.:: Keypicking :: Anything And Everything For Locksmiths, Hobbyist Lock Pickers, Locksport, Lock Picking, lockpicks, cutaways and Security. Simply The Best Lockpicking Forum Around!

I love Research and development, and the people involved in it. They are creative, questioning, critical, exciting and usually crazy. Whereas most people are vertical thinkers, R & D people think laterally 24 hours an day and sometimes find it difficult to integrate with 'normal' people. Their job is to think up problems, find the best solutions ... junk them and then come up with something ten times better. Down the rabbit hole the rules are different and the word 'impossible' does not exist. Here everything is possible and if you have not found it yet, it is probably because you have not yet learned to let your thoughts soar with the eagles.

It does not matter how crazy your ideas may seem, together we can turn them into reality.

I have been interested in locks for about a month now and single picked my first tumbler lock about a week ago, so I still remember all of the things that went wrong, like two inches of pick blade sticking out the back of the lock !. I mean, why do they make pick blades so long ?. Did I miss something, or do we really only need the pick blade to be long enough, to reach the back pin ?.

The length allows for space for ones' thick, fat, back to the missing link, fingers. But,
then again, look at short length of the card style picks recently posted here.

I thought the finger might be more comfortable resting on the handle rather than the blade ?.

I tend to have my finger on the stem of the pick and up close to the keyway. Just my preference but i found that when in a false set and i held the pick by the handle i was using the keyway for leverage to set the pins and this in turn made me believe that a biting pin was the next to be set ....where as it was me pushing the pick and therefore causing a false movement against the tension. Hence now why i always have my finger/s on the pick end itself. Plus i get better feedback than jst using the handle.

Just my way .....its individuality at the end of the day.

In regards to pick length:: Remember, some locks are 4 pin, 5,6, and 7 you have to have a long pick, if you had a short one, you wouldn't be able tp pick a lock with extra pins. One time I tried to pick a lock for a buddy of mine on his business, it was a 6 pin, I had a pocket pick set and it was only long enough to set 5 pins, no kidding, I was pissed.

Welcome Sir. Good feedback. Now, I am going to make a different pick for each number of pins, because I like making things. There must be a hundred other ways of doing the same kind of thing, for example we could have a set of screw on collars, that would set the pick up for different numbers of pins ... or we could re-invent the propelling pencil and simply dial the right length. Why didn't I think of that Hi!

From my newbies point of view I loose sensitivity by resting my finger on the sharp edge of the blade. I lose sensitivity by having a pick blade that is twice the length I need and I am sure am grateful I can find that back pin Hi!. Yes, it does boil down to what suits the individual best. I did notice that lots of the fancy handles have a forefinger rest built into the handle, I wonder how many people rest it on the blade instead.

I rest my finger on the handle, within 14MM ( about 1/2 inch) of the blade.

Magic, All 6 pin locks are not the same. Makers use their own measurements, which are different. You have to build in a "fudge factor", or make a lot of picks!

I've always had the idea of a thin piece of metal that can be inserted into the bottom of a keyway (or directly below the keypins) which has a thumb turn on the end. Turning the thumbturn will cause a piece of metal at the very tip to rise up vertically allowing you to directly control one pin and lift it to the very top without disturbing any other pin at all. Maybe even seven of these with seven thumbturn knobs allowing you to pick even the craziest bitting and keyway without any problems. Because... let's face it... we've all seen or tried to pick locks that have warding and a bitting that make using conventional picks impossible. I have a few of these... a Sargent LFIC from Selim (fucking downright insane), and an ASSA 600 euro.