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

My new kit has arrived, managed to get it for £30.00 from Amazon.
It appears to have a good range of tools and a nice leather case.
Has anyone else worked with the kit and how was the experience?

The kit is $57 on the Southord site so you maybe saved a few bucks. The C2010 is the Slimline model and you may find them a little flexible, because they are meant for European locks. The set has a good range of picks with metal handles as well as 7 tension tools. There are a couple of Deforest picks (with the long hooks) which are useful, but again, in the Slimline series they may be a little bendy. I use mainly Southord tools and have never had a problem with breakage. I like the line because they range all the way from no handles for a couple of bucks, to the mid-range metal handles at $6 to the Max line at $12. All in Slimline or standard thickness. You may want to pick up a couple of standard 2 and 3 hump "Pagodas" (or better buy Rai's Bogota set) as they have a very high success rate when used with a rocking motion.

Hi AaronMce.

Good choice on the C2010. I'd recommend them to any beginner. I was reading the lockpicking forums for years before I started myself in 2012. Time and again I'd see somebody ask what set they should buy if they were starting out, and the answer was always the same, "Oh, you just need a tension wrench, a half diamond and a short hook." Well meaning advice, no doubt, but I didn't agree, and I still don't. Like a lot of people, I'd tried poking bent hairpins and whatever bits of wire looked handy into locks and pushing the pins up - with no success, of course. I'd never even heard of rakes before I found Keypicking and Lp101. I don't have the manual dexterity of a guitar player, for instance, and I'm primarily a visual type of person anyway. I need to see it myself to really understand it, so "feel" is not something that comes naturally. What I'm getting at is if I'd just bought a tension wrench and a short hook, I would've thrown them away in frustration pretty quick. The C2010 wasn't the first set I bought, but I wish it had been.

I haven't really used the ball and snowman picks, as I haven't got any double sided wafer locks. I see the tension wrench you've got for them is different from the one I've got which is like a pair of tweezers. I haven't yet found a good use for the pyramid (MSL-05), the angle snake (MSL-14), or the big snake (MSL-15). These are all my names for 'em. I'd be interested to hear anybody's experiences with these picks.

I'm still struggling with SPP. In fact, my only New Year's Resolution this year was, " SPP!" The pick I like most for that, and the only one I've had any success with, is the Deforest half ball. May sound strange, but it's the one pick I get any real feel with.

All in all, a great set and well worth the money wherever you buy it from.

I have this set, along with a large GOSO set, that formed the bulk of my first set of pick tools. Whilst it is well machined and feels nice in the pins, I personally found the zero-handle picks to be too uncomfortable to hold for any length of time (may be due to my overzealous tension technique!) so I tended to defer to my GOSO hook instead, despite the 2010 being for Euro keyways (that I work with), and the GOSO... not, AFAIK.

That said, I've recently received the Sparrows Monstrum XXL set, and the standard hook from that, along with the half diamond, blows both of these out of the water IMO. And you can probably purchase a smaller set or those two picks individually for a good price.