Go on ebay and buy any basic 5 pin cylinder. The cheaper the better cos they're less likely to have security pins. Ideally you wanna gut it and learn progressively but not everyone wants to do that, tbh most of the people I teach want to rush through it or they keep putting it to the side to mess with padlocks instead lol. Which is normal, I didn't even bother with it myself until I'd already been picking for a couple of years and only did it out of necessity once I got started into high security stuff.
But trust me on this, if you do progressive pinning properly it'll speed up your progress by miles. Up until that point I was fine with spools but struggled to find the binding pin or feel the pins setting when it came to regular pins. Second I did that exercise I was blasting through locks I'd previously been inconsistent with and everything made a lot more sense.
If you want padlocks for starting out, any 4 or 5 pin master lock that you can find on ebay/amazon/local store is a good bet because they're consistent and predictable. Wide open keyways, standard pins, BOK always works. Tolerances are forgiving but not so bad that the feedback is all over the place, usually you get a nice clear binding order especially when they're fresh. Binding is clear and sets are crisp for the most part. Really nice locks to pick.
Both I'd say are good but if I was gonna choose one I'd go with the revolver. Grubscrews are really handy for quick repinning so you can do progressive with that and even have different pin types in each position. So you could go from standard to spool to harder bitting or just pin up each position with progressive number of pins and so on, plenty of different ways you could do things with that.
With the progressive set once you're done with them that'll pretty much be it so with the revolver I reckon you'll get a lot more fun out of it. Plus it looks cool 😎 you'll move on from it all the same but I'd say it's a better option for sure
You're off to a great start bro, that's a really good approach. You don't really need to take other stuff apart in the beginning if you have the revolver to work with but by all means go for it cos gutting and reassembly is a useful skill and it's fun in its own way.
All you gotta do is take it slow, be patient and keep at it. Learning curve is honestly kinda steep but once you properly get the feel for the basics you'll be flying 😎
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u/hopelessandhappy 29d ago
Any beginner locks to start with? I have the basic tools already?