Weslock

[The Speed of Dark]

I was called two days ago to go an pick someone's lock because they had lost the keys. The job turned into drilling a deadbolt and rekeying 12 cylinders. Why? I tried picking/snapping a weslock for about 90 minutes and failed. This lock has such a sloppy tolerence that the cylinder was rotating both clockwise and counter apx 10-15 each way with just the tension wrench. I could not feel ANY binding pins. Raking failed as well at getting this lock open. The client was an elderly women who had Alzheimer's and 90 minutes was enough time in the cold weather - thus I drilled the lock out.
Does anyone have pointers on how to bypass this lock nondestructively? Perhaps an electric pick gun or something along those lines?

[ElAbogado]

I was called two days ago to go an pick someone's lock because they had lost the keys. The job turned into drilling a deadbolt and rekeying 12 cylinders. Why? I tried picking/snapping a weslock for about 90 minutes and failed. This lock has such a sloppy tolerence that the cylinder was rotating both clockwise and counter apx 10-15 each way with just the tension wrench. I could not feel ANY binding pins. Raking failed as well at getting this lock open. The client was an elderly women who had Alzheimer's and 90 minutes was enough time in the cold weather - thus I drilled the lock out.
Does anyone have pointers on how to bypass this lock nondestructively? Perhaps an electric pick gun or something along those lines?

I give it 5 minutes before the rotary pick comes out, especially when someone is out in the cold (even me!) Weslock deadbolts are sometimes a pain in the as*, as you have found out. Fortunately, there are not many of them around. I have found that sometimes a lock that is tough to pick will bump easily. I know that this is not really a professional entry, but WTF, it's cold outside. (best example is a Schlage that two of us could not pick at all, but on the first whack, it went!)

In the end, you do what you have to do, and that's what you did. Another journal entry; right?

El Abogado

[CaptHook]

You mentioned rekeying 12 other cylinders. Was there another entrance you could have tried?
Chuck

[The Speed of Dark]

I tried all the entrances possible. The interesting thing was that I successfully picked one of the locks twice but the cylinder rotated 450 degrees and did not open - I figured it was broken. Further more the front door lock was installed upside down and I have no skill at pick a lock upside down (especially if a top pin is missing).

[unlisted]

please, explain what kind of house has twelve locks on it.... And I assume all keyed alike since that would be the only reason to redo them all.. (unless you were taking some seriously bad advantage of a senior citizen)

[The Speed of Dark]

What kind of house has 12 locks? This lock did. It was a two story house - red brick. Most were double cylinder and had gates. One gate plus one door = 4 cylinders, thus 3 gates and 3 doors = 12 cylinders. Not that unusual. I was not ripping her off. Her son came down from an hour away and paid to have the house rekeyed because his mom kept losing the keys. Did I do something wrong unlisted?

[The Speed of Dark]

Correction *this house did*

[mylofox]

12 locks? Ah heck I got called the day after Xmas to a property with 16 locks. 2 on front door, two sets of French doors 4 locks, 2 on side door, 2 on house to garage, 2 on garage to side yard, 1 on bedroom/office, 1 on master plus two more on the master balcony French doors. This was just one of those homes that was all duded up. Lot of fun decoding schlage f series locks.