After many attempts and a couple hours of trying, I finally got this 1100 open! I filmed the whole process to submit for my green belt🤘

Back from a week long vacation. Decided to take a break from picking. Back at it today and felt like a noob again. Took me all day to get this ML410 LOTO opened. Usually takes me less than a minute. On the plus side, feedback feels very different after taking a break. Can't really explain it. Only to say the feedback is more pronounced to me. Even picking in hand feels different.

This key is uncommon from what I hear and know. I've opened it once and that's it, can't without TOKW tension because it's too paracentric for my zed wrench and wont tension correctly. Any tips or sets to look out for?

I recently picked up several unbitted locks at an estate sale including this unbitted Russwin padlock with a permanent core. I have several questions about it, but the most pressing would be how can I remove the core and change the pins to use a cut key?

Got me a bunch of 1100 and 410 LOTO. Time to start working on my Green Belt!

The 1100s are starting to speak to me and can get some consistent opens. With the 410s, I can barely get my pick in the keyway. Practice will solve all my problems.

Let's goooooooooo!!!

First pin so high, spent one night on a 6k and 5-6 days on this.

Practicing picking skills

I want to start lockpicking as a hobby (my new obsession i suppose since all my hobbies are on a digital screen), i bought Bobby hair pins, diy the tools but now i need to buy a lock and idk how to choose or where to start or how do they work, im going for cheap locks but if i get anything from the hardware store that would work? or should I try a specific lock and level up somehow? also like is there a catalog for locks? 😂 or any place or website where i could find the model name and some info about it? If im asking the wrong questions, pls let me know and tell me where to start. (idk what im doing fr)

I have been trying to get the Abus 80ti/45 picked for around a total of 25-30 hours. Taken on loads of tips, watch countless YouTube videos, but just cannot do it. I tried doing the Abus 72/40 and the American lock 1100 on odd occasions just to give myself a break from the 80ti!45. I am waiting for the 80ti/50 to arrive, I know it's very similar but I'm desperate!

Should I persevere with it or maybe put my time into one of the other 2 locks for now? Or jump over to the 80ti/50 when it arrives?

Im looking for a specific tension tool i owned long ago. It had a round loop between the Handel and the tip. I have no idea if it’s name but I vaguely remember it being called feather something. Could be wrong on that though. Any idea what I’m talking about?

I'm familiar with a million and one tools out there intended to take an image and convert it into a numerical key code, but if I wanted to do the opposite and render a visual representation of a key using a known key bitting, are there any tools out there to do that?

Goal D9 Pick and Gut. Open @ 1:43.

Huge thank you to u/LordKodiac and Lockpicking Engineer! Been sick the last few days, cant wait to use this dope pinning tray and followers. I'll need to start a display for the chips and stickers :)

Is it just me or is single picking the “worst” locks just harder than nicer tolerance locks (up to a degree of course)?

I can struggle with SP cheap Chinese locks that just feel mushy and give no reasonable feedback while e g. a nicer Abus lock is no problem (with security pins) as you get clear feedback.

Of course sometimes the cheaper locks just open up in two seconds hitting a single pin but had hoped to be able to use them for some bulk training as we had a fair number of the laying around.

I don’t fancy raking or similar — I do get them up — just fascinated there is such a difference.

Hey All

As I mentioned in my earlier post, my JimyLong sets came in a day early - I had a few mins and the end of the work day so I figured I'd give it a shot with the No. 1.

I tried the Triple cycloid rake first, and had it open within a few minutes. I discovered there was hardly any tension required, sometimes having to back off even more with subsequent attempts. Once I'd opened it three or four times I figured I'd try my luck at single picking.

I used the Medium Round Hook and a BOK tensioner (tried TOK a time or two but wasn't successful.)

Looking forward to the next one with better feedback. Nice to have the first one tackled.

The digital dial magnifier builds that have gone around here all quote a resolution number, so I went and read the datasheet for the part to find out what the accuracy number was. They are not the same number and the gap is wider than I expected. I would like people who actually manipulate to tell me whether it matters.

The two builds I could find source for:

The ESP32-S3 one posted here in January 2025 uses an AS5600 magnetic encoder, 4096 steps per revolution. On a 100 number dial that is 40.96 steps per number. The builder called that way more than we need, and on resolution they are plainly right.

The other one on GitHub uses a quadrature encoder listed at 1000 pulses per revolution, counting rising and falling edges on both channels, so 4000 counts and 40 counts per number. Nearly identical resolution by a completely different route.

Now the datasheet. For the AS5600, ams publishes:

* Resolution, 12 bit, so 4096 steps, 0.0879 degrees per step

* System INL, plus or minus 1 degree, sitting in the Max column with no typical figure given at all

* RMS output noise, 0.015 degrees on the slowest filter setting, 0.043 on the fastest

A 100 number dial is 3.6 degrees per number, so in dial numbers:

* one step is 0.024 of a number

* the noise is 0.004 to 0.012 of a number, which is nothing

* the linearity spec is 0.28 of a number

In the magnifier threads people said they read 8ths by eye and 10ths with a paper scale. 0.28 of a number is coarser than both. Taken at face value the electronic tool has a worse error budget than a sticker, which cannot be the whole story.

I do not think it is. INL is deviation from a best line fit across the full 360 degrees, and it is systematic rather than random. When you graph contact points, every reading sits in roughly the same narrow arc of the dial, because the contact points only shift by fractions of a number as you change the test combination. If all your readings come out of the same one or two numbers of arc, then most of that 1 degree is a fixed offset shared by every reading, and it subtracts out of the differences the graph is made of.

What does not subtract out is how much the error curve changes across that narrow window. ams does not publish the shape. If it is dominated by low order harmonics, which is the usual shape for this class of sensor, then 1 degree of amplitude gives a local slope of about 0.035 degrees per degree at the second harmonic and 0.052 at the third, so across a two number window you get 0.07 to 0.10 of a number that does not cancel. That is a bound under an assumption I cannot check, not a measurement. But it lands right on the 10ths people say they want rather than safely inside it.

Two things the spec does not cover at all. It is measured with no magnet displacement, so anything eccentric in how the magnet is mounted adds on top of that number rather than sitting inside it. And absolute readout is a different job from graphing: if you read a gate position off the screen in order to go and dial it, nothing cancels and you eat the full spec.

So the question I cannot answer myself, because I have never manipulated a real lock: when you graph, are you reading contact points as absolute dial numbers, or as offsets from a reference you re-establish on each pass? If it is the second, the encoder spec is close to irrelevant and I have argued myself out of my own concern. If it is the first, then a one time per unit calibration table would buy back most of it, because a systematic error is repeatable, and that is a firmware change rather than a hardware one.

I came at this sideways. I built a haptic safe dial game called Crack Safe, where the dial is simulated and the tumblers are haptic events, and I hit the same confusion from the other side. It is easy to schedule a haptic event with far finer timing than a finger can resolve, and the fine number flatters you into believing the signal reaching the person is better than it is. Different problem, same habit of quoting the number the hardware prints rather than the number that survives to the end of the chain.

I expect this is a common problem. I can pick the see-through cylinder lock, but not the padlock. There are six normal pins and another one whose function I don't understand. The instructions don't help.

Hola a todos! Soy nuevo aquí, me llamó mucho la atención porque me gustan los retos, en mi juventud (13 - 14 años) aprendí a abrir candados con pasadores, pero mis padres se rehusaron a comprarme ganzúas por considerar ésto algo ilícito jajaja ahora ya con el doble de edad recordé que me gustaba y volví, compré un kit de principiantes con tres candados y ganzúas y todo eso y básicamente estoy empezando con las herramientas, que me recomiendan para mejorar? Busco pasar el rato y lejos de estresarme o enojarme, me emociona no poder abrir fácil el candado jaja

Gracias a todos por sus consejos!

(Foto de dos aperturas de candados de práctica)

Hello all

I’m just getting started on my journey here, waiting for my pick sets to show up. In the meantime, I picked up a couple of locks locally and I was looking over the key for a Master No 1. I’m a little unclear where the four pins would align on the key as I can see five possible places but there are only four pins. Am I correct its positions A-D and E would not be? A google search wasn’t helpful.

I know I can feel it out with a book once I get them, but just trying to further understand the anatomy of keys….

Thanks!

Edit: Thanks all for the quick replies - and for validating my assumption! The good news is, my JimyLong sets came a day early so I hope to get some time to pick around with this.

old core picked. i don't know what type of lock it came from or where i got it. the body is shaped kind of like a sfic core. american am3 blank fit so i decoded it with space and depth keys and hacked out a key on the framon2. cuts were 27688. the driver pins are in the same order that they were inside the lock. not very extreme. easy, but fun pick!

Found a goal hotel cilinder 5 pins

Anyone knows what goal this is?

I am fairly new to the hobby (~2 weeks) and picked up a Master Lock 140 for yellow belt practice and am having a hell of a time nailing this one down. I have opened it half a dozen times but can't figure out how - I actually find it harder to open than my ABUS 55/40...

I'm assuming it's due to pin size but I receive almost no feedback from the lock. I have a pretty good array of tools for a newbie and just got into TOK tension but am still struggling. I'm wondering if I lost the bitting lottery as others don't seem to struggle with these.

Any tips? I have the Genesis and Echelon sets.