Six vexing Sargent cylinders
But then there was the pile of six other Sargent cylinders sitting on my couch-side table taunting me. I tried to zip them, I tried to SPP for quite a while, broke off a home made bogota in one and never got anywhere. Was having a hard time even getting one or two sets. I was starting to think like "clearly these locks are cursed."
At some point I ended up looking down a keyway with a bright focused light and... the key pins didn't look right, not near as pointy as the others I had taken out but still bevelled on the edge (maybe worn I'd thought?) They started sapping my confidence as I resumed trying and then I returned to the comfort locks for a while. But then last night I picked up my trusty C rake and popped one, disassembled it and said "wellll W-T-F" when I saw the pins all layed out, picked up another one and used the same relaxed raking I'd done before and open! Disassemble and "wtf" again. Repeat four more times.
The first one had seven pins, but otherwise all six (seven pinner out-of-shot on top of the radio) had the same pins, same lengths, etc. There was less homogeneity in the springs (mixture of phosphor bronze and stainless steel in each lock)!