I remember reading this as a teenager and buying my first keychain lockpick set. One of my favorite sayings is that, "In order for a locksmith to fix a lock, he

I remember reading this as a teenager and buying my first keychain lockpick set. One of my favorite sayings is that, "In order for a locksmith to fix a lock, he must first understand it's inner workings. Just like a locksmith, before we can understand X, we must understand how it works first." I fell out of practice, but whenever I cruise by a hacker space with a lockpick area I will try and take the time to test my abilities. These days lock technology makes some locks very difficult (double-mushroom pins, etc), so I usually can only do the medium difficulty locks. I had amassed a huge collection of lock/key templates and even some stuff about safecracking, but unfortunately had a hdd crash and lost most of it. The bottom line with lockpicking, like other things, is that nothing beats practice.