old BEST Padlock

[leslie anne levine]

hi, ive only been tinkering around with picking locks for a couple of weeks now, but really haven't come up against anything that's proven to be much of a challenge, considering we've only got kwikset deadbolts and keyed master locks floating around my house. But, this afternoon, my little brother, who's also taken a slight interest in locks, brought home an old padlock he found while walking home from school. It's a Best padlock, and i think i'm counting 7 pins, but i could be wrong because they all seem kind of soft and i'm new to this. Anyways, i have two reasons for posting:

1. does anybody know how secure this lock might be? (e.g. how difficult is it to pick relative to what i've been playing with [kwikset and master locks])

and

2. the lock is stamped, U.S. N.P.S, which i'm assuming stands for United States National Park Service, and id just like to know if anybody has any info on the history or anatomy of the lock in general.

thanks.

[Romstar]

Sounds to me like someone either took the lock, or someone lost the lock.

Be a samaritan, and call up the local parks service and let them know you found a lock. If you get to keep it, there you go.

No, onto the severity of the lock.

Many BEST padlocks are made to use interchangable cores. This means that there are two shear lines. One for the control key, and one for the regular key. There could also be a third shear line, and that would exist if it were master keyed.

Part of the difficulty in picking these things is that you need to get the proper shear lines in order to open the lock.

Turning one way removes the core, and turning the other way pops the shackle.

These locks tend to be a bit mushy, and because of that, you may have a hard time getting things to line up. Don't stop though, because they WILL line up properly.

Good luck,
Romstar

[leslie anne levine]

thanks a million romstar. i guess i'm just going to give this thing hell until it opens, and then maybe i'll do the right thing and give Ranger Smith a call (yeah, i went there, Yogi Bear humor, so what?)

anyways, i really appreciate the info and if anyone else has anything additional to contribute, i'd be delighted to hear about it.

[randmguy]

Just a couple of things to add. Clean the crap out of the lock. Best cylinders come from the factory with graphite lube and it cakes up horribly if its left outdoors.

Every Best padlock I've seen turns clockwise to unlock. If you pick the thing and it only turns about 15 degrees clockwise, you've picked it to the control shear line and you can remove the core. It will probably be stiffer than heck to remove from the lock body but it will come out.

[raimundo]

seven pins is a bit much for most best locks, the only ones I have seen with seven pins also have special extra wide keyways. did you count the pins by holding them all up with a straight shaft and counting the clicks as you pulled it out? if so, the first click you heard could have been the straight shaft dropping out of the plate at the back of the cylinder.

[leslie anne levine]

after romstar suggested that it likely had 6, i went back and counted again, and i'm now pretty sure it is 6. I still haven't picked it, but i really havent been spending a lot of time with it. Wild coincidence however, i was sitting in my western civilization class, and the guy next to me saw my picks and said that he's been picking for awhile, so im going to see if he can point out what im doing wrong tomorrow. for all i know he's a member of this forum as well.

[Chucklz]

You can get 7 pin cores in the old lettered keyways. My college has them and most are quite old.

[MethLab]

Best padlocks are very frustrating... I just signed up for an account here to ask about one, and I got it open right before the registration email showed up.

For some reason, one appeared on our garage, nobody gave us a key, and I couldn't remove it using shims. It locks on both sides with different size bars, and there is no room for a shim.

Eventually I discovered that the masterkey setup for these is just kind of a downwards slope with a bump at the back 2 pins, so I put a half diamond in at a slant and wiggled it. The thing opened in about 2 minutes once I did that.

Later I made a SFIC tension tool out of a paperclip and removed the core. Imagine how stupid I felt when I realized it was the same key setup as the outside house door.