Try a locksmith supply house. Look under "Locksmiths' Equipment & Supplies" in the Yellow Pages. Your locality, State or the company may have requirements, such as having to prove you are a locksmith or showing a drivers license; call and find out. Look for mail order houses in the Appendix. You can also check on the Web for suppliers
2. How can I make my own picks and tension wrenches?
You can file or (more easily) grind picks out of spring steel. It is best to use spring steel - sources include hacksaw blades, piano (music) wire, clock springs, street sweeper bristles (which can be found along the street after the sweeper has passed), metal from a plumbers "snake", etc. In a pinch safety pin steel, or even a bobby pin (much worse) can be used. When grinding, keep the steel from getting so hot as to anneal (soften) it. You may have to re-harden/re-temper it. (See a book on knife making, gunsmithing, or machine shop practice for a discussion on heat treating steel. Spring steel is hardened and then tempered/drawn so as to retain some hardness and to get quite a bit of flexibility.) Some people prefer a rigid tension wrench and just bend a small screwdriver for this, but many prefer a slightly flexible wrench and use spring steel.
The "MIT Guide to Picking Locks" and the "Eddie The Wire" books (see below) cover making these tools. There are many places you can buy picks and tension wrenches. See the appendix.
Steve Haehnichen
Another archive has some pickes illustrated, but does not show the rake pick.
3. What books can I get on locksmithing?
Bill Phillips has written a number of locksmithing books. For the beginning or aspiring locksmith here is an excellent and practical introduction and overview:
Locksmithing
McGraw-Hill 2000 ISBN 0-07-134436-5
paperbound 7 1/2" x 9", 550 pages, $34.95
An excellent encyclopedic reference:
The Complete Book of Locks & Locksmithing, 4th ed.
McGraw-Hill, Inc. 1995 ISBN 0-07-049866-0 $24.95 (Paper) USA
and another one:
Professional Locksmithing Techniques, 2nd Edition
TAB Books/McGraw-Hill 1996
ISBN 0-07-049867-9 (Paper) $36.95 (Paper)
also many people think highly of:
Eddie The Wire: How to Make Your Own Professional Lock Tools
"Eddie The Wire" Loompanics Unlimited
ISBN 0-685-39143-4 4 Volumes $20
Your local book store should be able to order these for you. You can find other titles under "Locksmithing" in the Books In Print Subject Index, which any decent bookstore should have. Also see the Appendix.
4. How do I continue learning about locksmithing?
There are several things you can do to continue learning more about locks and locksmithing. One, of course, is to subscribe to a locksmithing magazine. Some years ago I compared the National Locksmith to the Locksmith Ledger and felt that the latter was a bit better on technical info. Call yourself a Student Locksmith, or perhaps a Security Consultant (surely you have given some advice to *somebody*!). Also read The Complete Book of Locks & Locksmithing, 4th ed. by Bill Phillips which was mentioned above.
Lock companies are starting to use the Internet to distribute information. See the on-line resources section below for many lock related web sites.
But all this reading can help only so much, so you have to continue buying various types of locks, taking them apart, figuring out everything about them, and installing, removing, modifying them. Buy some key blanks, make up a master key scheme, and file the keys to fit (assuming you don't have a key machine yet) - filing may take a few minutes, but it does work. Maybe buy a re-keying kit (kit of different size pins, with a plug follower) and do some re-keying for your family or friends (the same size pins fit, I think, the familiar Kwikset and Schlage pin tumbler locks) so that their deadbolts can be opened with their normal front door key. (Hint - when disassembling a lock you may want to do it inside a transparent plastic bag. Then the small pieces and springs will be trapped and won't go flying across the room, leaving you with a sad look on your face.) (A follower is used to push the plug out, when the pins are at the shear line, therefore keeping the top pins and springs in place. Then the rekeyed plug is used to push out the follower, again keeping the top pins and springs in place. Similarly the follower can be used when loading new springs and top pins, keeping the loaded ones in place.)
Or buy a deadbolt installation kit (hole saw plus template - I think that Black and Decker makes a good inexpensive one, available at better building supply places) and put in a few deadbolts for your family and friends - charging them only for the materials plus a couple of bucks towards the installation kit - and re-key the deadbolt for them, too.
Buy or make a pick set, and use your practice locks to practice picking. Do you have a good locksmith supply catalog? If not, give a call to a local supplier. Help people at work who have been locked out of their desks or filing cabinets. Desks usually have wafer tumbler locks which are *much* easier to pick than pin tumbler locks. Filing cabinets are not as easy to pick, but are pickable (actually some are very easy to pick - they vary greatly) and also can be opened by pushing a flexible plastic ruler between the side of the sliding drawer and the cabinet body - carefully inspect some working cabinets to see what I'm talking about.
5. How do I open a car door with a Slim Jim?
Besides picking the lock, one can open a car door with a wire coat hanger. Open the coat hanger by unbending the wire, leaving a small loop at one end. Insert the looped end of the wire hanger between the rubber weather stripping and a side window. Hook the looped end of the wire around the button of the door lock and pull it up to the open position. Many lock buttons are without a lip, an anti-theft measure, so that the wire coat hanger slides off without lifting it. One can also try to snag the door handle and pull it open.
The Slim Jim, a thin strip of metal with a notch cut at the bottom side, slides down the passenger window into the door. The notch tries to catch a rod running inside the door that connects the lock and the lock buttons. Pulling on this rod pops the lock into the open position. Many modern cars have the rod shielded from this access. Most cars today have many wires running through the doors to control such things as power windows, power locks, heated side view mirrors, lighted key ways, and burglar alarms. Some newer cars have airbags in the doors - setting them off is a very dangerous and expensive mistake! The Slim Jim can snag one of these, or a mechanical part and cause damage. Most locksmiths advise against using a Slim Jim except on old cars. The pros often use wedges, lights and manuals of parts locations to avoid damage and increase their success rate.
6. What is a jiggler key?
A thin piece of metal cut in the general shape of a key, the jiggler slips into the keyway of many locks and most car locks. The jigglers in the set come with a variety of general cuts that vaguely resemble cuts on keys. A jiggler is slipped into the lock and moved around, much as using a rake type pick, until the lock opens. If one jiggler does not work then the next one in the set is tried. Probability of success depends on the skill of the user and on luck.
7. Is there an ethical dimension to locksmithing?
Yes. Locksmithing is an old craft, and there is a strong tradition of ethical responsibility. A trainee (apprentice) learned about locks and security, and was supposed to have the personal integrity to avoid abusing that knowledge. This "do no harm" concept has been incorporated into the 'hacker ethic' which is found at MIT (in the "hacking community") and elsewhere.
