by TMIB » 6 Feb 2008 23:34
I still consider myself quite the noob when it comes to this stuff, but I can give you some advice.
1) Throw away the bobby pins and other makeshift stuff.
2) If you're picking a lock on a door or something else in use. STOP. Go get some locks from the hardware store, or if you're cheap some padlocks from the junkyard (most likely you'll need to clean these up with some solvent, dry them, and hit them with silicone spray)
3) read, practice, then read some more, then practice some more.
4) Go through the exercises posted in the "pick-fu" forum.
5) after all that, if you still have questions, feel free to ask, but the more descriptive you can be, the better the quality of answer you're going to get.
As it stands right now, you're asking "does pushing up the pins loosing them [sic] damage the lock entirely?"
I'm really not sure what you're asking here. Yes, you can damage a lock by picking it improperly. This is why you should not try and learn on a lock that is in use. Be patient and learn on practice locks first. If you really want to learn this, learn properly and also learn the ethics of hobby picking at the same time.
If you've pushed the pins up, and they don't come back down when no tension is applied to the lock cylinder, it sounds like you may have damaged something.
It also sounds like you don't understand fully how a lock works. Pushing the pins up too far will simply bind the lower pin, since you've pushed them past the shear line. Go back to some of the guides and look at the pictures of locks.
--TMIB
