[466] Unusual Cold War Era Latvian Padlock Picked

this is the lock-picking lawyer and what i have for you today is a cold war-era latvian padlock now what originally drew me to this lock was the really unique design of the lock body it appears to have been made for the sole purpose of accepting these little mini rim cylinders and I'm not entirely sure why that is if you could remove or replace those rim cylinders it might make sense but if I look at this lock the construction appears to be a clamshell design that's held together permanently by these four pins distributed around the lock body so it doesn't look like you can remove that cylinder equally confusing is the fact that we do have such a large cylinder in there far larger than most padlock cylinders yet there's only a three pin lock in there if we look at these keys you can see pretty clearly that there are just three cuts so a very inefficient use of space the locking mechanism is something that is not strange but but certainly not common either we have a small notch that's machined out of the end of the shackle and then if we look deep down in that shackle hole we can see a small bolt that slides in from the side to trap the end of the shackle so assuming that bolt is not too thin and it's hard to tell just by looking down there it's probably a pretty robust design and certainly one that can't be shimmed very easily I do have some of the original paperwork that came with this lock which i think is very interesting we have the name of the company that made it which is Alto electro pre bore I apologize for my butchering of the Russian language but roughly translated that means that this was a company that made auto electronic equipment and if we see this symbol right here again on the padlock and on the keys that is taken from the name of the company AEP Alto electro pre bore it also indicates that it was made in Riga which is the capital and largest city of via it contains a an excellent description of the lock a lock hanging with a cylindrical mechanism then we have when this lock was made which best I can read is November 4th of 1977 and then we also have the price to rubles 40 kopek that price is also noted on the back of this lock you can see two rubles forty kopeck and that's actually something pretty common on locks that were made under communist regime certainly in the Soviet Union and if you think about it it does make sense that they would put it on there it's not like these are going to be sent to a store which has any discretion about setting the price we have a command economy that price is probably set by some governmental board there's no reason not to put it on there permanently so what we're going to do is see what it takes to pick into this little three pin Latvian lock so we're going to use some bottom of the keyway tension on a pretty pair eccentric little key way but certainly one that we were going to have any trouble getting into and I'm going to use an eighteen thousand standard hook okay one is binding I think we got him set two is loose three is binding got to click out of him let's should just leave us two come on - there we go and I think we have it over so it appears to be or feels like three standard pins I'm guessing this is something that could be raked very easily as well let's try it with a couple different rakes this might be too thick there we go we got it open with that try something a little bit thinner maybe this city city rake in eighteen thousands there we go that slides in a lot easier and opens up okay so no surprise three standard pins as we we would suspect very easy to pick open but certainly a very interesting lock and one that I am very happy to have in my collection so that's all I have for you today on this cold war-era Latvian padlock if you do have any questions or comments about it please leave them below if you like this video and would like to see more like it please subscribe and as always have a nice day thank you

Channel: LockPickingLawyer

Views: 72,550

Rating: 4.9778218 out of 5

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Id: YCpB4TkxDAg

Length: 5min 1sec (301 seconds)

Published: Tue May 09 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/mrmyk3]

Nice!

[u/indigoalphasix]

interesting lock. thx for sharing!

The four "pins" as you describe them are actually not pins, but marks made from the rounded off-edges of the ejector pins in the die cast mold.

Likely the clamshell assembly was done by pressing one half -which would have several smaller pins cast inside, onto the other half which would have slightly undersized receiving holes inline to accept the pins. Basically a one time press-fit.