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Lockpicking
Dec. 3rd, 2004 05:00 amA Pointless Story
One of my proudest moments came one evening in A.D. 2000. I do not recall what day or month it was, just that a neighbor had locked himself. I overconfidently offered to have a go at opening his door for him. Prior to this I had practiced a few times on locks to see how picking was done, but the only lock I'd ever opened was one on an office desk. Not exactly putting me in the class of great burglars.
But I grabbed my screwdrivers and a paperclip from my apartment and sad down next to this door. I applied just a little bit of tension to the lock cylinder with one of my slot screwdrivers while I carefully raked the straightened paperclip over the tumblers. Usually this only results in about fifteen minutes of me feeling a few tumblers catch, only to have them all come plinking down just as I'm getting close and me eventually getting bored.. This time though, this time every thing went exactly right. The pins caught and inside one minute I had the lock turning and opened his door. I think my neighbor was both relieved and slightly worried that he lived one door away from a guy who could do that.
But hey, major achievement type thing.
Inspired by a short history of safe cracking that I read after seeing a link on![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nancylebov's journal.
One of my proudest moments came one evening in A.D. 2000. I do not recall what day or month it was, just that a neighbor had locked himself. I overconfidently offered to have a go at opening his door for him. Prior to this I had practiced a few times on locks to see how picking was done, but the only lock I'd ever opened was one on an office desk. Not exactly putting me in the class of great burglars.
But I grabbed my screwdrivers and a paperclip from my apartment and sad down next to this door. I applied just a little bit of tension to the lock cylinder with one of my slot screwdrivers while I carefully raked the straightened paperclip over the tumblers. Usually this only results in about fifteen minutes of me feeling a few tumblers catch, only to have them all come plinking down just as I'm getting close and me eventually getting bored.. This time though, this time every thing went exactly right. The pins caught and inside one minute I had the lock turning and opened his door. I think my neighbor was both relieved and slightly worried that he lived one door away from a guy who could do that.
But hey, major achievement type thing.
Inspired by a short history of safe cracking that I read after seeing a link on
nancylebov's journal.