Working Non-steel Lockpicks + Forensics Info

[bushd]

In your post you mentioned about what is supposed to be in the cylinder. Common things are graphite/lubricant, outside things like dust, brass or whatever metal said pins are made from, and other things. With the improvement of instruments (chemist grad.) finding out trace amounts of things on pins isn't hard if you want to spend the money. That kind of leaves you at a loss because brass or some type of carbon/graphite pick might not trigger something due to being there naturally but they leave marks on the pins. Things that might not leave marks on the pins would be picked up by chemical analysis techniques.

This situation is kind of unique because you really need to make something that doesn't touch/mark the pins while not leaving traces of its non-lock based material (brass, steel, dust, etc). Magnetism is out of the question, brass isn't magnetic and other parts of the lock can be, and high pressure hits aren't available because like mentioned that pushes everything above the shear line. However, I still think compressed air is the best method to pursue, just not in very high pressure hits. See what you can do about fitting a thin, particularly brass, rod with quite a few holes to pop air into the cylinder through the keyhole. Tiny tank->regulator->hose->thin thin brass rod with quite a few holes down it (only where it would be inside the key hole). The regulator should be electronic in nature so you could hit a button and it'd start pushing out bursts at a set interval.

A low enough force out of the brass rod would be able to float the pins at a specific position so I'm certain this is possible but may be difficult to master.

Before you say no way about requiring something that doesn't touch the pins things are being detected at the part per quadrillion level now. This is expensive but possible; however, parts pre trillion, billion and million are easily possibly with academic teaching grade instruments (not top of the line usually).

[bushd]

The hits of low pressure compressed air would be much like a pick gun, hopefully. No edit button?

[bushd]

You know, if someone wanted to try and make what I proposed work you can take a look at altering an electronic paintball gun. I might have to go get my broken one out and look at altering it. Look at tweaking the output of the electronic regulator (should be easy enough) and have one of the hoses push out to a custom made one that I fit onto it. Would look funny at first carrying around a paintball gun with an extra hose but as proof of concept at least it would work, hopefully. Now all I've got to look at is finding a thin enough hollow brass rod or drill small enough to hollow out a key.

[bushd]

If you really want to be able to manipulate pins and touch them then the materials you'll be looking at are very strongly bonded, in a chemical fashion, yet soft. If you look at polymers you're going to want a polymer that is completely crosslinked and not just an arrangement of long fibers interwoven.

Mica is a really cool substrate we use for a technique called atomic force microscopy. The mica, once cleaved, is a perfectly flat surface that has no contaminants on it at the time of cleaving the top layer off. The thing about mica is that it is pretty fragile and would break under too much force.

If you were able, I'm not sure this is possible, to create a pick tip out of mica then you could theoretically coat it with something soft and strongly bonded, basically cross linked and thin around the mica. What this would do is give you a pick that might break, but not leave pieces in the lock, before it would scratch the pins. This is a very delicate pick - strong yet delicate and may not be cheap or easy to create. For what we do with the atomic force microscope we use muscovite mica.

Using a method like that you're going to compromise the pick before putting enough force to scratch the pins. This may not be ideal but certainly better then scratching the pins and if it does break the thin coating keeps it together, which means no mica is left in the keyhole.

I think the theory behind this physical touching pick is good but the materials may not be suitable; however, if someone could find the correct material setup for this then you have a built in pressure sensor and it wouldn't scratch your pins by applying too much pressure.

Oh, I forgot to mention - the polymer that might be looked at would be some form of a branched teflon type polymer, polytetrafluoroethylene. Everyone made a big deal about PTFE for the chinese dome and how awesome this material could be but they didnt tell the public it is just teflon.

[mackai]

It seems to me that any air system would have to have a variable pressure system and only have one out let if you are going to “pick” the lock. Of course this system would only give feed back through the wrench. A multi air port system would be racking with air or an air comb system....

it makes since to me that the marks in the pic's back in the original post are distinguishable from a legitimate key because they are harder than the pins. Also if the pick material is softer than the pins, the pins will abrade material off the pick and be detectable. So if we use any material other than those that belong in the lock it can be detected (with varying levels of complexity) if the lab is willing to spend the time/money/resources. However we have seen that even a brass pick leaves marks on bras pins.

Why?

I propose that this is because the brass pick is so thin and there for leaves a distinguishable mark.

So... why not make a brass pick with a wider tip. It would not need to be very wide, just wider than the contact surface on the pin. Since the pin is conical in shape at the point in question, the pick tip would only need to be bigger than the tip/side of the “cone” on the pin. Round and polish all edges of course. The pick would still be small enough to push the pin up the hole if needed. It would be a true “pick”, would give feed back and should be very difficult to detect if used with a soft touch. If one was to be really picky you could even melt down factory keys and cast/forge the pick. Or (it would be a lot of work) maybe file/machine it out of a factory key if you were worried about some metallurgical changes that casting/forging might cause.

This would limit the side to side movement of the pick but I don't need much side to side room.

Of course we would need to figure out something for the wrench too......

I hope I got that all across correctly

MacKai

[bushd]

Brass picks being wider would help with marking but anything with moderate restriction would be able to keep wider picks from operating properly. I know in some of the locks I own a good majority of the navigator set is quite large and a pain to deal with on restrictive key holes.

[mackai]

I personally do not like wide picks.... for the reasons you've given, but if your trying to beat the Lab.... compromises will have to be made.

since this is an intellectual exercise....

the air ideas are interesting but i just don't see it working. I'd love to be wrong, it would be very cool...but...



MacKai

[datagram]

Hi gents,

The picks from earlier in the thread were about as wide as you can get while still working in the majority of locks (0.025"-0.030"). I would like to try the air thing, but I think it would take a large amount of air to push pins to the top. This is going to be hard to do with a tiny tube (remember, thinner than 0.030). On top of that, so much air might cause marks on its own by displacing dirt and lubricant

In other news, I should be getting some teflon coated picks at the end of the month to add to the site.

dg