What did you pick today?

[GWiens2001]

Welcome back, Comrade627!

Gordon

[Comrade627]

Welcome back, Comrade627!

Gordon

Thanks buddy, happy picking.

Master pro series 7030. I've not had many challenging experiences with Mater, but this ones keyway was particularly snug.

[GWiens2001]

Welcome back, Comrade627!

Gordon

Thanks buddy, happy picking.

Master pro series 7030. I've not had many challenging experiences with Mater, but this ones keyway was particularly snug.

Which keyway is in that padlock?

Gordon

[Comrade627]

Which keyway is in that padlock?

Gordon

The little one

[YouLuckyFox]

Picked a newly bought ABUS 83/45. I am rusty on SPP. I impressioned it a couple months ago about as easily as ever. Picking all 5 pins SPP didn't happen until today, picking it off and on each week. Used a Peterson Slender Reach and a custom-made prybar. It was fun picking a wide open KW1 keyway except with tighter machining tolerances and security pins. I gutted the lock and confirmed that there are 4 spools and 1 serrated pin. I do not remember my previous ABUS 83/45 having this many security pins or tight tolerances, was a fun pick to get back into the game. It also took me awhile to get used to the tension, the return spring was very strong and I needed to press pretty far out on and hard on my prybar. Is it just my hiatus from lockpicking or have ABUS 83/45 gotten a bit tougher to pick?

[femurat]

It also took me awhile to get used to the tension, the return spring was very strong and I needed to press pretty far out on and hard on my prybar. Is it just my hiatus from lockpicking or have ABUS 83/45 gotten a bit tougher to pick?

As you found out, the strong return spring force you to use heavy tension. This makes more difficult to set security pins.
That said, I have no new abus to try so can't confirm if they're better.

Cheers

[YouLuckyFox]

I have a follow up on this. Am merging my lishi experience in as well so this will be one long post rather than 2 medium ones on separate topics. So, upon careful examination, yes these locks have gotten better. I've been buying Abus 83/45s for many years. I gutted my most recently purchased 83/45 and found 4 serrated spools pins with 1 barrel pin. The lock was not loose when unpicked like you often see with locks that have so many spool pins.

The lock was a difficult pick based on the way the binding order worked out. As I passed the false set spool in chamber 3 it caused chamber 2 to drop. There was no way of avoiding this, and made the lock unpickable. Normally you'd pick in the other direction and use a plugspinner, but alas we have a padlock with one way turning on top of the difficult to negotiate return spring. As the lock can only be turned one direction, I was stuck with reverse setting 2 and 3 at the same time to allow the lock to be consistently picked open. Spp 1, 4, 5 was achieved so long as 2 and 3 were out of the way.

This lock also proved to be a niche example where the Lishi 2 in 1 is inferior to traditional SPP. The lishi has been an amazing tool to use and greatly speeds up picking, impressioning, and key creation, but to my experience a lock with this lethal combination made it impossible to open using the lishi even with pins 4 and 5 removed (did this to confirm that the lock was impossible.) Since the tool is designed to ONLY lift one pin at a time, I could not set 3 without dropping 2, the lock could not be opened with this tool. That's not to say this is a major detriment, if this lock was in the wild on a lockout call the lishi would still allow me to decode the depths and get well on my way with speed impressioning a working key off of the decoded depths.

Interested in any other feedback from y'all. I have been out of the game for awhile, my impressioning is strong but SPP is still coming back to me.

[prevariikation]

(Hope this is an OK thread to bump with my excitement.)

I've been going to the local reclaimed hardware store in search of KIK cores, etc., and I was very excited to find a Simplex 1000 with all parts included. And they only charged me $5! I disassembled the combination chamber to decode it, only to find that it had the default combo, I just wasn't entering it correctly. Oops.

[billdeserthills]

I had to open a Mini 1000 gun vault, unfortunately it was mounted so close to the shelf above there was only room for my HPC Peanut tubular pick--surprisingly it picked the lock open--first time this peanut pick ever picked open anything. I made a key off the pick with my herty gerty key cutter & collected my pay

https://www.walmart.com/ip/Mini-1000-Gun-Vault/4861129

[prevariikation]

Is picked by proxy a thing?

A locksport meetup was working to open a donated locker bay, keyed with Illinois Duo clones. Nobody felt up to picking 10 of the Duo cores, but we discovered that the control key, which sets the operation mode (total lockout or normal use,) had an unmarked midway point which briefly releases the core retaining mechanism, allowing for the Duo cores to be swapped on the fly Not the kind of thing we expected, and without the keys to many of the lockers already, never would have found it.. pretty clever, neither lockpickers nor thieves would be looking for that.

So while I couldn't pick the control lock itself (not quite a Duo, but not shabby,) I did get to hand-pull the core as the "z-axis tensioner" while someone else did the hard part

[demux]

Is picked by proxy a thing?

My opinion is, if you learned something new from the experience, no matter how small, that's still a win.

So kudos on "picking by proxy" a Duo clone.

[prevariikation]

Thanks demux it was a learning experience for sure.

More reclaimed hardware fun — bought some Master 1500s piece by piece after decoding them off an unsold locker bay. Cheap entertainment, lol. I really appreciate the crew being so accommodating!



Turned one into a reallly rough cutaway, just for fun. I winged the cutout process and accidentally drilled out the head of bolt holding the disks. Glad I have a 6-32 tap. Hoping to use this to get a sense of Oldfast's manipulation method, which predates Samy Kamkar's method but starts the same, which is hecka neat.

[prevariikation]

Just a cheap tubular lock, but the DIY tools worked out OK for it. Trimmed down hex wrench for picking, and dremeled-down key with slot cut for a bar to tension.

[GWiens2001]

Very creative way of picking the lock, Prevariikation.

Gordon

[prevariikation]

Used Gordon's tutorial on Wise locks to open this one , which my friend bought for me in broken condition. Innermost spring is broken, but the lock has a flat enough bitting that the grime holds the key pin in place well enough.