Sidkik23 wrote: I rake a couple times, and move onto the remaining pins. I lift each binding pin, and I can't feel that anymore are binding, but the lock won't open.
To me, a person ought to focus on SPP and raking separately. Become proficient in each method first before thinking about combining them. Otherwise you'll never know which method is not working and improving one's skill will be very difficult. To add to SquelchTone, nothing wrong with starting with one pin and just get used to it for a week, then add pin two and work it several times a day for a week. Just getting it open is not the point, learning to feel what is going on in the lock and the manual dexterity of feeling pins with the pick and being able to move from one pin to another particular pin is the point. Get used to it before adding more pins. Better to add one pin a week and develop good basics over a month or two than to develop haphazard skills in a couple of weeks that open locks part of the time.
I started playing with locks almost thirty years ago. A little bit harder to find picks and books back then in the pre-Internet era. SPP was something I had a hard time with, because I always tried it with all the pins in the padlocks I had. So raking was what I tended to do, at least it worked--part of the time. Fast foreward ten years later and I got some better picks and eventually learned to SPP, one pin at a time. How much more skill I could have built up over those years if I had started off SPP one pin at a time to begin with?
