Picking my first lock

[Soulune]

Hello everyone!
First of all, I hope I'm in the right place; forums have always been a grey area for me in terms of posting rules and I apologize if I'm not.
Second, I'll give you a little backstory before I ask my question:
At the moment I'm studying ptes and ethical hacking in college. That said, I love puzzles and getting into places that I really shouldn't be (we all have that curiosity, right?). I knew of lockpicking for a while and always wanted to get into it, but never got around to ordering a kit. Finally, I gave in last week and bought a 20pc SouthOrd set. It just arrived yesterday, at which point I promptly scoured my house for a lock of some sort to pick (hey, I was excited). I stumbled upon this nameless lock found deep in the trenches of my toolboxes and nic-nacs. It's been about a day now and I've spent a good 5 hours with it, but can't get this bugger opened. As someone who hates backing down from challenges, I've come here to request the help of all you fine people.

The lock:
-Core seems to rotate perfectly, I have the key and it works with little effort
-It feels like it has 4-pins, no idea on security pins (though there could be one or two based on feel, but I am a novice)
-There is no label on the key or the lock indicating who it was created by. The only thing I have to go off of is, as trump says, "CHINA" (I believe there may have been a sleeve on it, but that's long gone)

My approach:
-Lubricated the lock, checked for the number of pins and their functionality
-Used 'top hole tension'? so that my picks could fit without too much impedance.
-Tried rocking first, then raking, and finally went to single picking (where I'm at now)

The problem:
-Every time I try to pick the lock, I can get 2 pins down, but the other two seem to always stay up. The pin in the front springs back up regardless of how much tension I put on the wrench (it won't lock in place). The pin towards the back does the same, but it won't go all the way down (I suspect it's a security pin, since I can cause it to lock, but the pin still has a bit of 'give' and if I force the front pin down with my pick while the other 3 are down, the lock still wont turn).

My initial question:
-Are there pins that are created to not "lock" into place when you pick them? The first pin confuses me quite a bit as it just feels unaffected by tension. If I can get that down, I'm confident I can deal with the security pin. If you guys have any other tips, I would love the help; this is only my first lock after all.

Some included pictures (in URL format, as their resolution is pretty large):
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/108393771783184384/284031165675864064/image.jpg
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/108393771783184384/284031155882295296/image.jpg

[Squelchtone]

Welcome to the forum,

Take a look at these nice drawings and animations of how locks work http://toool.us/deviant/ , I think this will help you understand what is going on inside a lock. A lot of beginners tell us they pushed all the pins up (or down) but the lock wont open, or other pins dont want to also stay up (or down, depending on how you hold the lock)

If I were looking into your lock and the 1st pin is hanging down at 12 oclock, I put my wrench at 6 oclock with the handle facing right or parallel to the ground. I press down clockwise on the wrench enough so it starts to dig into my finger but not so it hurts and not so my finger turns white. basically the same pressure you would use to press a clicky computer keyboard. On a padlock like your I pulse my finger on the wrench like a morse code key, because there is a spring to over come, so I press from medium to harder pressure while inserting the pick in order to test if the plug is ready to turn yet. Going back to the pins though, when a key goes into a lock it doesnt simply lift all the pins all the way up causing the lock to open, because then every key on earth would open every lock. The pins inside the lock are short, medium, or longer, and match the depths of the valleys cut into the working key. If the wrong key is inserted, some pins may not be lifted high enough, while others will be lifted too high and the lock remains locked and the plug cannot turn, which means the shackle cannot pop open.

As you apply tension, insert the pick and hunt around inside the lock lifting each pin a little bit up and slowly until it clicks or the plug rotates just a little. If you lift a pin and it comes right back down, go to another pin and see if it will click and stay up, that's called the binding order, the order in which the pins click in place based on how even or uneven the holes in the plug were drilled at the factory. the clicking you hear is the moment when a key pin which touches the key, sometimes called a bottom pin, gets pushed up by a pick, and pushes the top pin (often called a driver pin (which can also be a security pin or a regular pin)) and when the top pin gets pushed out of the plug, while you apply tension, you get a little click and sometimes some rotation.

your first pin doesnt stay up no matter what because it is not yet its turn to stay up, you have to try pins 2 3 and 4 or 4 2 3 and 3 2 4 or 4 1 3 2 or whatever order that lock happens to be and each lock on earth has a different order in which the pins will stay up.

Hope that helps, and if not we can chat more
Squelchtone

[Soulune]

Hope that helps, and if not we can chat more
Squelchtone

Thank you for the in-depth answer. This is exactly what I was looking for. You cleared up all my confusion and helped me with the basics of lock picking in general; I really appreciate it. If I have anymore questions, I'll give you a chat-buzz. Have a wonderful day.

[dontlook]

I think Squelch is getting at this, but if you are looking in the lock and trying to make it so you can't see any of the pins, then you are oversetting the key pins(previously referred to as bottom pins). In that case you are forcing the key pins so that they are blocking the core from turning by being both in the plug and the shell, this is sometimes referred to as oversetting.

See slide #33 the 3rd pin set for an example of oversetting. Notice how the first two pinstacks that are set have their key pins(pictured in red) remain in the keyway.
http://toool.us/files/lockpick_intro.pptx from http://toool.us/resources.html

I liked that description though Squelch, I'm gonna have to look it over a couple times to figure out what to use when I have to explain it next!

[Squelchtone]

I think Squelch is getting at this, but if you are looking in the lock and trying to make it so you can't see any of the pins, then you are oversetting the key pins(previously referred to as bottom pins). In that case you are forcing the key pins so that they are blocking the core from turning by being both in the plug and the shell, this is sometimes referred to as oversetting.

See slide #33 the 3rd pin set for an example of oversetting. Notice how the first two pinstacks that are set have their key pins(pictured in red) remain in the keyway.
http://toool.us/files/lockpick_intro.pptx from http://toool.us/resources.html

I liked that description though Squelch, I'm gonna have to look it over a couple times to figure out what to use when I have to explain it next!

thanks, you should hear my "you're entering a dark tunnel" visualize yourself walking into the lock and looking up at the pins version.