What you don’t want to find on a call to pick open a trunk lock.

            When you go out on a service call to open a lock for someone, you hope to get out to the location, open the lock and be on your way. But in life, you can’t always tell what is in store for you. This was the case for an Alabama locksmith who went out on a job to open up a locked trunk. Upon opening the trunk the body of a missing woman, which owned the car, was discovered after being missing for over a year.

            This is an odd story, as the family of the missing woman requested to get the trunk open after a whole year had gone by. And more surprising is that the investigators who originally searched the house, never thought to check the trunk of the woman’s car, simply because they didn’t have the keys to the car.

            This article I came by is brief, so there is probably a lot of the back story got left out. It just seems odd that it would take the family well over a year to do anything with their missing relative’s car.

Read the story here: http://www.myfoxal.com/Global/story.asp?S=12298963

Most Burglars Are Not Trained Lock Pickers

Robbers will employ a multitude of methods to gain entry into your house. The most traditionally thought of method is that of picking a lock. But this requires skill, precision, and time. Many burglars do not have this skill or time, so they will go for the path of least resistance.

Some home break-in practices include:

1. Brute Force—The thief will plain out attempt to break down the door. Either by kicking it in or using another item to bust the door down.
2. Break the lock—Attempts will be made to pry off the lock with a wrench or pry-bar. The thief may attempt to saw off the lock or knock it off with a hammer.
3. Breaking the Glass—Front doors with glass panes may be decorative and pretty, but they leave your locks susceptible to attack. If a robber can simply break the glass and reach in to unlock the dead-bolt and door knob, they will. If you have a door with glass, it is advisable to get a dead-bolt that has a keyed lock on both ends. So even if they can unlock your door knob, the dead-bolt will stay locked.
4. The Door was just unlocked—People can be trusting and will not bother to lock their doors. Some people just forget to lock up when they leave the house. In either case, this offers an easy in for a burglar.
5. Drilling a Lock—Also falling under breaking the lock is lock drilling. The thief will just drill out the lock cylinder and hope that this will allow them to turn the lock open.
6. Spare Keys—Sometime people will keep a spare key somewhere outside of their house. And sometimes they will leave a key with a neighbor, while they go out of town or just for safe keeping. So a thief may have been watching you and saw where you put the key, or they may find it just by chance. You never fully know what your neighbors will do either, or what people they know.

Getting Through a Locked Door With a Credit Card.

From my postings in the past, one may see that I like to go back and look at the lock picking methods highlighted by cinema and television. One of the popular ones back from the 1980s was that of picking open a locked door with a credit card. You know when the private eye needed to get into the suspect’s locked office. He needed nothing but to wiggle a credit card near the door lock and simply pop the door open.

The idea is that you can take any thin plastic card you have, and insert it in between the doorframe and the door where the lock latches. The card can be anything from a credit card to a library card. Ultimately you want to use the card to work down the latch of the lock, so that the door will release. The position the latch is facing will also determine how hard it will be to open the lock this way. If the slanted side of the latch is towards you, it will be a much easier time than if the latch is away from you. You can use your body to put some pressure on the door to aide in the process. By wiggling the card around, you can eventually move the latch down far enough to open the lock. To prevent this method, many doors have wood trim around the doorframe, blocking access to the latch. If this is the case, you may need to employ a different method or remove the trim. Though ruining the trim may not be worth it. And on another side note, this lock picking methods is only intended for spring loaded doorknob locks. It will not work on deadbolts.

And as always, here is a word to the wise. Only attempt to open locks that you personally own and have permission to try and pick. Attempting to pick open locks you do not own is a crime, even if you have no intent of stealing.

When To Drill Out a Lock.

Although drilling out a lock is not a proper form of lock picking. It can be a means to an end. Your clients may have locked an old file cabinet that they do not have the keys to. If the locks are cheap and your client doesn’t use them anyway, it may be better to just destroy in instead of picking it. That is of course, if you can’t manage to pick the lock by traditional lock picking means. Cheap locks may be difficult to pick, since they lack the precision that is used in a quality lock.

The steps to drilling out a lock are:

1. The first step is to try and drill out just the locking pins in the lock. Select a drill bit that fits the longest part of the keyhole entry point.
2. There is no rush, keep drilling at a slow and steady pace until each pin has been broken through.
3. If you are working on a file cabinet lock, hopefully it will only have a couple of pins.
4. After breaking through all of the pins, switch your drill to reverse and pull it out. If you successfully broke through all of the pins, you should be able to turn the cylinder with a flat head screwdriver.

If the lock still will not open, switch to a bigger drill bit and bore out the bulk of the lock cylinder. With the lock destroyed, you should be able to get the lock open.

This is a style of pin and tumblers locks that you often see on bicycle locks, computer cases, freezers, vending machines, and some safes. Instead of using a traditional key, this lock uses a series of pins set up in the form of a circle. The Tubular lock is also known as the ace lock, radial lock, and axial lock. The lock cylinder is comprised of six to eight pins that push towards the front of the lock. The key to the locks has a series of indentations that correspond to the pins in the lock. When the key is inserted, the driver pins and key pins line up with the shear line allowing the lock cylinder to turn.

Tubular locks are harder to pick than traditional locks, but it can be done. The sloppy destructive way is to try and drill out the center of the tube. To prevent this the central part of the lock may be made of hardened steel or contain ball bearings. The easier way would be to get a lock-picking tool made specifically for picking tubular locks. You can try to straight out pick the lock by traditional means, but as you turn the locks each any pin you set will reset itself in the next pin’s hole. So you will need something to hold the pins once you’ve set them. Here is a video to give you a better picture of the lock.

 The lock pick gun is another tool that is making lock picking easier for people to do. In this method you use a tension wrench and the pick gun. The pick gun vibrates and causes the pins in the tumbler to jump; turning the tension wrench while this is happening may eventually catch all of the pins in the right position and allow you to open the lock.

Here is a video demonstrating this.