a lock open.

CompFX

I'm pretty sure that a nice long liquid nitrogen bath with a heavy impact will destroy nearly any lock (the S&G 833 I think is invulnerable to this).

[Mutzy]

^ I'd like to see that tried...

What type of padlock are you playing with? Got any piccys?

[nekret]

If only I had some liquid nitrogen I'd dip some warded locks in it and drop them on the sidewalk(prolly not the 833 as it costs too much for me to do that to ). Anyway I looked for padlock shattering videos but didn't find much, however there was this and looked promising. Now to head down to the chem dept to see if I can bribe a grad student for a cannister of the stuff

[Jaakko]

Now to head down to the chem dept to see if I can bribe a grad student for a cannister of the stuff

I don't which company there deals with the gas products, but here AGA (part of Linde) sells liquid nitrogen to whoever asks I think it cost something like 10 euros per litre at most. I didn't use it to shatter anything, instead I cooled my computer for an overclocking attempt

[raimundo]

No worries of any explosion, Im sure the person who first suggested it was just kidding. you could concievabley cause the springs to lose temper and become weak.
locks that use little plugs in the assembly, brass body locks, are often different metals, the lock body is machined out of some thick bar stock, and the little caps over the holes are made of some rod stock, not nessarily from the same foundry. You can often see the little covers simply because they are a different color than the body of the lock

I think we have been assuming that the padlock you want to dissasemble is a brass body lock with caps driven into the drillings and then hidden with a wirebrush finish,

You may however be trying to remove a steel spline driven into the edge of a steel body padlock, to hold the mechanicals in. this could be a very difficult thing to get out, non distructively. it may be tigher than a heat and cooling temperature expansion could accomplish, I have no suggestion if this is the case.

If you are refering to the caps on a brass padlock, you may try using an eye dropper of ice water just on the little caps while the lock is still hot, this could cause a local contraction of the cap metal and then before the rest of the lock catches up in cooling, pick it up with a tongs or welders mitt and rap it on a bottom corner of the lock against a bench, so that the caps are down, and the rap will drive the pins against them

If you take off little caps and do not have replacements, they could become dimensionally unstable, as in no longer fitting the hole they came out of, often when driven off by a pin punch, such as you would do with a best cylinder, the caps can get a little domed, and lose diameter so that they are no longer tight in the holes, this can be corrected by putting a pin punch on the cap in the center, leaving the perimeter untouched, and just lightly peening it once, this will tend to spread it just slightly in all directions, and also flatten it, your tool will leave a round mark in the center of the cap, so put this side to the inside of the lock and you will have less to file off to hide them again.

[Wrenchman]

he is trying to get the metal covering the holes to contract faster than the rest of the lock thus allowing them to fall out and letting the pins fall out too.

If it is the same kind of "metal" in both the lock and the hole covers I'm not sure that It would work. Maybe localizing the cold water so it only drips onto the parts to be removed? or coating the rest in clay except the hole covers so when it is dropped into the cold water the rest of the padlock won't cool down as quickly as the "covers"

Same Idea as they do on the katana...

Yes, you are correct, the metal covering is made of brass, like the rest of the lock, except for the shackle and the springs!

I was think about localizing the cold water so it only drips onto the parts to be removed too, but in the end I think that all this heating stuff is probably too much work to get a lock apart!

At what temperature does brass melt?

Ps. what is katana?

Wow, thats a new approach to taking a padlock apart. Hope nothing blows apart when you dunk it in ice water.

It´s supposed to blow apart!

Bake at 350 degrees for 3 hours or until golden brown. Serve with a nice red wine.

or some fava beans and a nice chianti....

When I last disassembled a solid brass padlock I did the following:

1.) Sand the edge that has the top of the pin stacks. You can then see them fairly clearly

2.) Place padlock in vise and use a punch to knock the caps in slightly

3.) Drill through (slowly) Because you've punched in the caps slightly the drill won't wander around and you can use an ordinary drill or dremel rather than a pillar drill.

At least in the lock I attacked there were thin brass caps then a pin then the spring and two more pins, so I had no risk of drilling into the spring. Your lock may be different.

Nice mini guide you´ve made there Dave.

In the locks I have opened there has´nt been any pins between the cap and the spring, I have drilled a few springs to death that way!

What type of padlock are you playing with? Got any piccys?

It´s a Papaiz CR 40, it´s made of brass!

It has been asked in the past what CR stands for, my guess would be Cadeado Residencial, which means Residence Padlock, but I´m probably wrong!




Raimundo, yea I agree with you in everything you said, even knowing that you could break/damage/weaken the lock, it should be fun experimenting with ice-water on the caps, only!

I use a butane gas oven, it reaches a max of 280ºC, anymore suggestions on how long time with max temp ºC?

Kids always use safety glasses!



Wrenchman

[Shrub]

Forgetting your likely wrecking your springs,

Put the lock in a cold oven,

Turn oven to full,

When light goes out saying its up to tempreture take the lock out, it wont get any hotter,

[hesevil]

WARNING: Although everything in this post is de-facto doable, and doable safely, both components are very dangerous. You will be working with open sources of alternating current, temperatures in excess of 700degC, and liquids lower than -30degC.

CAVEAT: This is more of a joke suggestion for the OP. The theory is the same: massive heating and quick cooling to rapidly change the volumes of the different pieces on the lock (case and 'cover') at different rates; however, the methods of heating and cooling are significantly more radical than 'an oven at 350F and some ice water'.

Well, if you are really into it, this is how you do it.

1. Heat the lock with homemade inductive heating device
2. Drop into container of dry ice and acetone

The inductive heating will more quickly yield a much higher, and even, temperature in the lock. It will work perfectly with a steel lock but will vary in efficacy depending on the alloy composition of a brass lock.

You can look it up on the internet or go to http://hackedgadgets.com/2007/02/08/induction-heatingmagical-non-contact-heat/.

Fill a glass bowl with dry ice and pour in enough acetone to cover about 1/2 the dry ice. Be careful with this liquid because it is cold enough to flash freeze extremeties.

You could substitute propane for the cooling, especially if you wanted to localize the effect. You could use a can of compressed air (for cleaning cases and keyboards) and drip the liquid propellant onto the heated lock by holding the can upside-down while dispensing. Again, be careful with this stuff as it is cooler even than the acetone and CO2.

-Matt

[hesevil]

Butane is what I meant in my first post, though if you had access to propane (l) than you could use that too.

I forgot also to mention the flammability of both the acetone and butane/propane. The CO2 evaporation in the acetone should mitigate the risk of flaming very low. If the drops of liquid butane or propane did ignite, they would post little risk unless you were very proximal to the source of ignition.

Again, these are extreme methods, and in the last 30 seconds of retrospect I realize that I probably shouldn't have posted it...be careful if someone does do it.

[Afisch]

Jus thought id answer some questions here, melting point of brass approx. 900.C and as for general point, a katana is a samurai sword 2-3' long. Seen kill bill? The clay cooling is used to cool one side slower than the other for strength. Yey for useless trivia.

[Chucklz]

In our wild and crazy college days Octillion, a few lab mates and I heated a cheap brass body padlock over a Meker burner (google it) and then dunked it into a crushed ice/water bath. Yes the lock disassembled, but the springs were toast. Far better to use the drill method if you have any visions of using the lock again. That being said, it is occasionally fun to have at a lock and attempt to destroy it ala urban legend. We also attempted thermite, and the lock ended up MORE secure than when we started (welded shut it was).

I have also tried liquid nitrogen (LN2) on both a laminated steel warded lock, and a brass body Best padlock. The locks got cold, and I gave them a modest amount of abuse, but they held fast. I didn't bring out the hammer, because I didn't have any similar locks as a warm temperature control.

If you want to play with LN2, go for it. It can be alot of fun, BUT only if you fully understand the possible dangers involved. Cryogenic burns hurt. Alot. Trust me. Although you aren't likely to be burned(frozen actually) by the LN2, you can be injured quite severely if you do something silly like pick up a -196C padlock with your bare hand. It will freeze to your skin, and then the real trouble starts. A very small volume of LN2 ends up being an incredibly large volume of gas at RT and pressure. Do not attempt to store/use LN2 in any kind of closed vessel. It will explode. It will be very painful. VERY PAINFUL. Also, don't disregard the suffocation hazart of LN2. You would probably need many litres to be dangerous in an average sized room, but deaths have occured. Unlike with CO2, you won't notice any symptoms of lack of oxygen, you will just pass out and die.

Probably the best thing to do is to freeze some rubber bands/flowers/an orange/rubber ball and shatter that. Then make ice cream with the rest of the nitrogen.

[raimundo]

anyone who messes with acetone and a red hot object be prepared to jump back quick as in light the fuse and run.