questioin about binding pins?

[protoboy11]

why is that pins bind in a certain order? and is there an order it usually goes in?

why cant the pins just set when you push them up starting from the front?

[chriswingate]

Pins bind differently because when the lock is machined and the chambers are drilled, they are off center by just tiny, tiny little amounts, and with metal, those minute differences make a difference when they contact. So the binding order depends on which chambers are more center. and it will change from lock to lock. Even if you have two identical locks the binding order may be different.

I'm pretty sure that is the reason.

[protoboy11]

and how does raking pertain to it?

does one have to rake for at least as many pins there are? or can one rake put more than one up at a time

[chriswingate]

Raking is different, you can raise more than one pin at a time, often you can lift them all almost simultaneously and get it to open in one go, depends on the lock, for instance a lot of master locks can be raked open in one or two swipes. Now locks that have security pins like spools, mushrooms, serrations, barrel pins, etc, tend to get hung up on the shear line. This can make raking difficult, where SPP allows you to manipulate each pin individually.

[Solomon]

When you apply tension, only one of the pins will be binding against the inside of its chamber because of tolerance defects. The pin chambers are different diameters, they're not perfectly circular, and they're misaligned. The pins are all different as well, not identical in size or shape like you might think. The differences can't be seen with the naked eye unless the lock is very poorly made, but these defects are all present in even the highest quality locks.

To simplify things, imagine you had a cylinder where all the pin chambers were exactly the same, but each of the pins were different in size. The biggest pin would bind first, it's impossible for them all to bind at the same time or for any of the others to bind before the biggest pin.

The binding order is completely random because there isn't supposed to be one. In a perfectly engineered lock, everything would bind similtaeneously and thus need to be set simultaeneously in order for the plug to turn. But it can't be done, and that's why picking is possible in the first place. Very old and well worn locks will sometimes pick straight from back to front because of the way things wear down but this is still pretty uncommon. Anyway, if the binding order was predictable then it wouldn't be much of a puzzle would it?

Raking exploits the same mechanical weaknesses as single pin picking, binding order still applies... you're just not paying attention to it, because you're attacking multiple pins at the same time and in a random fashion.