Seeking help with SFIC lock picking

[mdc5150]

Ok, so I admit it I am jealous of all you guys who can pick IC locks with what appears to be minimal effort. I really need to learn these things as I am trying to get more business with SFIC and I need to be able to get out the old cores and I don't want to have to resort to drilling every time.

So I've made the IC tension wrenches, and I've tried picking with and without them. I've tried light tension and heavy tension. I've tried raking, I've tried SPP but it seems these locks are my current kryptonite. You guys gave me fantastic advice and got me through my serrated pins and I would love to hear from you again on this. Thanks in advance.

[Riyame]

How long are the teeth on your IC wrenches? They need to be really short or they will not tension just the control shear line. IIRC somewhere it said no more that 0.012" long.

[mister sour]

Im going to throw this out there now, counting the clicks while picking pin stacks is worthless. Any BEST SFIC could potentially be master keyed or even grand master keyed. The way I pick them to control is, I pick them to operating and feel the bitting, then i tension towards control and try to pick to a different bitting

[magician59]

If they're relatively new cores, and pinned by Best, you'll be fighting spooled bottom, master, and top pins. If they're Best clones, they'll be easier to pick. What I do is super-lubricate the core and apply tension using a tweezer type turning tool. ( http://www.hpcworld.com/px/tensiontools ... index.html ).
Usually, there is enough friction on the control lug to be able to apply tension on the control shear line. Then I rake the living daylights out of it with a small half diamond.

[mdc5150]

Thank you for the replies I will give it a go.

[xeo]

With a 6-pin BEST, the middle two pinstacks pick up the control lug (and on a 7-pin its the middle three) So when picking, try double-setting or triple-setting those targets. You may need to force a pin higher after it initially sets. You may also find that when forcing it higher, everything else drops back down except what you just set. Now you've got a driver up there putting binding force on the control lug, so the next pins to bind should naturally be what satisfies the control bitting. I hope this makes sense, you need to basically force the control lug to bind by forcing pins higher.