The journey of a thousand Medeco openings...
So I started with one pin in chamber six. And opened it quite a lot. When I lifted the pin on the bottom right side the lock opened as soon as the pin cleared the shear line. When I lifted from the middle or left it was a mixed bag. Sometimes a touch to open and sometimes starting over. At this point ~5% of the time I could feel pin rotation. The rest of the time I was poking at an obstruction until something happened. But, the openings were so frequent I decided to put in a second pin.
Now two pins with filling chamber five and six. Talk about being slapped back to reality! The lack of feel for pin rotation was suddenly very important indeed. Things were weird though. All of a sudden I had a bunch of openings. Sort of like all I had to do was pick the last pin to open the lock. This was followed by not being able to open the lock to save my life. Then open. Then nothing. Through this the second pin didn't feel right. It wasn't turning and wasn't springy. When the plug was turning it wasn't a big deal. Finally, after more difficulties I decided to go back to one pin and practice pushing the pin out of place and rotating it back properly.
Opened chamber five and noticed I hadn't installed a spring. What a maroon! In locks with poor tolerances this wouldn't be a big deal. However, I noticed right away that Medeco tolerances are much tighter and the pins are quite snug in the chamber. Most likely there was enough friction in the chamber to prevent the pins from falling freely every time leading to confusing results. For now I have two properly filled pin chambers and am developing my feel.
Supplemental: The distal thumb joint of my picking hand is not happy. I think it is a soreness from overuse. I picked at the lock for quite a bit yesterday. The second thing I noticed is I have polished the lock to brilliance with the amount of time I have been holding it. Notice in the picture the grime in the corner of the lock? The lock had a nice layer of that when I first received it. Now it gleams once again.
Until next time...thanks for stopping by and have a great day