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What factors make a cheap, should-be-junk lock hard to pick?

Information about locks themselves. Questions, tips and lock diagram information should be posted here.

What factors make a cheap, should-be-junk lock hard to pick?

Postby absynthe » 4 Aug 2007 23:57

I am new to this forum so I apologize if my posts are tired topics, I haven't had time yet to read too deep into the threads.

I bought my first lockpick set about 8 years ago and have on and off played with various locks. Most of the locks I have come across are nothing special. I live in the US and the majority of home locks are simple.

About three years ago I lived in an apartment with three other people and decided to put a lock on my door. I just got a cheap kwikset from walmart. Well one day I realized that I locked my key inside and luckily had let my friend borrow my lock pick set to play with. He had gotten pretty decent and wanted to try. He sat there for about 30 minutes and gave up. So I sat down and tried for about 30 minutes. Both of us were confounded and so sadly, I had to call a locksmith.

A teenage guy showed up and he breaks out his set and goes at it. After a while he says this lock is pretty tough. He breaks out the snap gun and goes at it. Doesn't work.. goes back to the picks. Finally he calls an older guy ( I am guessing his dad) and when he shows up he tries for maybe 20 minutes and finally they both resign and say they can't do it and leave.

Well... on one hand I was happy that a professional locksmith (I don't know how much that is worth) got stumped on the lock as well. On the other hand I was sad because I had to spend the next 20 minutes hacksawing it off in a very cramped corner.

Anyway.. sorry for the long story but what do you guys think are factors that could make a cheap piece of junk lock so hard to pick. I am guessing the pin lengths were kinda nasty or that it just so happened the a pin or two had an interesting geometry that made it hard to feel or easy to overset.

Has anyone else had this experience? What sort of factors can make a basically simple lock so crazy hard.

P.S. I realize that maybe my friend and I suck and maybe the locksmiths sucked too ; )
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Postby mrdan » 5 Aug 2007 0:03

A real (experienced) locksmith would have gotten it open. Or at least been so enraged by his failure that he would have busted the door down :lol:
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Postby freakparade3 » 5 Aug 2007 0:12

Kwikset are very easy locks for the most part. A big factor to picking them like any lock is the biting. Any lock with extreme high/low biting is more difficult to pick. The age of the lock can also be a factor, as well as any gunk that may be in it. Remember, picking a lock you are holding while watching TV and drinking a beer is alot easier than picking a used lock while bending over in front of a door. That said however, any locksmith that gives up after being unable to pick a Kwikset lock should be fired or forced into retirement. Then again, we all have days where even our easiest locks won't open.............
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Postby globallockytoo » 5 Aug 2007 0:21

many times I have heard a similar story. if these guys were professionals they would know more than just picking locks. a true professional will offer more than one method of entry. they could have impressioned it, if they knew how. i suspect they werent locksmiths because after 20 minutes of picking, impressioning is the next logical step. Aside from the case in point that most locksmiths will squirt lube into a lock prior to picking...these guys obviously werent locksmiths.

Lucky you it wasnt a scammer....the scammers would attempt to pick for 10 minutes and then say they have to drill it and charge you a fortune in the process.
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Postby globallockytoo » 5 Aug 2007 0:25

1 more thing....almost all kwikset knobsets, the cylinder can be pulled whether the lock is locked or unlocked. Had they been locksmiths they would know this.
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Postby absynthe » 5 Aug 2007 0:37

Well... I don't think dirt or age was a factor. I had just gotten the lock maybe a month prior and I wasn't giving it excessive wear or putting keys with dirt in it.

It does seem that the pins had a strange configuration or that they just matched the bores in just such a way as to make things weird.

From what I vaguely remember of the key.. It had a very high section near the tip (pushed the pin deep in the back) and a pretty low section in the front (barely pushed the pin in the front). At that time I did not have too much experience but I had not met a lock which I hadn't been able to pick (of course I was only playing with simple front door locks and padlocks and certainly never tried tubular locks or anything that looked like it was not friendly) I had certainly picked my share of kwiksets installed on doors and never really had too much problem. I remember both of us felt very shamed and surprised that it owned us so hardcore. I am kinda sad that I ended up hacksawing the handle off. It would have been nice to keep and keep trying until I figured it out. But I had to get in my room!
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Postby Jaakko » 5 Aug 2007 6:51

globallockytoo wrote:1 more thing

No destructive entry discussion on open forums please :)
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Re: What factors make a cheap, should-be-junk lock hard to p

Postby keysman » 5 Aug 2007 10:04

absynthe wrote: .

A teenage guy showed up and he breaks out his set and goes at it. After a while he says this lock is pretty tough. He breaks out the snap gun and goes at it. Doesn't work.. goes back to the picks. Finally he calls an older guy ( I am guessing his dad) and when he shows up he tries for maybe 20 minutes and finally they both resign and say they can't do it and leave.


Well ? did they at least charge you for the service call?

Personally I find this a little difficult to believe... KW and the asian knock offs are VERY easy to bypass .Most professionals won't spend more than a few minutes before " Plan B" comes into play .After all time is $ and how much time are you going to spend to save a $10 lock.[/quote]



absynthe wrote:
Well... on one hand I was happy that a professional locksmith (I don't know how much that is worth) got stumped on the lock as well. On the other hand I was sad because I had to spend the next 20 minutes hacksawing it off in a very cramped corner.



I can assure you that the " clowns" you said showed up were not professional locksmiths.. perhaps you called the bagboy from the local grocery store by mistake?


absynthe wrote: .



Has anyone else had this experience? What sort of factors can make a basically simple lock so crazy hard.




Well... you now have learned RULE # 1 .. Don't pick locks you rely on ..... you probably jammed a pin and it wouldn't release..
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Postby linty » 5 Aug 2007 11:51

personally if i couldn't pick an el-cheapo dollar lock in a few minutes i'd probably drill it and replace it. From a locksmith's point of view it's just not economical to spend half an hour trying to save a lock that's worth next to nothing.

I guess it could have just been a tricky bitting, and some newer kwiksets have spool pins as well.
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Postby Afisch » 5 Aug 2007 12:56

Now you have access to the room any chance of pictures of lock / keys? Would make answering questions lots easier. My guess would be that either the hour you and your friend spent caused some damage which stopped the locksmith or you had a high low combo and/or security pins and the locksmith wasn't up to it... Pics would be good.
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Postby absynthe » 5 Aug 2007 19:57

No.. this was 3 or 4 years ago and everything is long gone. I wish I had kept the key and cylinder though. Perhaps we did damage the mechanism by playing with it like amateurs but I don't think we wreaked it. All of the pins were still moving up and down and falling back down all the way. I do remember though that the key had a very high section towards the tip and that we were having to push it pretty high to get the shear line to hit.
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Postby globallockytoo » 5 Aug 2007 21:48

Jaakko wrote:
globallockytoo wrote:1 more thing

No destructive entry discussion on open forums please :)


Nothing destructive about this method. The tabs are replaceable and the same cylinder can be put back in.

No evidence of break in either!
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Postby Jaakko » 6 Aug 2007 7:28

globallockytoo wrote:
Jaakko wrote:
globallockytoo wrote:1 more thing

No destructive entry discussion on open forums please :)


Nothing destructive about this method. The tabs are replaceable and the same cylinder can be put back in.

No evidence of break in either!

Okay, no bypassing on open forums please ;)
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Postby Shrub » 6 Aug 2007 7:44

Firstly, lock pulling is for the advanced forums and not the open forums regardless of how it can be repaired and i think thats the point trying to be made however how to do it wasnt mentioned so its no biggy in this case before you two start a war,

As for the OP,

I think its all been said but this sounds like anyone of the halfwits we get through here that think they can pick a padlock so start offering a lockout service, they dont know what they are doing and shouldnt be doing what they are doing,
This thread reminded me of the kid who opened the cash register at his local drug store or whatever, they think they have the god dam given right to take real work from real locksmiths then make a shambles of it and thus give us a bad name,

The knob heads you got were not locksmiths and obviously know very little about locksmithing, a real lcoksmith would have been in the door with that lock on it it regardless of biting in less than 5 minutes 10 at the most,

Lets just think about the time on this,

You had a go when you shouldnt have done and wasted an hour,
The kid then turns up and i guess spends at least 20 mins messing around before calling his sugar daddy,
The old timer shows up and spends 20 mins on it then they walk off,
You then spend a further 20 mins to hacksaw it off,

Thats 2 hours of fannying around on what i think has to be the cheapest and crappyiest locks ive ever seen or owned, i put them on a par with the padlocks you get with suitcases, drop one on the floor and it may open lol

And all because you wanted to save a few bucks,

The people you got were not locksmiths and obviously not even pickers, im guessing its a father and son who think they can pick a lock by visiting somewhere like this and then stickign an advert in the paper saying they are locksmiths,
Its people like that who give us a bad name and stop us getting work, i dont know how many youve told this story to off here but im sure each one of them now have a bad idea of what a locksmith can or can do and that annoys me,
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Postby absynthe » 6 Aug 2007 8:36

I didn't do it because I wanted to save a few bucks... I did it because I was learning lock picking and wanted to try. When you started to learn about lockpicking, are you saying that you wouldn't have even tried and immediately called a locksmith?

I don't really think people have passed through here, read my thread and now believe that locksmiths everywhere suck. I guess there is a risk to the trade that I am not aware of. But the point of this thread wasn't to dismiss these guys as idiots. It wasn't to say that any locksmith would have had trouble. It's that in the level of skill that I had four years ago, my friend and I and two locksmiths (amateur as it now is clear) had difficultly with a lock.

Maybe the reason is that we damaged is while we were playing with it. Maybe the lock got messed up before the incident. When I started the thread I was simply asking what factors can cause a simple lock to become difficult. LSS even mentions that simple locks don't always turn out to be simple. I was just wondering why. We had not had trouble with a large number of US house locks before.

Sorry to offend you man.
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