Nice .
Wot wot wot? No demagnitize lock doo-hickey? Bluff.
“Does not contain the essentials” - Um, what? I see torsion wrenches and a variety of nice picks… what’s missing exactly? (I mean other than a bump key which is faaaar easier to use than these tools for picking the average door lock)
Indeed, I see the one in there that will open all the locks in my parents house, my apartment, and work.
I wouldn’t call those cufflinks “lockpick handcuffs” as they’re not picks, but keys.
Massive pick sets are, for the most part, a rip-off. If you know what you’re doing, a pocket set will do just fine; if you don’t, more tools won’t help you much.
if all you’re talking about is basicaly kwikset/yale locks, then you’re correct - but the special shapes can definitely help with the weird, warded, mushroom-pinned stuff out there.
Not many warded locks left.
I haven’t found random rake shapes to be especially useful vs. spool/mushroom pins. Your experience may vary.
Has anybody started putting out minaturized magnetometer probes and user-configurable electromagnet probes for attacking locks with magnetic elements?
A naive attempt would probably involve a lot of very frustrating teeny-tiny-magnet-wire-snapping incidents; but they would be a neat toy…
If anyone has, Deviant Ollam would be the dude who has. I love his lockpicking talks.
An advisory for those in the “Land of the Free”: mere possession of a lockpick is a felony in some states.
I’m probably really naive, but why would you buy a lockpick set? Isn’t lockpicks mostly for illegal use or do they have other uses than open locks with no key available?
It’s a hobby for some people. Part of the hacker mindset. People want to know how something works and what vulnerabilities something has so they examine it completely. Hacker conventions usually have some kind of lockpicking workshop set up. Sometimes there’s even a workshop for kids. If a 4-year-old can be taught to pick locks in a couple hours, think about how useless locks are at keeping someone determined out.
I think you mean keeping out somebody skilled rather than determined…Even though it is a teachable skill, people with that skill would generally have longer, more successful careers as locksmiths than criminals. An axe (sometimes through the roof, or from an adjoining store in the strip mall) is the preferred tool of the “determined.”
Aha… Ok. I think I kind of get it.
Thanks for the info!
I think most people that own lockpicks are locksmiths.
I wish more burglars would use lockpicks. It’s more annoying to have to replace the smashed window instead.
We had our house broken into when I was a kid. My parents followed the suggested practice of having the deadbolts be key operated on both sides, so what happened of course was that the burglar broke the window on the door, found it locked, went to another door and broke the window, finding it also locked, then went to a window and smashed it to gain entry into the house.
It ended up costing the insurance more to replace all of the windows than the stuff the guy stole (a CD player, and a VCR–this was back in the 90s).
On the other hand, the fact that they tend to smash their way in does make it harder for insurance companies to challenge the theft report.
Interesting - requiring a key to unlock a door from inside sounds like a fire-code nightmare to me. Are you going to go hunting for your keys while the house fills up with choking smoke?
I agree though that it would sometimes be nice if burglars would just take their relatively low-value haul without incurring considerably damage on the home. When I was a kid, we got half-burgled once (we also got proper burgled two or three times) - we got home after the burglar broke my bedroom window, but before he cut all the way through the screen; he heard us and ran off. If instead he’d half-finished picking the lock, we’d never have known…
Problem of course is that most people with the skill and determination to master a skill like lockpicking, have the skill and determination to get a better job than burglary.
