Re: What have you picked today
Patrick Star wrote:Any hints for the Emhart?
I spent nearly a week on it and this is what I did and learned during that time.
I removed the brass strip so I could progressively pin the lock.
When your picking it with just a few pins or fully pinned make sure you reinsert the key often and after every picking attempt. I did this for two reasons, first is because when you pull out the key it insures that the pins are rotated within a certain a range (about 90 degrees) making them easier to rotate either fore or aft. The second reason is because after you pick the lock sometimes the pins will stay disconnected. By reinserting the key and turning the plug this makes sure they are all reconnected. I think they're a few fake videos of people picking Emharts with the pins disconnected. Unlike Medeco locks the key pins should never drop until the lock is fully picked and plug rotated.
As for picking I tried to lift and rotate at the same time. This got the pins to the correct height and rotation about 50% of the time. Once all the pins are lifted to shear, the pins that are not correctly rotated will bind heavily. You may need to release a small amount of tension to rotate these binding pins. The pins that are correctly rotated and lifted will have a very specific "loose jiggle" when your rub your pick over the tip of each pin. I think that was the most important thing while picking the Emhart was detecting that loose jiggle of a properly lifted and rotated pin by rubbing my pick over the tip of each key pin.
Also I made a very small half diamond for rotating the low cuts in the rear of the lock. None of the other picks I had could rotate these low cuts comfortably.
Hope that helps, I'll probably do a pick and gut video in the near future.
GGL