by ww85 » 24 Feb 2011 15:07
In my opinion the single best thing you can do is go out and buy a deadbolt cylinder lock which you can repin yourself.
Your goal with it isn't to simply open it, but to spend some serious time with fewer pins so that you can learn. You want to be able to easily navigate amongst the pins and recognize the various types of feedback as you move each pin into position. You want to get used to keeping track of each pin's state so that when the lock does open you know exactly why.
I just bought my second Faultless (similar to Kwik-Set) dead bolt. I went with a double cylinder so that I got two cylinders to play wit for essentially the same cost as 1. There are some guides floating around on how to repin these, but if you need a more detailed guide let me know. I know that when I repinned my first cylinder it was a little bit daunting.