Sun Oct 08, 2017 9:42 am by mercurial
There is more to not picking locks in use than just breaking them, especially if they are locks in the workplace, as described above.
Without permission/directions from a manager with the right authority, a person could be jeopardising their job by picking a lock, even if asked to by somebody who holds a key to the lock who has lost/forgotten to bring it.
A person claiming to have lost their key may in fact have been relieved of it by management to keep them out of the locked area in question & picking the lock for them because they have "lost" their key could be a quick way to get fired.
Those sorts of issues aside, you are right that "if you know what you are doing picking a lock in use is harmless", but depending on the lock in question, "knowing what you are doing" can require some very deep knowledge & a lot of time on hand to put things right if things do go awry - especially in the workplace where more complex locks & master keying are commonplace.
The all too common scenario of the plug getting stuck after being turned through 180 degrees due to the driver pins protruding into the keyway results in countless urgent posts for help over the years, but I concede that anybody who knows even a tiny bit about pin tumbler locks should be able to recognise and rectify that problem very easily.
Less widely known and much harder to deal with is that in the same circumstances, thin master wafers can fall into the keyway when the plug is turned through 180 degrees. Sometimes they fall all the way into the keyway, sometimes they get stuck at an angle across the shear line, jamming the plug.
It can be difficult to dislodge a jammed wafer to free the plug, and good luck working out which pin stack that wafer belongs to, and restoring that lock so that it still behaves as it should within the master key system!
Along the same line of thought, there are dimple locks that will spit pins & master wafers into the keyway if the plug is turned beyond a few degrees with only a tension wrench in the keyway.
The above only refers to issues relating to displaced pins resulting from turning a core not filled by a key. I could go on and on with other potential issues.
For a final example, if somebody manages to pick an Emhart cylinder, and the rotation of the key pins gets upset as they turn the plug, they're going to be in a world of hell trying to restore that lock to working condition, unless they have both specialised tools & the requisite knowledge. A hobby picker could end up in this situation picking a lock in use that looks to them like a normal pin tumbler. A lock with trap pins is another disaster waiting to happen to the less knowledgable.
To know what you are doing to cope with all of these potential problems means having knowledge that many/most hobby pickers will never have or need if they stay away from locks in use. They are for the most part hobby pickers, not locksmiths.
Hence my position that locks in use should be the realm of real locksmiths, who in those worst case scenario are covered by their insurance when they're knowledge is lacking & they screw up.
I don't think that I'm up tight at all, but I certainly wouldn't advise somebody who posts here saying that they're new to picking that it's ok to pick locks that are in use, "if they know what they're doing" especially when the locks in question they posted about were in their workplace.
I once felt the same way & would've posted the same thing you did on this issue, but feel differently now that I have a deeper understanding.
...Mark