Tubular lock pick troubles...

[feltes45]

hello everyone, ive recently purchased the HPC 7 pin tubular lock pick as seen on lockpicks.com. i thought it would be good to learn how to tubular lock pick to expand my hobby of lock picking. an old friend of mine has a broken vending machine and a turn apart Pepsi machine in his garage. so i got a stool, grabbed a working light and started trying at it. they are both 7 pin ace 1 locks. after 10 mins of trying to find the right tension for my feelers, i realized the locks might be too dirty to be picked? they have like a grime in them, definatly weathered a bit. for the most part most of the feelers go to the max depth of if i was using the keys, and there are 2 stragglers, they dont even go to position 1. how can i get all the grime outta the lock? at first i thought id try an air duster, will that work? and would a graphite lube help at all? and last question for now, could i lube the feelers on my pick? even with the tension ring off they feel quite tense. thanks you guys.

[Jaakko]

Apart from the vending machine this-and-that, a lock can be cleaned with acetone, varsol, any kind of solvent really. You just have to hope that the solvent doesn't solve anything else around the lock or inside the machine.

After cleaning a little bit of good lubricant helps a lot. You don't have lube your pick, because it has to have friction.

[raimundo]

tubular pick, is a tempramental instrument even on un gummed locks, as Jaako said, it needs friction, but it also needs even friction on all the sliders as provided by the rubberbands, however, when these picks are left for a while without use, the rubber will sometimes adhere to the sliders, yours may have been on a stock shelf at the company that sold it for a while. you need to loosen all the sliders on the pick and just see that none of them are sticking in the tool. a bit of slideing them works. there is also some fine sanding that I would do to the tool barrel tip, just to eliminate any friction that may work against the turning of the tool.
so if your tool is all tuned up, ( and you will have to tune it again if you leave it unused for a few months)
I would recommend that you find a clean ace lock to practice on to get the hang of how to use it, then try those weathered locks,
WD40 may help you ungum them,
you also should put a piece of paper or cardboard in the keyhole before using the pick to absorb some of the excess oil, so that it doesnt get on your tool and make one of the sliders slide to easily.
the tools are reliable, but you have to have the patience to understand it and work with its foibles.

[Eyes_Only]

Does it have to be WD-40 on a tubular lock and not a dry film lube?

[Shrub]

Gummed up locks react well with a good spray of wd-40,

Wd-40 wasnt mentioned to lube it but to ungum it,

Use the normal sugestions for lubeing the lock after youve cleaned the wd-40 out afterwards,


Remove the feeler picks and make sure each one is free from burrs as this is a common problem with the mass produced tools,

Ace locks generally need the tool to be used as a single pin picking tool unless you get a series of lucky locks that open in the impression style,

When useing the impression method a good tip is to set the feelers at the right height then tighten up the tension quite tight then work back from that after youve tried it if you find its too tight,




Its a vending machine, we dont allow the talk of vending machine opening in the open sections, ill leave this thread open for now so you can post up a picture of the machine in your mates house showing the surroundings its in and a laptop or somthing in the back ground with LP101 on the screen,