 Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining. I'm the Greek. I'm the chapter lead for tool in Colorado Springs, Colorado And this is my first DEF CON presentation. So even though we're not doing this in The real so to speak I do know the tradition. So I'm going to carry it out Opa Shouldn't drink glen levitt like that anyone who's familiar with the fallout franchise of games will know where the Title for this talk comes from you know our bobby pins more effective than lockpicks. The answer is you know, obviously no but What if you don't have lockpicks? Well You planned poorly you should have them with you there's only a few states that are That having them on you is a crime in and of itself now internationally I'm not familiar with the laws, but Obviously check your state and local authorities to make sure that it's legal for you to have them on your person In the state that you're in Like I say there are some states that they're not legal to have on you at all times Virginia, Mississippi Nevada which is strange because that's where DEF CON's at all the time and There's one more Mississippi, Ohio, Nevada in Virginia. They're considered prima facie evidence of the intent to commit a crime So if you're in those locations don't have them on you So if you don't have them on you in those locations, what do you do if you need to pick a lock? Legally, of course you do what we've always done you make your own, right? You might have started with the paperclip you might have actually tried the actual bobby pin I Don't recommend that you destroy Your wife's or your significant others under wire bra until you get permission to do it just ask permission There's other things that you can use as well like spark plug gappers These work very well But there's a lot of material there that you have to cut away if you want to make this into a usable lockpick one of the things that I Really like to use is Street cleaner bristles street cleaner bristles If you walk down the street, you can find them after the street cleaners gone by or you can luck out like I did I was driving home one day and it was in my truck and I saw on the side of the road a broken street cleaner Head and so I Stop the pickup truck and I got some street cleaner bristles now one of the things that professional Quality lockpicks have over anything improvised is generally the handle These are a HPC set here. These are out of the tool tremendous 12 They have a substantial handle to them And it's easy to hold on to cuts down on fatigue while you're picking And it just feels better in the hand Then if you were to just have this And try to pick with that. So what I'm going to show today is how I improvise handles you can do Several different things. These are just swizzle sticks Some sort of a straw that I found to put over the outside of this homemade tension wrench Um, I did the same thing with this double ended pick here But these are all picks that I've made by hand using street cleaner bristles And a dremel tool and so that's what we're going to go over here today The basic idea is just to give Some heft to the tool Something to hold on to something to give it some rigidity There's multiple different things that you can get from hobby stores out there This is a plastic that can be used I tend to prefer brass But there is also I'll see here a couple of them that I've used an aluminum tubing on and it all works basically Exactly the same whether or not you're using a square stock like this which Gives you a little bit more of a feel that's similar to this type of pick Or if you're using round stock Um, again, I tend to prefer the round stock Just Maybe for aesthetics. I have no idea what There is a benefit to using square stock and and that is that uh, you know these flat picks and a square handle um Don't roll away So the first thing to do is Essentially figure out which one you want to duplicate Um, I like to mask things off and hold them in place I get a good piece of stock if it's Um, rusty like this, I'll take a piece of um Again, this is improvised right? This is actually wood sandpaper, but I'm going to use it Okay, now that I have this relatively cleaned up I'm going to take the pick that I want to duplicate. I'm going to do This one from the tremendous 12. It's uh Man, I have the hardest time with that word sinusoidal Yes, so sinusoidal We're going to duplicate this one what I like to do is match it up and then tape it in place with just some sort of tape to uh Keep it in place while I trace onto it So that's the basic gist of it right there. So now it's copied onto the stock and Um, next I'll get out the dremel tool and I'll cut it out So anyways, not identical. I can take more off of the one that I'm fabricating But uh at this point in time It's close enough Like I say, I can take more off as needed But I also want to make sure I retain the strength of the pick Okay now for the handle I'm going to use brass I want the overall length to be Just about the same size as all the standard picks. So kind of measure it Put a mark on it So be the overall length of the pick Approximately and then as far as the handle goes how much of that needs to be handle Somewhere in there It's not an exact science We'll cut the uh We'll cut the pick off with the dremel But we'll use a tube cutter for the Handle stock I ended up making two This one here with the round stock And then I decided to make one with the square stock for the handle Um go over what I do to Secure the pick within the handle and that's essentially Just some epoxy putty. I forgot I was working on cardboard here JB Weld sets up pretty quick. Um Put as much in the In the handle as you can Press it in there And then press The pick in this stuff I can hardly work with it anymore. It's almost completely set up But you still can do a little bit More it's not even sticky anymore. It's it's done. It is JB Weld So one of the things about working with your own picks is you can make your Own designs based off of some need that you might have with a specific lock This pick is one that I use quite regularly. It's It seems to work fine Here's the one that we just made I'll probably clean this up over time and Tighten up the tighten up the cuts on it a bit. Let's see how I like the The square handle might be interesting Here's the one with the round handle basically the same pick But just with the round handle Made that one today as well This is a pretty standard Cross-section right here. This one I made quite a while ago. I actually even Took solid brass stock and put it into the base. I think that's probably a little bit too much Because they do break But like I say You can make this specific pick that you want This one has a rounder or a larger diameter barrel for the handle than the rest of them Again experimentation This is Just a very tiny Hook pick for a very specific lock Um The same with this here. This is a very tiny half diamond again for a very specific lock One thing that's important to note is that the street cleaner bristles Have a tendency to snap when you bend them into say like a A tension wrench like this and This is similar to put a handle on a tension wrench, but you'll notice that the the bend is not You know, um super extreme like you might find on A uh A mass produced handle like this where it's Got a nice bend in there and you can Get to that It is uh, I think it does make the metal a little bit more brittle But um, you can make your tension wrenches out of the same material You just have to be a little bit more careful when you bend I think I showed These are ones with a Half bend in the middle and this one in particular Is tapered to where it'll fit a smaller keyway again the same Thing that uh, I talked about with regard to The specific picks that you can make that are specific to your lock You can make a tension wrench that is specific to the lock that you're trying to pick um Let's see So to the question, um, you know our Our Bobby pins or Improvised lock picks are homemade lock picks Better than or as good as comparable to Picks that you may buy I think that it's very situational the The specific picks that I have made for specific locks Were the only ones that I can get that would work for those locks I had to make them and then they worked um The quality I think is um better with the professional made picks obviously um the Reproduction is better with the professional made picks but I guess it's the the trade-off between The purchasing of something And um being able to Make it on your own For years I didn't have access to Picks or any place to get them at and so I made them on my own um, and uh I think that that's where the Fulfillment I guess comes in with doing this yourself Um, thank you for your attention to this. I would Um, ask you if you're interested in this to please um Post some questions in the channel so we can ask so we can answer them Um, and uh, we can talk about different materials Uh different ways of fabricating Um, we can poke fun at how bad I am with the dremel tool Um But also if you're interested in this look for a local tool chapter Look for others that uh want to um To explore this lock sport with you and with us and again, I appreciate your attention Thank you very much. I hope you enjoy the rest of death con safe mode and uh, this is the greek and Yasu, I'm not going to drink it like I did the first time this stuff's too good