a few months ago I was living in a shared house in England and one evening
I accidentally locked myself and my girlfriend out of a room. in the end I
had to call a locksmith and I paid a hundred and forty five pounds for a 40
second job I know myself and I know that this is probably gonna happen again
so I bought a lock picking set containing a transparent lock and a tool
kit specifically designed to practice and to understand how it works the
padlock has seven pins inside the lock cylinder the block its movement and
rotation each pin has two separate parts driver pins and key pins and every
single one of them has a different lenght that's also why a key has an irregular
shape when we start the key all the driver pins are aligned on what is
called the shear line this way the lock cylinder is allowed to rotate and the
lock will open following the instructions included in the kit we need
to insert this torque wrench tool into this empty slot and then we apply a
torque force along the natural rotation direction of the lock cylinder at this
point to insert the pick and we try to align the pins on the shear line. Applying
rotating pressure will keep the pins in the correct position after we push them
up if we don't do that they will just immediately go back to the original
position once we move to the next pin with the lock tool. When all the pins are
lined up the lock cylinder is allowed to be turned and we can finally open the
lock. The first time it took me about 40 seconds to open it but now after a bit
of practice it takes me literally, two seconds
I have 17 lock tools included in the kit but after a bit of practice I feel
really comfortable using this pick with this torque wrench this is pretty simple
because we can see the pins and we can keep adjusting them until it clicks
now one try with a real lock. I use this to lock my bike for years and it should
be much more difficult since I can't see what is happening inside. All right let's
try I guess the concept is pretty much the same
I trusted a lock that you can open in two seconds for at least 7 years. And I had the same result again and
again nobody ever stole my bike by the guess
I've been lucky. I was getting pretty confident opening the locks so I decided
to try with a real door lock once again the concept is pretty much the same we
stick the tension wrench into the lock on the opposite side of the pins and then
we apply a slight pressure to cause rotating tension into the lock cylinder
then we stick in our pick and we keep moving it back and forth trying to line
up the pins on the shear line after 25 minutes without being able to open the
door I understood what I was doing wrong I was pushing the pick to the very
bottom of the lock. It is not really about pushing up the pins as far as you
can, but instead you need to align all the pins on the shear line so lock cylinder
can rotate. So I moved the peak to the middle of the lock and I kept pushing it back and
forth and after about another 5 minutes this happened
after opening the door for the first time I got pretty fast at this. I've been able to unlock this door a few
times in under 10 seconds and my personal best time is 5 seconds.
The only problem is that when I locked myself out of my room a few months ago I didn't
have a lock picking set. So I tried to find another solution to apply the same
unlocking concept but with something that you can easily find at home.
paper clips basically we need two paper clips one to act as a torque wrench and
one to act as the pick. We need to unfold the large edge of the first one and we make
a tiny upward band into the tip this one is going to act as the pick then we take
out both bands in the second paper clip until we get just a straight wire with a
curve in the end and this is our torque wrench. And now we just have to see if
these work. I tried first with the transparent lock obviously this way it's
much harder than with the lock tool mainly because the paper clips tend to
bend if you apply too much pressure but anyways after few minutes I got it
but maybe there was just a fluke, so I tried again.
then it was time for the normal lock.
this time the paper clips were bending even more so decided to
modify my torque wrench and finally a few minutes later
I really don't know if it's gonna work but I won try with the final challenge the door lock
I started trying but immediately realized that my handmade tools were too
thick so I made a new peak and a new wrench. I was mentally prepared to spend
hours trying to open the lock but literally after three minutes
the piece were lined and the cylinder rotated but the paper clips weren't
strong enough to move the latch and open the door basically like this
So I decided to try with the bigger paper clips
and the lock finally started rotating
I guess I'll put two paper clips in my wallet then the next time I
close myself or my room, I'll know what to do. See you next week