OZ

How To Pick-lock

I am a bit of an absent-minded guy, I tend to forgot some basic resources at crucial times. Like today, I locked my self out of my room. I had a packed schedule - 2 lectures, one lab and a career fair that i wanted to attend. All the required resources for those tasks were locked in the room with the key. It was turning into ‘one of those days’. I had two options call my land lord and ask for a spare key for which he charges 30$(OMG!! for a key) or Pick-lock for which i had no expertise. My next door house-mate had been in a similar situation wherein he kicked open the door and it cost him more than he expected 50$. So i decided to pick-lock and eureka!, to my surprise i did it in about 10 min. This is what you’ll need to do if you end up in the same situation.

• You’ll need two paper clips or some flexible metal for the job.

• Open the two clips make them kind of flat, so the edges don’t pop out too much.

• Fold one of the clip(1) in two and bend the edge so it’s “L” shaped. the point is it should work like a tong so you can insert it and rotate it easily.

• Let the second clip(2) be flat for now.

• Now inset the clip(1) into the lock’s hole(towards the place where the flat end of the key goes in). Make sure you touch the end with the clip and you get a bit of a leverage to rotate it. It would bend a bit if you try to turn but try giving a bit pressure and rotate if it opens then you door is not locked and you can stop reading this article, if not then go on.

• This is the tricky part, when you see through the hole you would find some metal hanging form the lock usually at the top(depends if the teeth of the key usually goes facing up this is UP if the key goes facing down then it’s DOWN). Try pushing it up with the other clip(2), it would go up(or down as i described above, in this post I’ll use up as that is what I did) easily. This is basically what you’ll be doing to unlock. There are several such metal rods hanging by means of spring, one has to push all of them up in a way so that you can rotate the clip(1).

• Now try slowly inserting the clip(2) making sure you are able to push all the metal rods up(if not try bending the end of the clip(2) and try pushing it up like i did cause there was a bit of a gap which my clip(2) was repelled down by the spring action of the metal rods so bending the gave it more force. Meanwhile simultaneously try turning the clip(1).

• Every rod has variable length to which it has to be pushed(Depend on the depth of teeth in your key). So keep juggling with the clip(2) while you turn the clip(1). At some point you would have pushed the rods correctly and the clip(1) will rotate with it and ‘OPEN’.

If you understand the mechanism I am quite sure it’ll be easier. Cause I knew how these basic locks work so I could work it out easier than I hoped. The main cylinder which we rotate has holes drilled into it vertically along the line. Springs are attached to the top of the lock and rods of same length are suspended from the spring attached to the lock and fall into the holes drilled into the cylinder. These block the rotation of the cylinder. Now Rods of variable length will be placed in the hole of the cylinder touching the rods of same length that were suspended via spring. Now if he correct key is inserted it will push the variable length rods there by pushing the fixed length rods out of the cylinder. Now the cylinder along with the rods rotate when the key is turned. So depending on the variable length of the rods the depth of the teeth for the key is set.

Tags: key, lock, pick lock
Posted in Life in Oz, Tips n Tricks, Uncategorized | Comments (1)

One Response to “How To Pick-lock”

1. cnu Says:
   August 8th, 2008 at 3:26 am

   Great experience. I too have read about lock picking in the MIT Guide to Lock Picking, but haven’t tried it.
   Lucky you didn’t get caught in the process.

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