by Oatmealer » 16 Mar 2016 17:26
Greetings and salutations!
Background
My Dad retired from the military several years ago and had taken the Foley-Belsaw course back in the early 80's to assist him in his military career path. He hasn't done much in the ways of lock smithing since retiring.
I was a Maintenance Manager and Operations Manager in the rental car industry for 10 years, so gaining access to cars that were accidentally locked (with the keys in them) via the various techniques you all probably are all too familiar with, and using a key machine to duplicate keys was an everyday task. I hired a locksmith to make some keys for all the various areas of the business. The General Manager and I would possess the "A" key, entry level Managers would have the "B" key, Supervisors "C" key and so on, down to the employee that opened the door for the time clock every morning.
Growing up and watching my dad, being in the rental car business and that locksmith that made that set of keys had really sparked my interest in locksmithing. I bought a cheapo-depot set of tools a few years back and started tinkering at home in my spare time. Nothing fancy. Just padlocks. Most of them were made in China or MasterLocks.
I have owned and operated a small, local Handyman business for a while now and decided I was going to enroll in the Foley-Belsaw course to further diversify my handyman business. I have new, quality tools and a big box of practice locks that my dad handed down to me. Many of them are locks used in the military.
So, enough of the background stuff. There are a couple locks in that box that are difficult, but I've gotten them open. There's only 2 locks in that box that I have struggled with unsuccessfully. One of them is an Italian made Corbin and I'm waiting on the thinner European picks to come. The other is a BEST lock. It has 7 pins and I'm not quite sure yet how many of them are security pins. Or, what kind of security pins they are. I've gone online and done some research to try and gain a better knowledge of its inner workings and I believe a thread I found on this site mention they had 2 shear lines and have a paracentric keyway.
Can anyone explain how the 2 shear lines operate? What technique(s) to utilize? And what would be a better pick to use for the paracentric keyway?
Also, how the heck do I upload the handful of pictures I have of the lock?
Thanks!
