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I am looking for a 6 lever pick impressioning tool.



If you have one laying around that you no longer need or use, please let me know.

what does it impression, the old grasshopper locks?

It was designed for use on the lever mechanism pancake padlocks, such as those made by Miller.

I've not seen those anywhere for sale. I believe that design was created by (or at least featured by) Lauren Arndt in "The Extreme Antique Padlock Collector," which includes instructions how to fabricate... pretty simple, really. Used for old Champion padlocks, if I recall correctly. He talks about a few variations of it for use with other locks, and a lot of other shop-made tools for picking/decoding antique padlocks. If you can still get a copy, it's a book worth having.

cheers, you can get the brad nails for nail guns in rectangular section that would probably work well to make one of these.

AFAIK it was designed by Bob Dix and is known as a "Dix PIx".

I made one (mine wasn't so beautiful as Lauren's, but it worked) but I also had good luck with using a thin wire between the levers and finding the location of the gates. I'd purchased many of these locks on eBay, but a great many of them sold with "no key" were broken - either the shackle spring was broken, the levers were stuck together, or in one case, the lock had been heated beyond repair in some unfortunate incident in it's past. I got a number of them working with keys I made, so that was very satisfying. I didn't use the "caliper extension" method that Lauren used, but I hooked the gates, and measured the distance to the spot where the wire entered the keyway.

My initial keys were made wth Star T-23 blanks - too thick and not wide enough, but nothing that a torch and anvil couldn't fix. Lauren made his blanks from steel, but me, being lazier, bough some blanks off fleabay, and cut those.

If you're handy with a file, it's not hard to make the keys by hand.

If you can get a copy of Lauren's book, it's nice to have, and interesting. The design of the 6 lever lock demonstrates the ingenuity of the lockmakers of yore, plus a working 6 lever padlock is a great desk toy.

I just searched for the book and see it says to look on this site for his current works so must be a member here, I also notice there's a book 2 as well.
Edit, https://keypicking.com/viewtopic.php?t=11980

Look here for the book

https://www.blurb.com/b/6565733-the-ext ... -collector