Contrary to what a lot of people might think, lock picking isn’t only done by burglars and thieves with plans of making themselves rich by illegal means. No, it’s also a craft that has seen many interested lock pickers challenging themselves with even more complicated locks. An interesting skill to acquire, it doesn’t really take much at all to get started.
Know how to begin your lock picking journey below:
Why learn to lock pick
So you don’t exactly have any plans of breaking into other people’s homes or business offices. That’s great, but neither do a lot of people who practice lock picking. Many do it for fun, as well as for bragging rights. More than that, though, learning how to pick locks can give you a better awareness of physical security. We all keep our prized possessions behind the best locks that we can procure, but after successfully picking your first lock, you’ll realize just how little security these can actually contribute. This eye-opening realization can help you come up with more sound ways to keep your family and possessions safe. Additionally, learning to lock pick can actually come in handy when you’re, say, locked out from your own home because you left your keys inside.
What you need to get started
There is a variety of tools that you can use to pick a lock, but when you’re just beginning to learn this skill, the following will suffice:
Practice lock
Beginner lock pickers typically aren’t advised to start practicing on doors since you might find yourself biting off more than you can chew and actually compromising your home’s safety. Instead, get yourself a practice lock which, as its name suggests, is used for practicing lock picking. There’s no need to get the fancier ones as you’re really just trying to get your hand in for the first few tries. You can go for 5-pin locks to practice on, or buy a set of these, remove pins from some of them, and work your way up from unlocking 1-pin to 5-pin locks.
Lock Pick Set
The contents of a lock picking set can vary, but they traditionally include torsion or tension wrenches, a hook pick, half diamond (steep and shallow angles), a snake rake, a long double ended pick, an S-rake pick, and a double round pick.
Unused Locks
Once you’ve gained an understanding of how locks work and figured out all your practice locks, you can start practicing on unused locks of varying shapes and styles. Not only will this “train” you in various kinds of locks available, it will also be more challenging and keep your lock-picking training more interesting with the variety of locks available in the market.
Lots of patience
While it’s easy to get the essentials down and pick your first beginner’s lock, moving up the levels can take a lot of focus and skills, not to mention plenty of time to practice. You’ll need lots of patience in order to keep moving forward and improving! Learning to pick locks can start easy enough, but it’s a perishable skill that you’ll need to keep at in order not to lose. Continue to challenge yourself more and more with more difficult locks and you’ll one day become a lock picking master of locks!
