Why lock picking is an art and how you can write it.

Just the presence of a lock is often enough to deter most people from even checking if a door is open. Locks are clear and powerful signals to Keep Out, and most people are hardwired to respect that signal. Lock picking, spits right in the face of that norm. Lock picking is forbidden and exciting, and you can use that to your advantage when writing a lock picking scene.

In the last lock picking post we went over the technical details of lock picking. That part is good to know, but it is really just the prerequisite to understanding the really interesting bits.

If your character is a skilled dancer, your wouldn’t describe their performance as three steps back, pause, one side step, and keep back straight. You wouldn’t describe a skilled musician by the way they hold their fingers for each note. In the same way, a scene with a skilled lock picker would not focus on the technical details, but on the art, skills, and feelings that they have developed.

The writer of the most popular guide to lock picking, “The MIT guide to lockpicking”, describes lock picking as a zen process that requires focus, practice, and visualization. Richard Feynman and King Loius XVI of France were known to pick locks to relax or keep their hands occupied. Today, there are many people who pick locks, not for illegal purposes, but because it is fun and challenging. Locksport is an outlet for lock picking hobbyists to exchange information and compete against each other, but they adhere to strict codes about only picking their own locks. I’m not saying that any character who knows how to lock pick must care a lot about it, but it might be a fun detail to add if your character has more of a relationship with locks than just cracking them for sneaky reasons. It says something if your character is law-abiding but gets a rush out of picking their own locks, or law-breaking but treats locks as a meditative exercise.

Jargon

You might recall some of the vocabulary used in the last section. The key goes into the key way, the pins that touch the key are the key pins, the pins above them are the driver pins, the cylinder that turns is the core (or plug), and the edge of the core where the pins have to line up is the sheer line. Those are some of the few vocabulary terms that are consistent, but there are many other names that differ from region to region, or are even contentiously debated.

Recall that when a lock picker is quickly moving the pick in and out of the keyway without paying exact attention to which pins are setting, it is called raking. Raking is also known as scrubbing. The picks used for this are often called rakes, snakes, worms, L, or Bogota. That was a lot of jargon, but don’t worry, it is completely accurate to call the pick and the motion a rake if you don’t want to throw less intuitive jargon at your audience.

The L shaped piece of metal used to twist the plug and put pressure on the pins is called the tension wrench. However, it is also sometimes known as a torque wrench. There exist people, out there in the world, who get mildly annoyed when it is called a tension wrench, because the wrench is applying torque, not tension. Despite the perfect wrongness of the name, tension wrench persists as a common name, presumably because the wrench is used to keep tension on the pins. Or something. I guess. Whatever. If you have multiple characters who can lock pick, you could make them refer to the tension wrench by different names. This is an excellent little detail that you can use to make them snap at each other and create some banter during a tense scene.

Now, say your chracter needs to describe misbehaving pins in order to justify why the pick is taking so long. They can refer to the pins as over set, which means that the key pin has gotten stuck above the shear line and they have to start all over by releasing the tension wrench. If the lock is a fancier security lock, the character can refer to security pins, mushroom pins, or spool pins. These are all names to describe different shapes of pins that are harder to pick and are found in security locks. The pins are shaped so that they catch on the shear line and give a feeling of being set– known as a false set— even if they are still keeping the core from turning.

Personality of the lock

Even if two locks are made by the same manufacturer, on the same day in the same factory line, it is entirely possible that one of them opens after three seconds of raking, while the other will stubbornly refuse to open to all but the most particular pick shapes. This is why locks are often described anthropomorphically. Why are some locks more stubborn than others? There is no magical personality imparted to a lock upon creation, it simply happens because pin heights are randomly chosen for each lock and certain arrangements can be particularly tricky to align with a rake. These tricky arrangements can require the careful attention of pin by pin picking. These are the sort of locks that can force even an experienced lock picker to have to switch picks and release the tension wrench a few times.

If your character is an experienced lock picker, you might want to describe them getting to know the lock. They will run the pick over the pins to get a feel for how they move. They will set a few pins to get an idea of where the different pin heights are and if there are any tricky arrangements. They might play with different pressures on the torque wrench to see what changes. They will use all of this to build a visualization in their mind of the lock and all of its quirks. Only then will they switch to the pick that they like using to work with that particular type of lock personality and use what they have gleaned about the lock to open it. You can start to see why this might be considered a meditative sort of exercise.

Raking vs Single pin picking

If you really want to start a holy war between two lock picking characters, have one of them prefer single pin picking and the other prefer raking. As a reminder, single pin picking is when you use a pick to push one pin up until you feel a click, then repeat until all the pins are in place. Raking is when you put a pick into the lock and rapidly scrub it over all the pins, over and over again, until the pins fall into place and the lock opens.

Some facts about the difference between raking and single pin picking: Single pin picking is gentler to the pins and, thus, less destructive and leaves less evidence that the lock has been picked. Raking is significantly faster if you have an easy lock and get lucky.

I’m about to make some sweeping generalizations, but it’s okay, because I’m talking about fictional characters who need to be clearly developed and not real life people who are not beholden to such stereotypes. Characters who are practical, no-nonsense, risk-takers, and just want the job done fast will prefer raking. They will argue for the practicality and speed of raking. They might claim that in the hands of an experienced lock picker, raking can give just as much information about the personality of a lock as single pin picking. On the other hand, characters that leave nothing to chance and consider lock picking to be meditative or something of an art will prefer single pin picking. They will describe raking as brute-force and skill-less. They will describe single pin picking as more pure or sporting. They will claim that an experienced lock picker can be very fast single picking, and that they run less risk of having to try a few times because they will learn more about the lock than they would if they were raking.

Random Extras

A few randomly inspiring things that I found during my research that I thought I would share:

• Blind people tend to pick up lock picking pretty quickly. Lock picking requires a lot of sensitivity to subtle tactile or audio feedback. It also works better if you can visualize what you are learning about the lock in your mind. There is basically nothing new that your eyes can tell you about a lock, which is why some people will pick them with their eyes closed.
• Many tricks that lock pickers and locksport enthusiasts have discovered about bypassing locks have been known to locksmiths for a while. Locksmiths are typically secretive. They pass down their knowledge of locks from master to apprentice over generations. They are held to high standards of ethics, because they are passing on knowledge that could be dangerous in the wrong hands. And, they don’t much appreciate all these methods for bypassing locks being put up on the internet where just anyone can learn them without being held to the same high ethical standards. Some locksmiths have even been known to get a bit nasty towards locksport enthusiasts and lock pickers who make public the innate flaws in locks.
• There are some pretty intense forensics involved in checking if a lock has been picked. Anything other than a key that is inserted into a lock is likely to damage it, since the key pins are soft metal. When a lock is picked, the pins are forced and scratched in ways that are not normal. This leaves marks on the pins and sometimes on the keyway. Even delicate pin by pin picking can leave scratches. This is how forensics check to see if a lock has been picked or not.

Other methods of bypassing a lock

Bumping

If your character has some prep and research time, then they can bring a bump key with them. If they know exactly the kind of lock that they are going to be opening, then they can buy a similar lock with a key or a factory blank, which is a key without any teeth on it. The prepared character will then file down all the would be teeth on the key to get a bump key. A bump key is so named because the key is inserted into the lock and hit sharply in order to “bump” all the driver pins up above the sheer line.

This method works because of the way energy is transferred through solids. Think about a Newton’s Cradle– that clicky ball thing that some people put on their desks– just as the energy in a Newton’s Cradle is transferred from the first ball, through the middle balls, and into the last ball, the energy from the hit to the key is transferred from the key, through the key pins, to the driver pins. The driver pins bounce up above the shear line and the core turns easily

This method requires careful timing, because the key cannot be twisted before the hit, or some of the diver pins might be trapped. It also requires some prep time, and a few loud whacks. This may not be an option for your characters, but it is a very fast and easy method if it is.

Pick Gun

A pick gun is a fast way that police and locksmiths open simple pin tumbler locks. They are used in combination with a torque wrench, just like a pick. The pick gun is kind of a combination of a rake and a bump key, a thin flat metal piece is inserted into the key way and rapidly jiggles the pins. They are a bit expensive, large, and loud, but if this is not a concern for your characters, then they will get the job done without damaging the lock as much, at about the same speed as raking it.

Impressioning

If your character has tools, time, and needs to get past the same lock multiple times, then they can make a copy of the key without ever seeing the original. Impressioning is the process of shaking a blank key (a key without any teeth carved in it yet) in a keyway with quite a bit of force. The blank key is then removed and examined for scratch marks from the pins or wards. This works on both warded locks and pin-tumblers. The key is filed down bit by bit, based on where the scratch marks are, until the lock opens. This is also a way for a lock savvy character to give a more honest character access past a lock. I mean, or they could just teach them lock picking which, as you have just seen, is also not too hard.

Very basic lock picking, the kind that will get you past a low security door in maybe fifteen minutes or less (with a bit of luck), can be taught in an evening. On the other hand, if a very good lock impression-er has a few tools (file, magnifying glass, pilers, etc.) and about five to ten minutes they can make a key copy.

Now, before you go running off to write a scene about lock impressioning. This is a method that I did not even know existed before I started researching, and it is fascinating so I had to include it. As cool as this method of lock bypassing is, your audience would have to already know a lot about lock picking in order to know immediately what the character is doing and why it is a legitimate method of opening the lock. Even if you went through the effort to explain it, it might not be as intuitive to some audiences. Most people understand that a lock can be picked, but without some very thorough explanation, impressioning might be a kind of strange magic that will throw them off. Not that you shouldn’t use it if you want to. If a character could explain a way of lock bypassing to the audience that most of them have never even heard of before, that is a very strong way of characterizing them.

Drilling

Finally, if your characters don’t care about noise, subtlety, or size of tools, they can always drill the lock. Shove a power drill into the plug, destroy the lock, and twist the innards of the lock open. This is the fastest and most reliable way to get past very hard to pick locks. It also destroys the lock and lets everyone know what has happened.

Magic

So, since we are writers, writing fictional stories in fictional worlds, magic might also a legitimate method of opening a lock. Yes, they could possibly blow through the door with fire, if your magic system allows for that. However, say they are not a very powerful magic user or maybe they just need to be a bit more subtle. (You mean blasts of fire aren’t subtle?) You now know enough about locks and picking them to describe the character using magic to move pins in a tumbler lock or the trigger in a warded lock.

On writing lockpicking scenes

Like any topic you research for your story, keep in mind how much your audience really cares and what the pacing of the scene demands. You have just learned quite a lot about lock picking, and there are so many little details that could be fascinating to add. You might decide you want to drag the scene out for two whole paragraphs to describe your character talking to the all the pins in the lock or complaining about it to their partner. You might want to keep it shorter with quicker details about the character closing their eyes or complaining about over-setting a pin. Or, you might just want to stick with writing “she leaned over to pick the lock”. Whatever is the best option for your story. Either way, you can now live, secure in the knowledge of just how insecure locks are.

References and Links

Long talk about locksport

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwgZvOjwkLI&list=PL2kFDUC5bKElMvqDQ02485YoCSBQlwOE9

Forensics of Lock Picking

http://www.lockpickingforensics.com/forensic_locksmithing.php

Bumping

http://www.lockwiki.com/index.php/Bumping

Lock impressioning

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30CmeSZb-qE

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