Wed Aug 31, 2022 3:09 pm by MHM
Great stuff, glad I could help.
You can actually use that slight dragging to try to set the pin rotationally as you set it vertically...the theory is that you manipulate the pin to snick it into a gate as you're lifting it. When it does drop into a groove like this it's an unmistakeable (and I must say very gratifying) feeling. The problem of course is that if you're picking the lock blind, you don't know where the gate is and you don't know whether it's a pin with a false gate, so you don't know which way to twiddle the pin.
If you DO happen to know where the true gates are it becomes a lot more feasible to do this, and there is a video on picking Medecos somewhere that discusses this in detail. The guy speaks about mentally mapping the pin orientations as you go, so that once you know where the gate is for a given pin (by trial and error in successive iterations through the lock), you try to orient the pin properly on subsequent runs through.
Whoever it was that posted the first video pick of the M4 copped some heavy and in my view justified criticism for having a camera shoved up the lock's keyway from the rear. He was thus able to see where the pins were as he was setting them and knew which pin he was on, whether or not it was set or had dropped, and whether it was rotated correctly or needed a twiddle. It's far better to be able to do it without this assistance.