BEGINNER LOCK PICKING HOW TO

I know it's commonly taught to use very light tension, but I've found that when the right tension is applied a heavier force will help you find the binding pins, and I tend to use moderately heavy tension. The better your tension, the more prevalent the binding force becomes on the pins and the easier it is to set them. We need to apply as close to perfectly circular tension as possible to the plug – Tensioning tools, on the other hand, are extremely important, and the more ideally your tension matches your target lock the better luck you will have with it. Work your way up to a 5-pin lock, then swap the order of the pins each time you feel confident you have mastered a particular bitting for a new challenge. Try it over and over until identifying that tell-tale resistance of a binding pin in the lock is second nature to you. Can you tell the exact moment when that first binding pin sets, and suddenly the second binding pin that was loose is now bound? Then add a second pin stack and repeat the process, this time with the added challenge of first identifying which pin is the binding pin and which is not. Memorize the feeling of that binding pin, then slowly start lifting it and see what it feels like to set the pin, both how it sounds and how it feels through the tension wrench and pick. Try pushing on the pin with just your hook pick, feel what an unbound pin feels like, then apply tension and feel it again. With the easily removable pin cover, pull out all the pins, and repin it with only the first pin stack in the lock. They suprisingly cheap on Amazon like this one – It's to this stubborn extremist attitude that I attribute whatever skill I have now. That attitude forced me to improve because I would either open a lock by deliberately single pin picking it or the lock would not open, I didn't leave myself another choice. My attitude, for better or worse, seems to be that any time spent learning something other than the hardest technique is potentially wasted time since you'll eventually surpass it. This principle has guided many aspects of my life, for instance when I learned the Linux operating system, research told me people thought Slackware was the hardest to learn but once you were comfortable with it you'd be comfortable with any Linux version so that's what I started with, or how I'm trying to learn guitar now and prefer to practice harder finger-picking patterns rather than relying on strumming chords to play simpler versions of songs. I think I was scared that otherwise if I went to show my skill off to other people I wouldn't be confident about the outcome, at best I'd just know that I could sometimes open locks quickly but other times I might fail for no reason. My goal wasn't to open the lock quickly I wanted to be able to open a lock reliably, knowing that if I repeated the same steps each time I'd likely get similar results, even if it took me much longer than other people.

BEGINNER LOCK PICKING HOW TO

When I was first learning how to pick a lock, I researched the idea online and observed that people generally thought single pin picking was the most skilled technique, so I stubbornly refused to practice any other way until I had learned what I perceived to be the best one. champion & invitation to compete in the world championship at my first of many LockCon competitions. speed-lockpicking competition, going head to head with a personal hero of mine Schuyler Towne for the final match and earning the title of U.S.

My credentials, for what they're worth: I've had a hand in running the Longhorn Lockpicking Club in Austin since 2007 where I've taught hundreds of beginners over the years, organized a number of lock pick villages at hacker conferences and other similar workshops for everyone from Facebook headquarters to schoolchildren.Īnd at DEFCON 17 I won TOOOL's U.S. I know that some of this may sound self-righteous or incoherent and rambling, but this brain dump is my best attempt at explaining it to those who might value my opinion. While drafting a response I thought this might be useful to others so I've decided to make it available publicly. Someone recently asked me for advice on how to get better at single pin picking ( SPP). When you buy through our links, we may earn a commission. We independently review everything we recommend.

Beginner lock picking