Inor
09-03-2015, 10:26 PM
My travel schedule has been brutal this year, so I took this week and next off of work. Of course I have my usual honey-do list plus a pretty tough project going in my wood shop. But I also thought I would take some time to learn a new skill: breaking and entering.
So, I bought a lock picking set and a lock picking training kit called: Lock Picking School in a Box.
https://www.lockpickshop.com/ST-23.html
The training kit came with 4 picks and tension wrench. But from the pictures, the wrench and picks looked like pretty questionable quality. They do not have any handles or anything on them, but they do seem to be made from a decent quality spring steel. I think these will be my travel set that I will stash in with my survival stuff in my suitcase that I travel with. But I did also buy a small set of picks and wrenches made of good government steel. Those will be going into my BOB.
The rest of the training kit came with 5 lock cylinders that came with between 1 and 5 pins. They look like the standard Kwikset locks that a lot of tract homes come with. It also came with a pretty nice quasi-wood stand to mount the cylinders in while working with them. Finally, it came with a lock picking "book".
The book was the real reason I bought the kit because I had not seen it advertised by itself anywhere and the reviews on it were good. Overall, I was really disappointed in the book. It is more of a pamphlet, about 15 pages long. It only covers the bare bones minimum on picking a lock one pin at a time. And I did not even think it did that great of a job of describing that process. Had I not watched a bunch of YouTube videos before I ordered the set, I doubt I would have had much success with just the book.
So in short, learning lock picking with the kit works well as long as you are prepared to do your "how to" research online first. I got the set this afternoon and after playing with it for about 90 minutes, I had picked all 5 locks a minimum of 3 times each. It seems to be a skill that is either pretty easy to learn or that I naturally take to. Regardless, then I broke into my house as well as a couple Master padlocks.
The question of whether you should bother to learn lock picking is one only you can answer. It is fun as hell and I expect will have some value post SHTF or if your neighbor really pisses you off.
But I do not think I would recommend spending the money on this training kit. The locks are all the standard Kwikset variety and you can purchase cylinders at the hardware store for less than $10 each. Popping the pins out of them so you can make a set of locks of graduated difficulty is not difficult at all. The quasi-wood stand is pretty nice too, but again anybody with the mechanical ability to pick a lock could make one from scrap in less than half an hour.
So, my recommendation for learning lock picking is to spend your money on a decent set of picks and wrenches and a couple cheap lock cylinders from the hardware store. Do your learning on YouTube or maybe find a better book than the one included with the kit. In other words forego the Lock Picking School in a Box.
So, I bought a lock picking set and a lock picking training kit called: Lock Picking School in a Box.
https://www.lockpickshop.com/ST-23.html
The training kit came with 4 picks and tension wrench. But from the pictures, the wrench and picks looked like pretty questionable quality. They do not have any handles or anything on them, but they do seem to be made from a decent quality spring steel. I think these will be my travel set that I will stash in with my survival stuff in my suitcase that I travel with. But I did also buy a small set of picks and wrenches made of good government steel. Those will be going into my BOB.
The rest of the training kit came with 5 lock cylinders that came with between 1 and 5 pins. They look like the standard Kwikset locks that a lot of tract homes come with. It also came with a pretty nice quasi-wood stand to mount the cylinders in while working with them. Finally, it came with a lock picking "book".
The book was the real reason I bought the kit because I had not seen it advertised by itself anywhere and the reviews on it were good. Overall, I was really disappointed in the book. It is more of a pamphlet, about 15 pages long. It only covers the bare bones minimum on picking a lock one pin at a time. And I did not even think it did that great of a job of describing that process. Had I not watched a bunch of YouTube videos before I ordered the set, I doubt I would have had much success with just the book.
So in short, learning lock picking with the kit works well as long as you are prepared to do your "how to" research online first. I got the set this afternoon and after playing with it for about 90 minutes, I had picked all 5 locks a minimum of 3 times each. It seems to be a skill that is either pretty easy to learn or that I naturally take to. Regardless, then I broke into my house as well as a couple Master padlocks.
The question of whether you should bother to learn lock picking is one only you can answer. It is fun as hell and I expect will have some value post SHTF or if your neighbor really pisses you off.
But I do not think I would recommend spending the money on this training kit. The locks are all the standard Kwikset variety and you can purchase cylinders at the hardware store for less than $10 each. Popping the pins out of them so you can make a set of locks of graduated difficulty is not difficult at all. The quasi-wood stand is pretty nice too, but again anybody with the mechanical ability to pick a lock could make one from scrap in less than half an hour.
So, my recommendation for learning lock picking is to spend your money on a decent set of picks and wrenches and a couple cheap lock cylinders from the hardware store. Do your learning on YouTube or maybe find a better book than the one included with the kit. In other words forego the Lock Picking School in a Box.