On 5/4/2021 1:11 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 5/4/2021 1:49 PM, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Tue, 4 May 2021 11:20:05 -0400, Frank Krygowski wrote:


BTW, we have a friend who went through a divorce. Her
husband took the
keys to her shed's padlock. She asked me to open it for her.

It was a Masterlock. I tried the rapping technique but
wasn't able to
make it work. I was SO disappointed! It's almost like
stuff on YouTube
can't be trusted!

I've been doing various forms of locksport:
http://lockwiki.com/index.php/Locksport
erratically for most of my life. I'm not very good at it,
but am
getting better. When the lockdown started last year, I
began spending
more time at home, which gave me an excuse to practice
some more. It
takes time to assemble the necessary tools and get the
feel for how
SPP (single pin picking) is done. I'm not that interested
in bypass,
raking, bumping, jiggling, comb keys, etc. If you want to
open the
lock with minimum effort, look into those, especially raking.
https://www.google.com/search?q=lock+rakes&tbm=isch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFEa_j3D97E (2:44)

I've played with various picking techniques you mentioned,
but didn't want to advertise the fact. And as I said, I'm
not very fast. I thought rapping might be both inconspicuous
and fast, but I couldn't make it work.

(I cut the shackle with a Dremel.)

It's usually easier and cheaper to cut the door shed hasp
than the
lock shackle. The better padlocks are worth far more than
the door
hasp. However, if you must cut, an angle grinder with a
narrow cutoff
disk is probably the easiest but noisiest.

I have a 120V angle grinder, but the woman's shed was
probably 100 feet from any outlet. My "dremel" is actually a
Black & Decker clone. I found that its power transformer
outputs DC voltage in the range of 12V (plus or minus), so
for portable use I long ago rigged up a plug to power the
tool from a surplus motorcycle battery I happen to have.
That worked well enough for this task.

The biggest frustration was breaking then replacing a couple
of the fragile Dremel abrasive disks.


Professional models are $200 to $800:
https://www.mscdirect.com/industrial...c-grinder.html

The preferred 'catalytic converter acquisition' models are
$39.95 (shopliftable at big box stores).

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971