noob alert

[psykro]

hi all, i just got into picking about 6 weeks ago. i love it. i'm in the bush in east gippsland, australia, on dialup.
at first i tried to learn from utube vids [neighbour's netconn] but ha, well its pretty hard to tell wtf is goin on. i'm an old dog with a new trick- sometimes i feel like i'm making progress and then i hit these walls of "what the fuck". i'm currently trying to pick lockwood padlocks... they are freakin hard for me.
the first lock i picked was a shitty little swan padlock [4-pin i think] but the feeling when i got it- nothing like it. from there i found a no-name 4-pin, then a master 40mm 4-pin, and after that a drawbridge 5-pin. at first i just kinda found a fluke maneouvre or trick to open the first two, but it got less satisfying as i went on. plus it didn't cut it on the master and drawbridge.
about 3 or 4 days ago i found this forum and another one, and first heard mention of the MIT and LSI and solomon's guides. WOW. so that's what ur meant to be doing!
so i set about really trying to SPP. when i'm on song i can get all the paddies i mentioned like twice in 2 minutes or so. but other times i just can't seem to pick at all.
perseverence furthers
what really gives me the shits is i've probably practised for about 100 hours and i am unable to get these lockwoods open, but a girl i know who has spent about 10 minutes practising has opened two of them [ tho not in my company so she may be geein me up haha]
i am completely addicted so its only a matter of time, but right now these lockwoods are giving me the shits. i vaguely remember opening one of them about 10 days ago but it seems more and more like a dream [it was silly season, beer and other things involved] the longer i try with no success. but i do remember shouting to my mate "I GOT A FUKN LOCKWOOD!"
awesome forum
oh yeah i am a bit of a ranter, i know.
peace and good luck

[xeo]

Welcome.

Nice. Perseverance definitely pays off once you crash through that next barrier. Keep at it and SPP is definitely what you want to focus on.

What tools are you using?

[LockManipulator]

Welcome!

[piotr]

Welcome to the forum. There are a few Australians here on the forum.

Lockwood padlocks are difficult for the beginner. AFAIK all of the non-repinnable Lockwood padlocks have spool driver pins in them. I think your friend is just winding you up

It may be less frustrating for you to use a lock that you can re-pin, either a re-pinnable Lockwood padlock or a Lockwood 201 rim cylinder. With these you can pin them progressively i.e. pick them with less than the full amount of pin stacks and then work your way up to a fully pinned lock. You can also buy spool pins and introduce just one into the cylinder to see how it changes the behaviour of the cylinder.

[Oldfast]

Welcome! Glad you're here. I'd go with what Piotr's saying. I think you'll not only learn quicker, but with less frustration.

....[it was silly season, beer and other things involved]....

P.S. This does not help matters LMAO

I look forward to seeing more of ya. You're in the right place!

[psykro]

thanks evryone , apologies for lateness of this post, my son turned 10 on thursday and my family came out to stay.
aaarrrgghhh, i cant see the thread while i type this, so i cant address things to the people that said them, but:

i'm using a long hook [ i think u'd call it not too sure haha] i made from memory of a photo i looked at on the net, ditto a half diamond. theyre hacky blade. at first i was using ground down allen keys as tension wrenches but they dont have much feel, so i moved onto a piece of dipstick i had in my scrap pile, however i stuffed up the temper so it is a bit fatigued for stiff locks.
so i bit the bullet and ordered some sparrows sets for myself and my lad. ifind the tension wrenches to be superior to my improvised ones, but i'm having better success with my homemade picks than the sparrows! maybe cos i have done 80% of my practice with them, not sure.

cheers for that advice, i rekn i will invest in a repinnable lockwood. there's just too much going on for me to work out whether ive overset, hit a spool, underset, whateverset...
on the subject of lockwoods, they have such tiny movement of the barrel its hard for me to find a binding pin, it gets me pretty crazy!

thanks to everyone who said hi and look forward to learning how to pick with this forum as an ally

p.s. my son and i climbed a local mountain today and at the summit there was a decommissioned solar array part of which was 4 cabinets which had housed inverters and uhf repeater shite. someone had previously boltcut the latches for whatever reason and kindly left 3 lockwoods inside the cabs. so i got 3 practice locks in an unlikely location ooh yeaah serendipity : ]

psykro

[piotr]

The Sparrow's kits are good; when you start-up with a new set (with a different weight, different handle material, different rigidity) there is always some re-learning that has to happen.

Regarding tension wrenches, you can make them from street sweeper bristles and windshield-wiper inserts. You can make very good TOK (Top Of Keyway) tension wrenches using "music wire".

[psykro]

thanks piotr,
ive not had anything to do with music wire before- where do i get it?
also, the link u gave for the repinnable lckwd- is that you? [eb id]
forgive me for asking some questions that are easily found on net as no joke it takes up to 5 minutes to load some pages and i just dont have the time for that shit!! so, apology in hand, is $40 good value for a repinnable lckwd?
cheers

[piotr]

Music/Piano wire is generally found in hobby stores. I bought mine from the UK via ebay. You want wire that is around 0.078 inch (1.9812 millimetres) for tension wrenches: look here. Ebay is a good source for most things including locks. A$40 is a good price for one of those Lockwood locks (they cost up to double that at one of hardware stores like Bunnings).

Are you an an ADSL dial-up plan?

[uklockpicker]

psykro[/quote]

so i got 3 practice locks in an unlikely location ooh yeaah serendipity


Welcome to the forum psykro , Lol what a place to find x 3 lockwoods haha love it

Hope you enjoy your stay here

[psykro]

piotr- i wish i was on adsl!!! i live in a tiny settlement which i guess doesnt have the population required to install adsl into our exchange [pop. approx. 60 ppl]. satellite is an option but its expensive to install and data is outrageously priced too. tho i am gonna have to do it regardless. so, yeah i am on straight old dialup like last century style. sometimes i cant even load my email as everything is coded for broadband these days and i time out.
piano wire being round i gather u beat it flat or file it yeah? cheers mate for info

hi uklockpicker, i will check out your site : ] i am totally into metal so going on ur smiley i should haha

[psykro]

unbelievable. my lad, 10, has just spp'd our 4-pin master twice in a minute! it took me about a week to get that lock out when i began. he's only been picking for about an hour over the last 2 days.
now to hand him some of these lockwoods...

[piotr]

piotr- i wish i was on adsl!!! i live in a tiny settlement which i guess doesnt have the population required to install adsl into our exchange [pop. approx. 60 ppl]. satellite is an option but its expensive to install and data is outrageously priced too.

Wow! Any idea if/when they will be laying fibre in your area for the NBN?

piano wire being round i gather u beat it flat or file it yeah? cheers mate for info

You could beat it if you have an anvil but you'll still likely have to file it to get a tight fit. Most of us just bend it into an 'L'-shape, file it on both sides so they are flat and fit snugly in the top of the keyway and then trim it so it doesn't interfere with the first pin of the lock cylinder.

[psykro]

cheers piotr, you're a gent.
no fibre rollout here unfortunately-not enough taxpayers i would say!
still chipping away at these %$^&*ing lkwds, about to buy a repinnable, as it seems it will be the only way i will work the fuckers out.

[piotr]

about to buy a repinnable, as it seems it will be the only way i will work the fuckers out.

Just a note on the repinnable Lockwood padlocks. They don't have any security pins but they are a bitch to open because they are very well made. They are manufactured to very small tolerances for deviation from the spec so their feedback is subtle. Also their pins are nickel-silver (IIRC) so they provide a different kind of feeback. But because they can be re-pinned they are suitable for learning.

Sideshowmick (another Australian on this forum) is very good with the entire range of Lockwood padlocks and cylinders so he may have some good advice. It would be good to have a cutaway version of something like the Lockwood 120/50 padlock but I've never seen any for sale and I don't have a mini-mill to make one.