Mortise door lock picks ?.

[Magic1]

The grooved lever lock tool is now complete except for fitting the tension pin onto the shaft of the grooved rod. The standard idea is to drill a hole though the shaft and fix the pin in place, by riveting or hard soldering. As I mentioned before, all locks are different and the chances are, whatever length I make the pin, it is going to be the wrong length for the next lock. Now usually the next instructional step would be to introduce you to the idea of 'over lift' wires, because they can act as 'try' devices to determine the required length of tension pin (or picking pin). However lever locks do not appear to be a popular subject, so I will terminate this as quick as possible. The tool can be seen below.

The bottom picture shows the tool complete minus the tension pin. The tool follows classic lines with two deviations. The first was brought about by a lack of experience and it figured that where-ever I put the tensioning 'knob' on the tool shaft, it would be wrong for someone, so I have made it adjustable and the knob can be fixed at any position on the length of the shaft. Just slide it to where you want it and tighten the set screw.

If you look at the first picture you can see I have added a slot just above the groove on the knob to enable the picking wire to be 'threaded' into the tool and this makes it very easy to change the picking wire for a different size.

That leaves us only with the tension pin, which we know requires different lengths to suit different locks. I now have two lever locks and know what length of tension pin they require, what I don't know is the length that will be required for the next lock I encounter. I have three choices, first a different tool for each lock type ..... or a single tool with an adjustable tension pin length .... or a replaceable pin. I have a simple design for the latter option, but as always do not yet know how well it will work out in practice. The problem being the amount of torsion required to be applied to the 'tension' tool to make a lever bind and the resultant wear on the pin and pin hole. The strongest option would be to have a tool of each size, the most flexible .... bearing in mind we can already change the picking wires .... is to be able to change the length of the tension pin. The safe route is to drill the shaft for a pin (probably 2.0mm ground down to less than 1.5mm wide and profiled in the usual manner). The end of the tool shaft is drilled and tapped to accept a set screw. Now the pin becomes interchangeable. If it is subsequently found that this is not strong enough, then the pin can be permanently attached.

[Magic1]

Boot sale on Sunday and I picked up three new lever locks. Made training locks out of the top two, bottom left is my original lock and bottom right is internally identical to bottom left. I had decided to remove the latch components but on the two top locks the main bolt also locks the latch bolt as well, so I decided to leave them in.

The holes in the Perspex windows have to be quite accurate and the simple way of doing this is to clamp the steel case to the Perspex sheet and use it as a drilling guide.

Now that I have a curtain lock (7 gauge) I will be able to make a curtain lock tool.

[Magic1]

When I was making the grooved lever picking tool, I was wondering how I could add the the bolt tension finger in a 'stronger' way ..... and because different lengths are required, make the finger interchangeable .... like the picking wire.

Yesterday I thought I would have a go at incorporating some of my ideas into an over lifting tool, which has the same requirements. If you look at the photo, the shank of the tool is about half the length I started with !. As the hole in the shank for the wires is fairly long I had to drill from both ends using almost the full length of the drill bit. The drilling caused quite a bit of heat, expanding the steel rod and then when I stopped drilling the steel shrank back onto the drill bit and I could not move the dam thing. This happened at both ends of the rod and the end result was that I ended up with a short shank, after my rescue work !. Fortunately it is still long enough to be a usable tool, in a door mounted lock.

The 'key' part of the tool is the slot cut into the business end of the shank. The hex headed bolt serves as both a handle and also for securing the lift wire. I only use my fingers to tighten it as it only has to stop the wire sliding out when the tool is withdrawn from the lock. The shank protruding to the right of the wire is deliberate, and this engages in the keyhole in the locks back plate. This more precisely positions the tool in the lock. My second disaster was that I ran out of 16 SWG piano wire, so I still have to make several more sizes of lifting wires and tension wires to complete the tool, but otherwise it works great and is probably the best tool I have made so far.

[Magic1]

Added a few more wires to the range, in one millimeter increments. Have three more to make for the small end, when I get some more wire.

[Magic1]

My version of the grooved tool. One commercial type grooved tool is not going to open all lever locks and therefore up to a dozen may be required to pick most common lever door locks and at £50 a time that can get very expensive !. Then of course there are the breakages. My solution was to make all parts of the tool interchangeable, especially the 'fingers'. Doing it this way, one can easily make up a range of picking wires and also a range of tension fingers, to fit most domestic door locks. The end result is the tool shown below. The interchangeable tension fingers are secured within the shaft by a 3.0mm hex headed screw. Any length of tension finger can be cheaply make up from scrap bits of 16 SWG piano wire. Likewise other sized picking wires can also be easily made from the same material.

In addition 'handed' picking wires and tension fingers can be made, without replacing the whole tool.

I asked for this forum for the two way interchange of ideas and information, but it is not working. In many ways, forums such as this remind me of the camp cooking pot .... if no one puts anything into it , no one can take anything out of it !.

[LocksmithArmy]

OK having said all that, a transparent training lever lock is the quickest and best way of understanding how they do and do not work and it is well worth the effort of making one. If you don't then you will never be able to see what happens when you turn the key the wrong way !. Have fun ....

while these are cool and a great idea for learning lever locks... i must dissagree that they are the oly way to see what happens when you turn the key the wrong way...

I have just recieved a few sdb locks and (while i know how they work) I cannot facilitate acrylic tops for them... if i want to see how they work or what exactly my tools are doing... i just take the top off and watch em that way... if the lever pack spreads i just push em back down. its a really simple way to see whats going on inside without thetools to do what you are suggesting... just dont try and store it with no cover... bad idea.

the suggestions mentioned above are great though because when you remove the cover you can clearly see when and how the levers spread and this is a challange to overcome when making a clear cover.

thanks for the tips