.:: Keypicking :: Anything And Everything For Locksmiths, Hobbyist Lock Pickers, Locksport, Lock Picking, lockpicks, cutaways and Security. Simply The Best Lockpicking Forum Around!

This may not be the right forum, this isn't so much a review as a major descrepancy I've found. After impressioning a key for a lock and cleaning it up I decided to repin the lock with new pins so I used this decoder and the key did not work. I thought there are many reasons it didn't work, I measured the wrong spot, pins are worn down to match the key. So I decided to measure the key spacing and depth, the pins and they matched up to the references I had. So just to check I measured the decoder and it was off, I thought maybe since I'm realtively new to this I was missunderstanding my references or doing it wrong, so I measured the other 4 key companies and they matched there reference, so here is what I have and where it went wrong:

Master Decoder measurments vs reference(decoder measurments were not precise but close enough to notice the difference.)

Cut depth___Decoder____Reference
0___________.323_________.280
1___________.308_________.265
2___________.292_________.250
3___________.279(.280)____.235
4___________.262(.265)____.220
5___________.250_________.205
6___________.234(.235)____.190
7___________.218(.220)____.175
8___________.202(.205)____ N/A
9___________.186(.190)____ N/A

As you see in the ( ) it could be a shift of 3(3=0/9=6) but even then I'd only hae to 6 on the master scale missing two key depths or a shift of 2 for american key depths. Either way it is off.

Does anyone else have this decoder and have this issue?


I am going to email my findings to MasterLock because maybe I am that new and there is more than just master padlock key cuts, but I doubt that they would be different sizes than that. In the mean time I'm going to find a more accurate decoder for my needs. Any input on this topic is greatly appreciated.

Thank you.

After researching and learning a lot I realized that the Master part of this gauge is not for master padlocks and that is why it is not the same.

Got the same decoder, and good piece of intel. Makes sense though.