On the proper use of bobby pins in escape scenes.

Your character is sneaking into a closed library, stealing documents from a filing cabinet, or escaping a cell. It’s a hard sell to try to convince your audience that there isn’t a lock around to stop them, so you quickly add lock picking to your character’s resume. You want to write a little more than “she leans over to pick the lock”, but it is probably wrong to have them jiggle a bobby pin in the lock, right? So, what are the details necessary to write a lock picking scene?

The short quick version: describe them using two tools, a L-shaped ‘tension wrench’ to twist and the lock pick itself in a raking motion. That is the bare minimum you need in order to write a perfectly passable lock picking scene.

However, if you want to write a more accurate scene or you need to show from the character’s perspective that they are very skillful at lock picking, you are first going to have to understand locks.

Types of locks

There are more types of locks than I expected, when I first started researching. However, most lock types either weren’t very common or can be grouped into one of two categories: warded and tumbler locks.

Warded

The first lock is a called a warded lock. This is the lock that you might think of when you think of fancy shaped keys. Warded locks have been around since antiquity. They were popular in ancient Rome and China, and were common until the 1700s. So if you are writing historical fiction or medieval styled fantasy, these are likely the locks you are dealing with. Warded locks have very few moving parts, but they are also not particularly secure. Today they are typically used in cheap bike locks, locker locks, and handcuffs.

Warded locks are named because of the ‘wards’ in the lock that prevent an incorrect key from turning. If a key is not the right shape, then the key will run into the wards and keep the key from turning. A correct key will turn past the wards, unimpeded, and push a trigger that opens the lock. The trigger is almost always in the same place, so if you look at a bunch of different keys for the same brand of cheap padlock, all of the keys will have a tab in the same place (near the end of the key) that hits the opening trigger.

Pin Tumbler

The second type of common lock is the pin tumbler. The oldest known lock is actually a wooden variant on a pin tumbler, but they didn’t really reach popularity until more modern times. Today, pin tumblers are easily the most common kind of lock– door locks, nicer pad-locks, cabinet locks– anything with a flat, toothed key.

Pin tumblers work off the idea that the key would turn the core (yellow cylinder above) and release the lock if the pins weren’t in the way. The pin is split into two parts, the key pin (red) and the driver pin (blue). Either pin can get in the way of the core, but if you line them up just right, then the break in between (shear line) will line up with the edge of the core. A key that matches a lock, will line up all of the shear lines and the core will turn freely.

I’m going to mention just one more kind of lock. The lever tumbler is similar to the pin tumbler lock, it just uses large lever-like plates instead of pins, and the key lines up holes in the plates rather than shear lines in the pins. They can be a tiny bit harder to pick, and are more common in the UK than they are in the US. However, the method to pick them is very similar to pin and tumbler locks, and thus, they will just be grouped with the pin tumbler locks.

Lock Picks

Lock picks can range in fanciness from a bobbypin to an entire set of different shaped picks with squishy handles. Generally, however, they can all be described as thin strips of metal with a little bit of a wiggle or hook on one end and maybe a handle on the other end. Warded locks and tumbler locks require different types of picks, and tumbler locks require a part besides the pick called a tension wrench(which I will describe in a moment). Lock picking sets are often kept in a little envelope, wallet, or wrap of fabric, to keep them all together. To give you an example of what a very nice tumbler lock picking set looks like, here is a picture of the prettiest set off Amazon:

And a warded lock picking set:

Picking Locks

Picking a warded lock

Warded locks are typically more simple to pick, so let’s start there. Warded locks have only one part that has to move in order to open the lock. This makes them cheap and rugged locks, but it also makes them very easy to pick. The most common way to crack a warded lock is with a skeleton key.

What is a skeleton key (besides an awesome name)? Well, the wards in the lock hit flat parts of an incorrect key and prevent the key from turning and hitting the trigger. What if you just cut off all parts of the key that are hitting the wards? You would be left with a key with all of the unnecessary parts stripped off and just a little tab of metal on the end: a skeleton key.

Skeleton keys are typically made by taking a key that is for the same brand of lock that you want to break, and filing off all but the tab that hits the opening trigger. However, if your character cannot get a hold of a similar key that will fit the lock, a thin T-shaped piece of metal will often work just as well. Have your character put the pick or skeleton key into the lock, and twist. The pick might not twist if they chose the wrong shape of pick, in which case they would reach into their case and pull out a slightly different shaped T pick. The character then twists and gently shakes the pick until the lock snaps open. Note, this will probably not work in real life unless you’ve done your research and know a bit about the lock you are trying to pick, but it is good enough to write a character doing it because you can assume they have already done all the research and practice they need.

There is another, simpler way to open a warded lock if it is a pad lock. Pad locks, if you have ever opened one, have a little divet that holds the metal ‘U’ in place when it is locked. A shim, is a thin piece of metal jammed between the ‘U’ and the latch that holds it down. Shimming is very quick. Very, very quick.

Picking a pin tumbler lock

The picking of pin tumbler locks is a bit more involved but is also much cooler. In a pin tumbler lock, if you have a key then you already know the proper distance to push the pins all at once. If you don’t have the key you have to push the pins one at a time with a pick. A few common types of picks are shown below.

In order from top to bottom: diamond pick, hook pick, rake. This image is a template, which is often used by DIY-ers to make their own lock picks out of sheets of metal or band-saw blades.

However, it is not quite as simple as stuff the pick in the lock and jiggle. There is a second tool which is necessary to complete this picture: the tension wrench. Your lock picking character begins by using their secondary hand to put a ‘tension wrench’ into the bottom of the key hole and twisting the plug of the lock. The tension wrench is very important, because it pushes the core of the tumbler lock just hard enough to trap the driver pins above the shear line once they are in the correct place.

Observe the pretty gif, below. This is what your character is doing when they insert the lock picks into the keyway. The torque wrench is inserted and one of the blue pins catches. A yellow circle appears in the gif over the one that has caught on the shear line.

Using their primary hand, the character will use the lock pick to push on the pins. The blue driver pin that is jamming the core will move up until the edge lines up with the shear line. The core will then turn just a tiny bit and catch on the next pin. The overturned core traps the driver pin (previously blue, now gray) above the sheer line, but the key pin (red) falls back into the keyway. That pin is called “set”. This is repeated until all the driver pins are set, and the core can turn freely. This can be done one pin at a time with a hook pick, as is shown above, or multiple pins at a time with a rake pick, as shown below.

The goal of pin raking is just to hope that the combination of pressure from the tension wrench and the movement of the pins from the rake will speed the process along without having to pay much attention. Rather than testing each pin, the lock picker just runs the rake over the pins a few times and sets the pins without paying too much attention. A lock picker in a hurry will often use a rake pick first. A rake will work on most locks. With a little luck and in the hands of an experienced lock picker, a rake will take seconds. So, if your character is a decent lock picker and comes up against a cheap lock, they can believably open it very, very quickly. In something like a few seconds.

A few seconds to open a lock might be great for some scenes, but what about when you need to build some tension? The plot requires that the lock takes a good several minutes so that they can have snarky dialogue and get very nearly caught by the guards! Never fear, you can write a scene that take as arbitrarily long as you like. Occasionally, even if the lock is very cheap and the picker is very good, the pins are just randomly arranged in such a way that the rake won’t work very well and the pins will “over set”. An over set pin is when the key pin(red) pushes up too far and gets stuck above the shear line. Sometimes an over set pin will fix itself, but usually all of the pins have to be reset by releasing pressure on the torque wrench and starting over again.

If a lock picker can’t get a rake to work after a minute they will reset the pins and try again a few times. If the rake still doesn’t work after a few tries they may switch to a different rake. This process can take quite a number of minutes of intense concentration, even for a good lock picker. Need to up the tension even more? No problem, because when your character finally determines that they can’t rake the lock open they will have to settle in and take even more time to do pin by pin picking.

Security Locks

Security Locks are so named because they are more secure. Go figure. They include extra features to make picking either harder or nearly impossible for amateurs who don’t know what they are doing. These are brands like Medeco or Schlage. They are, however, more expensive. In the US in particular, most home locks are very cheap and have no features to prevent picking. Check your door. If the lock on it says Kwikset, then your door can be opened in seconds by someone with a few weeks worth of skill. Worrisome, to say the least.

In Europe, it is harder to buy a lock without at least a few basic features to make picking harder. However, for an experienced picker, it is still very possible to pick them. It will take longer, but the time to pick them is still around two to ten minutes.

To Conclude

Finally, to address the question that you have all been asking yourselves, can you pick a lock with a bobby pin? The answer: Yes.

To pick a tumbler lock with bobby pins you need two bobby pins, or to break the one bobby pin into two pieces (which is hard, I’ve tried). One bobby pin to be the torque wrench and one to be the pick. In fact, in the links at the bottom, there is a very good video that uses bobby pins to explain lock picking.

A warded lock is even easier; it is one of the few places where shoving a single bobby pin into a lock one handed and twisting might work. There are two things to consider. First, is it reasonable for the lock to be a warded lock? If your character is trying to open a medieval lock (in which case I guess it’s a hair pin instead of a bobby pin?), handcuffs, or a locker, then their bobby pin gambit might work. Second, did they bend the bobby pin to put a little L on the tip? A bend at the end of the bobby pin will turn it into a lock pick, an unbent bobby pin is just damaging the inside of the lock.

This post was mostly about technical details of lock picking, and as you can tell, there’s a lot of it. The really interesting parts, those things that turn lock picking from a process to an art, take even more time to explain. Look for them in the next post on lock picking.

References and Links

Lock Picking Video (using bobby pins!):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cjuT_63Ioig

The document formerly known as the MIT Guide to lockpicking

http://people.csail.mit.edu/custo/MITLockGuide.pdf

Raking:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R2r07NN21vM

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