 is log picking techniques and tools for high security. I am the Gigi Breadman, GBM, and I guess let's get started. Okay, this presentation is meant to give you an understanding of the fundamental principles that most high security logs are the ones that I'm going to cover. The principles in which they use to try and stop people from picking them. This talk is not meant to be a talk on specific makes and models of logs. A lot of different models have their own little quarks, and that's up to the picker to find out as he picks them. But the basic principles in which they're based on are the same. Alright, let's go. Okay, over here. We'll start off with pin tumbler locks, how they work. I'm sure everybody's familiar with these, residential, business use. You probably have tons of them on your key room. We're going to talk about how they can be picked. Then we're going to move on to mushroom spool pins. These are like a little upgrade for your basic pin tumbler locks. We're going to talk about how you go about picking them and what the good points about them are. Then we're going to move on to tubular locks. We're probably really familiar with these as well. There are lots of vending machines, stuff like that. I'm Canadian, so I'm not sure how lots of stuff goes in the United States, but notice recently a lot of the tubular locks are being changed over on vending machines, and now they're switching to abloy locks. So, a little security upgrade. Once we get past the tubular locks, we're going to move on to medico and abloy locks. From the tubular to the medico locks and abloys, the skill level to open these locks really jumps and the time that you'll need to practice and when your technique will also jump. They're not easy to open, and they're not for people who get frustrated easily. Then afterwards, I'm going to go into what do you do if once you come up a new lock that you've never seen before, what resources can be used to discover how the lock works, maybe even how do you find out about restricted tools that can be used to open them. And by restricted, I mean that they aren't available to your everyday hobbyist type person. The locksmithing industry likes to keep stuff pretty locked down and keep their trade secrets secret. So, let's start. Here we have basic pin tumbler lock. With your pin tumbler lock, there are two main parts. You have the cylinder, can you guys see the most good? Yeah, okay, good. You have the cylinder, and within the cylinder you have the plug. In the cylinder, you have the springs and the upper pins. And in the plug, you contain the lower pins. Lower pins are the ones that are cut to different lengths and this determines the depth that you'll need to cut your key when making a key. When picking these locks, you can see the shear line. This is the key thing you're looking for. The shear line is what you're going to be using to manipulate this lock. And of course, okay, the boarded keyway. Basically, the only deal with this is that they try to make it hard for you to insert foreign objects into the lock to manipulate the pins. And pin tumblers, there can be the number of pins and the spring tension, stuff like that, can vary. Same with the type of keyway. Okay, why can you pick a pin tumbler lock? Okay, this is an overhead cutaway of the cylinder. These would be the outer walls of the cylinder. This would be the outer walls of the plug where the plug meets the cylinder. This line here is the center of the plug. Ideally, in theory, and these little holes, these are the pins. In theory, all these pins should be aligned on the center. But due to mass production and, well, versus cost in machining, you cannot always guarantee that these are lined up straight. So as you can see, they're skewed and offset here. So what you can do is, if you can get a pick through the boarded keyway and get your tension wrench into the plug to slightly turn it, you will be able to bind the pins against the shear line. And by, because they are not all binding at the same time, you can individually set the pins one at a time. And like on this lock example, you can see that from the back to the front, that pin two would be the first to come if you were turning it clockwise to bind against the shear line. Then you would move through the lock with your feeler pick or rake pick and find that pin and set it first. The pin would then turn slightly and you would go on to set the next one that's binding the most, which would be, in this example, pin one, so on and so forth. That's the basics of how you pick a pin tumbler lock. What type of methods can you use to pick pin tumbler locks? Well, pretty much anything. These aren't very tricky locks. A lot of people are surprised how insecure these are because it's a false sense, well, not a false sense. It's just meant to keep people out the general person. But if you can get a pick, like, say, a paperclip through the worded keyway, you can use that as a pick. These locks aren't very tricky. You can use a standard feeler pick, rake, any type of rake you want. There's lots of different types of rakes out there, modified, whatever. Or you can use a combination between the rake and feeler pick, which is the diamond pick can be used to set pins individually, like a feeler pick, or it can be used to rake the lock, like a rake. Or there are lots of pick guns available that work on spring principle to knock all the pins up, separate the upper and lower pins at the shear line, and then allow you to turn the lock, the plug, and cylinder. These locks aren't very technical, and with minimal practice, they'll be over these locks, no problem. And due to the low, the tolerance is very good in this lock. The pins are kind of not centered well. You can use pretty much any type of tension that you want. It's not very critical, the torque that you put on the plug. However, if you're talking about a more pricey, better pin tumbler lock, you might need a more sensitive tension wrench to manipulate the pins. All right, what do you do? What's the next step up from pin tumbler locks? The next step up is the mushroom pin. The mushroom pin is a replacement for the upper pins in a pin tumbler lock. You can see that instead of like a standard upper pin is just basically a cylinder, but mushroom and spool pins have different diameters throughout the pin. The whole idea being that it will give you a false sense that you have set the pin and it will wedge itself against the shear line and not allow you to pick the lock. This is a step in the right direction, but it is only a baby step. If you've mastered pin tumblers, it won't take you much longer to master mushroom pins and setting those. You can see the whole way that you get around the mushroom pins are that you must pick them first. If you do not pick them first, you will turn the plug too far and due to the different diameter, they will snag and wedge at the shear line. What type of tool would you need to pick mushroom pins? A filler pick is good. You can use it manually set individual pins. That's what you use if your skill level is fairly good, or you can use a diamond pick. While it works well, you can set the individual mushroom pins once you've found them and then you can break the remaining mushroom pins. A good way to tell if you are dealing with a lock that is mushroom pin is maybe you've been picking it for a while and it's not giving, and then you notice once you've picked a pin, if it still slides up and if you can still push the pin up after the plug has turned a little bit clockwise and clockwise depending on which way you're going, it is most likely a mushroom pin because if you are in fact binding on the shear line and you set the upper pin above the shear line you should not be able to move the lower pin up any further. It is a good idea to avoid just trying to break these locks. It does work, it can be done, but you're kind of hoping on dumb luck that you don't bind the pins. You may get it, you may not. It's better just to concentrate, work on your skill level and you'll be open, no problem. Alright, tubular pin tumbler locks. These are found on a lot of vending machines and things like that. They are similar to your standard pin tumbler lock because they have both a set of upper and lower pins that are spring loaded. They're all similar because they are many variations. You can variation between four to eight pins in the tubular lock and the alignment of the pins can also vary. You may have them evenly spaced around the circle. You may not, they may be three on one side tightly packed together and two spaced on the side. It really depends on the model. Here you can see, this is an example of picking a tubular pin tumbler lock. You can see the similarity between this lock and the pin tumbler. You have a lower pin, you have an upper pin followed by a spring. The difference however is that the shear line is a circle. So what's going to happen is you can use a tension wrench, if you can get it in there to turn clockwise, or you can use a small screwdriver. It also works. There's a little more cumbersome. I definitely recommend just taking some time, make your own custom tension wrenches to turn these locks. It'll save you a whole lot of time and grief. But what you can do once you're turning it, the pins will bind on the shear line. You can use a small piece of stiff wire to press the pins down and set them. You have to go around just like you would using your feeler pick to pick a pin tumbler lock. You'll have to go around the circle and feel which one is binding the most. However, why is this better than normal pin tumbler lock? Because as you can see the shear line, all the pins line up. You turn this lock in eighth after you've unlocked it. The upper pins and the lower pins will realign with, say, okay, say you're at pin one. You turn it, it's going to now pin one. Lower pin one will be aligned with upper pin from the second one to the right. And it will relock itself. So if you're picking this by hand with this method, it's going to be slow and time consuming because it's going to relock itself all the way around. You're going to have to pick it several times to open this lock. And you're going to have to pick it several times to relock the lock. And if you, heaven forbid, can't get it all the way, you may not be able to get the key in there to reset the lock. I'm kind of hooked. So more specific locks come, more specific tools. Here's your standard tubular lock pick. They come in, this is pretty much the standard one. They come in seven, eight, depending on the model of the lock. Different types of pins, different alignments of the feeler picks. These are feelers here that can be set to different depths to open the lock, to manipulate the pins. What is the benefit of using this type of tool? Instead of doing it by hand, it's faster, easier to pick. Once you've picked it, it will not reset on you. That's the main thing. Drawbacks for this is, depending on a specific lock, you will need a specific tool to open it. It's going to cost you more money, just a little less skill involved if you want to just do it by hand and be skillful, I guess. Then what happens later is, if you have tubular locks with very strong springs in the bottom, it becomes very hard for you to manipulate the pins by hand or even using the previous tool here. It's very hard to set a pin and then leave it set because of this force acting back on the pins. It's very strong and it will reset itself. So, along comes a new tool. This tool is basically the same thing as that one, except the feelers are threaded at the top here. I don't know if you guys can see that with dials so that once you set one of the feelers to a certain depth, it will stay there and the spring cannot force it back up even if it is a very strong spring. Once again, getting into more specific locks, high security locks, the tools like this are quite pricey and this one I think is about $300 US. It's kind of incentive to do it by hand but in this case, you're not going to really be able to do it. I'm going to have to have a tool. Medical locks also known as biaxel pin tumbler locks. Now, here's where things start getting really tricky. With a biaxel pin tumbler lock, you not only have to worry about setting the pins to the proper height and worry about pins binding on the shear line, you also have to deal with the sidebar. If you do not align the pins, you can either set them, spin them, left, right, center and in many locks, it's either goes 20 degrees left, 10 degrees left, center, 10 degrees right, 20 degrees right. If you do not rotate these pins properly, the sidebar, there's a groove in the lower pins that allows the sidebar to slide into it when it's aligned properly. If you do not spin them, even if you get the pins to the proper height, if you have not rotated the pins to the proper alignment, the sidebar will not drop and you will not be able to turn the plug. It's not tough enough. A lot of medical locks also have mushroom pins in them. So, not only do you have to worry about rotating them properly, raising them to the proper height and worrying about if the pin is mushroomed or not, so you have to pick it first. You may also, some locks also have what are decoy grooves in the lower pin. These are the grooves, like you would see, that allow the sidebar to drop down. However, they're too shallow for the sidebar to completely drop down. So, it gives you a false sense that you have aligned the pin and the pin is engaging the sidebar when, in fact, it's still not set to the proper rotation and the sidebar will jam. Picking medical locks is pretty much a standard way. This method has been around for a while now. This is a slow and difficult process. This is not... If you're a thief, you're not going to do this. It's going to take you far too long to manipulate this lock. And when I say too long, I'm talking like to open it in an hour if you're good and you're lucky. So, it's not a piece of cake at all. The most important thing you've got to worry about for your tools when you're picking the medical lock is you need a very sensitive tension wrench. If you do not use very light torque on these locks, the lower pins will bind against the sidebar and they will not rotate for you. You'll not be able to manipulate them to the proper degree. You may set the pins to the proper height, but the sidebar will still be stuck and you won't be able to open the lock. So, what do you do? Well, for a better rotation of the lower pins... By the way, this is called a white crane tension wrench. I think Stephen Hampton is the one that came up with this. It's a very nice wrench. I, myself, prefer the standard feather-touched tension wrench than you will see in locksmithing stores. But it's beside the point. What you can do to get better rotation on spinning the lower pins is you can modify your diamond pick. You can take the top, the very top of the diamond pin, spin it about 15 degrees and then file that to a point. By doing this, when you're doing a raking motion, it allows you to more easily spin the lower pins as well as lift them to the proper height. Once again, this is a very slow and tedious process. It takes a long time. But it is the whole point of doing it. It's a puzzle and the whole satisfaction of opening the lock. All right. What about other tools? I'll talk a little bit about a restricted tool here. Several years ago, I heard a rumor of a tool that would be able to decode medical locks. Rather than pick it, this tool would allow you to find the proper rotation and height of the pins and then make a key. This isn't as easy as it sounds because even if you do know what the key looks like, the keys for high-security locks such as medical are controlled. You just can't walk into a store and get one cut like your Ford car key. They are controlled and there's databases for proper owners and such things. So yeah, it's not that easy, but anyhow. This decoder, after a little searching through the US patent office, does anybody know... I think this tool is actually made by Fella. I've seen a couple pictures of it, but I'm not too sure. If anybody hears the diagram from the patent office, if anybody is a locksmith here and uses this, I'd really like to talk to you about it. You can tell me how this thing is and if you use it. I'm not sure actually even if this particular tool works anymore because in the original patent, as you can see, it's a Wallback 1976, also has countermeasures of what you can do to a medical lock or a biaxial pin tumbler lock so that this decoding method will not work. So I don't know if it's still a viable method for opening medical locks, but I have seen pictures of it on the net. So here, Hintabla's tool has a dial here to find the proper rotation of the pin, insert the front of it into the lock and manipulate the pins individually and it has a decoder for which pin you're working on as well as the height of the pin. I'm assuming. Alright. We'll talk a little bit more later on about how to find out about restricted tools. Now we're going to move on to the ablar locks, also known as the keyed disc tumbler lock. Basically these locks work similar to a safe or a combination lock. You have several discs in a row that have to be aligned to the proper, I don't know, it's kind of hard to see on this diagram, but these discs are notched and when you insert the key into the lock and turn it, the key has different levels of material cutaways so that these discs will turn either a little bit lots or not. So when that's done, there are little grooves in the disc that will allow the sidebar to drop down. These are a lot different types of locks than pin tumbler locks. I noticed that they started to come out with these locks more on vending machines and parking meters, a lot of applications like that but I still have not really seen this used widely in residential or business use, like for offices and stuff like that. And also in the front, a lot of these locks that are used in vending applications have a free spinning faceplate to prevent people from attacking the lock physically and trying to drill it out and gain access that way. Alright, how do you go about opening these locks? Well, since there are no springs in this lock, like the pin tumbler, you don't need a standard tension wrench. What you can do is you can use two L-picks or feeler picks to manipulate this lock. The key is that the last disc in these locks are usually the one that engages the cam to spin the lock and usually the last one to allow the sidebar to drop down. So what you can do is you can use one L-pick to engage the last disc and turn it giving you tension. You can then use a second L-pick to manipulate the rest of the discs and what's going to happen is really helpful for you to mark your pick so that you know which disc you are working on takes out a lot of the guesswork in where you are and what's going to happen is when you are picking this lock you will feel the sidebar rubbing against the disc and once you have brought it to the proper alignment of course because there is that groove you should feel a slight give and the tension is gone now from that disc because there is a gap between the sidebar and the disc. So what you are going to do is basically you are going to have to go back and forth with your second L-pick while keeping tension on the first L-pick. This is a more technical approach and requires some skill and practice. That's the key. If you want to get into lock picking you are going to have to practice lots and lots of practice. There is another way to open these locks. This is Stephen Hampton came up with this it didn't even occur to me but you can impression the lock I don't know if any of you guys are familiar with impressioning of pin tumbler locks and such things but these locks can actually be impression. What you do is you can take your standard copper pipe a small diameter like plumbers often use file it down on your bench grinder cut it away half way and then polish it up so it's nice, very polished. Then like in impressioning a pin tumbler insert it into the lock turn it slightly so that the copper will bind against the discs and the thing that's going to happen here is you then remove the copper and you'll see, take your light, shine it along the pipe and you'll see smudges or small indentations along the pipe where the discs with the most that are friction where the discs that are tight against the side bar are rubbing the copper So what you do is you take your file and you file down where the smudges are You have to be very careful when you're doing this to use the proper size file If the file is too thick and you take off too much you're done, you're going to have to start all over again So it's a slow polish again You have to go in several times stick the piece of copper pipe in turn it slightly pull it out file it repolish it so you can see where the next where it's next going to bind put it back in and so on and so forth The advantage of this is that once you do this you don't have to re-pick the lock you need to open it a second time However, you've got to remember that the whole reason why this works is because you're using a soft metal and the metal used for the disc is harder than the copper and that's why it'll bend So you have to be very careful not to damage the temporary key otherwise you're going to have to impression the lock all over again Yeah, then you could if you wanted to if you could get a key blank you now have the proper sort of degrees to which the crescent is at if it opens you can then just take that take your files and measure it and then file a harder piece of metal so it won't be damaged as easily What type of lock are you talking about? All these? Where about right here the angling? I don't understand what you're saying Come up to me afterwards and we'll talk If anybody has any questions or whatever just come up to me afterwards and we'll talk about it and stuff like that New challenge, plan of attack This is basically the formula that I use when going about opening new locks that come against a new lock you get curious, want to know how it works Basically, a lot of times locks will be stamped with the manufacturer but sometimes and some applications are not like new pay phones and that they don't have the manufacturer stamped on them but they will have markings usually like logos and different symbols like that if you take those, just write them down take them into a locksmith new shop find a similar lock with the same stamps then you can find out the manufacturer once you find the manufacturer you can narrow down what model that lock is once again just talk to your locksmith do some searching on the manufacturer's web page to find out in which type of situations their particular models are employed then you can get a similar practice lock for you to practice picking and that's when basically fun starts and you learn how to open these locks if you can get the patent number off the box or off the lock you're going to save yourself a lot of trouble because you'll then be able to go to the US patent office very helpful site can't stress it enough you'll be able to go there, you'll be able to read the technical descriptions as well as read the diagrams on how the lock works this is good for several reasons and I'll go into it in a minute here after you found out about the lock and what it is you can search the patent office for the patented tools to bypass the lock and you'll find a lot of times that it will take you a little bit to find the lock, the bypass tool you'll have to search around it may be difficult it will be a lot easier if you know the technical description of the lock like is it a biax up in tumblr you can really cut down your search tons and then it's all about sitting down at your workbench disassembling the lock and practicing come up with a plan of attack it's usually not that difficult you can just think rationally what type of tools what does the key look like how can I mimic the key to open this lock patent office well, it's a gold mine basically if you want to sell stuff in the states and you don't want somebody to steal your idea you're going to have to patent it therefore, even though the locksmithing industry likes to keep these things secret which is a good thing you can still trace the paperwork back and find out what type of tools are new and if you are so inclined you can build your own tools from the technical descriptions or if you're lucky to have friends in the industry they can give you a hand also it's very good if you are not too sure on how the lock works you don't want to pay a couple hundred bucks for a high security lock and then find out that you've broken it when you disassembled it it really sucks alright, this is basically what you got you go to your patent office not like Google, just the content's better alright, you go through there you can search all different ways basically what's going to happen is standard search when you come up with a patent it's broken down into different areas there's the abstract the second summary of what this law patent does it's going to be company names those will help you if the patent was originally filed by the company if it was not they brought it out later you're going to have to go to some trouble finding out the technical terms then once you're there if you can find a good patent that will help you probably well it's not that hard you get stuff like this you got a basic decoding tool for biaxial pin tumblers and then you get the good stuff the technical description of how that tool works why is it different than all the other tools out there why does it deserve a new patent things like that alright kinda rush through a little bit basically here's my sources Steven Hampton he comes up with this new book for modern high security locks it is very good I only have really one problem with that book is that I wish he would have released it three years ago it would have saved me a whole lot of effort and frustration that's about it I suggest if you are interested in picking high security locks pick up the book you'll give you a good starting point you'll be able to cut through a lot of the having to stumble around in the dark yourself find the new techniques that are being used now and then it will give you an idea of how you can go on and progress past that so yeah I guess if anybody has any questions second I'll be in the in the main area just kinda walking around for the next area I'll have some practice locks out I'll have some medicos that can be disassembled if you want to take a close look at them if you have your own tools try out the practice locks and just talk I'll be in the main area or if I'm not and you're at another talk see me walking around just grab me and ask me whatever