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Can anyone recommend a good lock pick set and maybe some locks to buy to practice on? My mom expressed an interest in lock picking a while back and I was think
by cgag 15y ago
Can anyone recommend a good lock pick set and maybe some locks to buy to practice on? My mom expressed an interest in lock picking a while back and I was thinking of getting her some stuff.
- nirvana 15y agoI don't know if this is really the case, but I thought lock picks were something you couldn't easily buy. But my friend from MIT told me that the Cambridge street sweepers used metal brushes and the bristles were long flat pieces of spring steel, and showed me a lock pick set that he made from that with a bench grinder. He had a few spare pieces and that's what I made mine out. Both the tension wrench and the rakes can be made out of this kind of spring steel.
- burgerbrain 15y agoLock picks are generally quite easy to acquire: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004EAME4W/ http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004EAME4W/ I don't know if they will refuse to ship to jurisdictions where laws are tighter.
- evilduck 15y agohttp://s.dealextreme.com/search/lock+picks http://s.dealextreme.com/search/lock+picks They definitely don't care about our laws. Worst case scenario is customs snatches them, but that seems unlikely.
- ChuckMcM 15y agoI attended a talk that Matt Blaze gave on picking locks and he discussed various 'tools' that folks use. The fact is that many locksmiths make their own out of bits of steel or steel wire that has been bent into shape. Of course there are kits with a mix of tools in them that are often available. But another thing he had done was to take a bunch of door locks and mount them into a board in a 3 x 3 arrangement (9 total locks) and removed pins so the first lock was 1 pin the next lock had 2 pins, etc up to 7 or 8 pins. Then you could practice picking them from easy (1 pin) to hard (8 pins). I found that to be a really clever thing and if you know someone who is re-keying their house or for some reason decides to replace all the locks, you can often get those from the locksmith doing the work.
- xorglorb 15y agoIt depends on whether you want to make them yourself or buy them. If you want to make them yourself, street sweeper bristles work well (just follow a street sweeper on a bicycle and you'll get a few), as do the strips of spring steel inside of windshield wipers. Then, just look up some tutorials on how to make them (I'm sure youtube has a few decent ones). If you want to buy them, Southord has some really nice sets, and I personally recommend the PXS-14 for a beginner (I use it daily).
- danparsonson 15y agoThis isn't a recommendation as such but may be of interest to you: http://learnlockpicking.com/ http://learnlockpicking.com/ They sell a re-keyable pin tumbler lock that comes with a variety of different pins so you can practise increasingly difficult configurations as you learn.
- vl 15y agoYou really only need a good small flat screw driver, piece of wire and pliers. It also has an added benefit of not unbeknownly breaking numerous laws or other local regulations.
- Luyt 15y agoThe guide explains this in the appendix. You can make them from street cleaner bristles, bicycle spokes, brick strap, old springs etc...