 Welcome to intro to lock picking. I'm Dr. Tran. So I'll be walking you guys through kind of how to start picking locks. Has anyone here never picked a lock before? Okay, so hopefully we'll change that. At the end of this presentation, we have tables out there with public locks, public picks, and other experts, much better experts than I, wearing tool shirts that should be able to help you get started. So first, we have rules because of course anything good has to have rules associated. There are kind of two golden rules of lock picking. And as long as you follow those two rules, 99% of the time you will stay out of trouble. First rule, do not pick locks which you do not own, unless the owner has given you permission. And when we say own, we mean the literal sense of own. Just because you have the key to a lock does not mean you necessarily own that lock. It only means you have permission to use that lock. So situation where maybe you're office building or issued an office key, you don't own that lock. You have permission to use that lock or an apartment building. You don't own that lock. The landlord does. So don't pick locks which you do not own unless the owner has given you permission. The locks that we have out there on the table, tool owns them, but we are giving you permission to pick them. Second rule, don't pick locks upon which you rely on. So this means don't pick your front door lock. Though it is rare, there is a chance of you breaking a lock. So if you're picking your front door lock, all of a sudden you've broken it, now you can't lock your front door. That's just bad news. So again, follow these two rules and you will stay out of trouble, 99% of the time. So what you learn is lock picking is actually a very simple skill to learn. It is not, Hollywood actually portrays it somewhat inaccurately. You see them just stick a paper clip in and it pops open. It's not that easy, but it is pretty easy. And I'll show you why. So the most common type of lock that you'll find in the U.S. is what's called a pin tumbler lock. You've probably heard of this term before where, and pin tumbler locks are used in door knobs, pad locks, dead bolts. And when you look at a pin tumbler lock, if you look into the keyway you'll actually see a little bit of that pin. However, what you don't see if you had X-ray vision is that there is a pin stack. You have this entire larger metal piece out here holding everything together is called the housing. This smaller cylinder is called the plug. That's the part that turns when you insert the proper key in. Then you have the key pin because it interacts with the key. You have the driver pin and then you have a spring holding the pin stack in position. Now we don't call it a top pin and a bottom pin because depending on where you are in the world this will be mounted in a different position. It could be 90 degrees, it could be 180 degrees. So we avoid the terms top pin and bottom pin and we call it the key pin and driver pin. Now another important component or concept is called the shear line. That is where the plug and the housing meet. Without a proper key if you try to turn that plug the driver pin will be blocking the shear line preventing that plug from turning. That's what keeps the lock closed. But if you insert the proper key it raises that pin stack to the shear line allowing the plug to spin. Very straightforward. Now of course in real life locks aren't going to have one pin stack it will have multiple pin stacks. Depending on the type of lock it varies. Pad locks can generally have three to four. House locks may have four to six. So the number of pins vary. If you are to insert when you insert a proper key the cuts in the key or the bidding will raise all the pin stacks to that shear line allowing that plug to turn freely. If you have one bidding off whether it's cut too low you still have a driver pin block of the shear line. Even though you have four out of five that block is not going to open. If you have a bidding cut too high you still have a problem but now a key pin is blocking the shear line. So you have to have all five pin stacks lined up for the lock to open. So some of you are thinking okay it's like a password. In some sense yes it is like a password. However that analogy starts to break down when you start understanding how locks are actually manufactured. So in the real sorry in a perfect world or in a computer like computer code if you were to type in your password incorrectly you're not it's not going to tell you which character you got wrong in your password but a lock will actually tell you which one you got wrong. In a perfect world let's say this was a computer diagram of a lock where the measurements are exactly the same everything is perfectly straight. If you try to turn that plug all five pin stacks in this case would block you at the same exact time. But in the real world where there are manufacturing tolerances and imperfections this is a picture of a brand new lock by the way you can see there's a lot of imperfections. The bores aren't perfectly round they're not perfectly straight across. I think you can kind of see here if you look at this silver this brass color track here you can see that they're not even perfectly aligned. So in the real world what ends up happening here's a line and this is an exaggeration but you can see that they're not perfectly lined up because of manufacturing tolerances. So what happens is when you try to turn the plug one pin stack will actually bind before any other one. So you basically now know if you had one character wrong in your password. So again if you try to turn the plug without the key you have the driver pin blocking. However if you apply torque on the plug and you slowly lift the pin stack eventually you will reach the shear line and what happens is when you are lifting that binding pin stack the pin stack does kind of stopping the plug from turning. Once you lift that pin stack to the shear line what happens is the plug will actually turn a tiny bit. The lock won't open but the plug will turn just enough for the next most misaligned pin stack to bind or block. But what's also happened here is as long as you are providing torque on that plug you've created a little lip here for that driver pin to sit on top of it will not fall back down. So if this was a five pin lock you've now reduced it to a four pin lock. You just have to look for the next binding pin stack to attack. So here it is in action across all the pin stack so you apply torque causing one of the pin stacks to bind. Now you're reaching in there with your pick looking for the binding pin stack which feels different from the others. A pin stack that is not binding you will feel the spring push back down in this case down push back on the pin stack. But once you find the binding pin stack you will feel that there's friction. Eventually when you hit the shear line you will feel a click or the plug will turn a tiny bit and you won't feel that friction anymore. The key pin will kind of fall back down and be free floating. There will be no spring tension on it at all. So as you set pin stacks you are just hunting around looking for the next binding pin stack to attack. And that's basically locking. You are just methodically going through and looking for each binding pin stack and setting it. Eventually when you get all the binding pin stacks the lock will open. Now of course you have to be careful not to lift too much because if you lift too far up you may actually push the key pin past the shear line. And if you cause the key pin to bind on the shear line the only way of resetting the lock is to release the torque and then let all the pins spring back into the reset position. I mean effectively you have to start all over again. There in that situation you have lifted the key pin too far up. Maybe you used too much lifting force and forced it up. But that can happen. And again you have to reset the whole thing. You have to reset and start all over. So lock picking is a very simple skill. With the information you just received that's all you need to get started with picking real live locks. Now some more information about the tools. So the turning tool here or the torque wrench or the tension bar. People refer to it differently. It's basically just a flat piece of metal that has been bent where you can insert it into the key way to apply torque on the plug. Now we recommend that the way you use your tool is to push out, is to push down on the tool further down the shaft. Because if you try to apply pressure closer to the lock it's a little bit harder to have fine motor control over the amount of pressure that you're using. So always recommend that you push down at the far end of the tool. A good amount of pressure to use. This is actually the biggest mistake that beginners make is too much pressure. A good amount of pressure on the turning tool or torque wrench is that the tip of your finger is still flush colored. If your finger starts to turn white that's way too much pressure. And then there are different picks. You have a standard pick here. You have a rake which is a tool that we do not recommend beginners learn. Raking is a technique of randomly jostling the pinstacks that get them to set. We don't recommend beginners try that. And then you have a half diamond which can be used both as a pick and a rake. In terms of lifting technique there is the kind of rocking technique where you're using kind of the edge of the plug as kind of a fulcrum to leverage against the pinstacks or there's direct lifting. Now of course you have to be careful because you can bend the tools. So if you are using enough pressure to damage your tools that is way too much pressure and way too much force. Lock picking does not require a lot of force. A good starter exercise to kind of get used to what the pinstacks feel like is if you're able to find a lock that has one pin and in some of the public locks we have out there there are locks are labeled with a number one. That means there's one pinstack in it. The first thing to do is without any applying any torque to the plug lift up the pinstack with no tension. Feel what that spring resistance feels like. Next add torque to the plug because there's only one pinstack, there's only one to look for. Now this pinstack is binding. Now try lifting it and feel the difference between a pinstack that is not binding versus one that is binding. So once you get used to those two different kind of phases or modes that a pinstack can be, you'll be able to hunt down the binding pinstack. So again I mentioned that there are practice locks out on the table. Here's an example of a progressive set where a number one means that there's one pin, number two means two pin, all the way up to six pins. And of course we have tons of padlocks out there too which are generally three or four pinstacks. So generally some frequently asked questions, so people here, how do you hold the lock? Since the lock is not actually mounted on a wall or anything, sometimes it can be a little bit awkward. If you are right handed this is an example of one way of holding it, kind of holding the lock between your palm and thumb and then using your index finger to apply pressure down on the turning tool further down the shaft towards the end to apply torque. Here are some examples of how to hold, a good example of how to hold the pick. Here are some not so great examples. Now of course it really depends on your style and what your preference is, but generally this is the best way we recommend of holding the pick. And then which direction should you pick from? This is the front of the lock so you should be inserting your tools through this side. This is the back of the lock so you would never see this side of the lock when it is mounted against the wall. So pick from the front of the lock please. And sometimes depending on the locks there is a metal plate here so there is not even this slot on the back. And the two most important things, first being relax. Again the biggest mistake that beginners make is using too much pressure, using too much force, is because they are so intensely focused on the task at hand that they are using too much force. Just relax. Talk to your neighbor. Watch TV or something. Get your mind, don't focus so much on the picking that you are applying too much pressure and tension on things. So relax. And the second important thing is once you get a lock open, yell open, let your neighbors know that it is possible. Brag to your neighbors that you were able to get this as well. So we want to hear everyone scream open when they get the lock, when they pop their first lock open. Okay? Deal? So any questions on how this works? Great. Well everyone, hopefully you have some fun and go pick some locks. Thank you.