Dimple Lock Picking 101 - EVERYTHING you Need to Know

hello again it's Locke move and well this video is a beginner's guide to dimple lock-picking the reason I'm making this video is I get loads of requests about wanting a dedicated video all about how to pick dimple locks and I thought well why not let's do it why dimple rocks well I think that a lot of people want a starting master standard pin tumbler locks they start to look at other types of lock configurations and locking mechanism to see if they can stretch their skills it'll further be that dimple locks or dissertate locks or leaf locks etc but in this video we're just going to concentrate on dimple locks we're going to start with what is a dimple lock what pigs do you need how do you tension dimple locks basic picking and breaking techniques as well as what locks to then go on and practice with so what is a dimple lock well first let's look at a standard configuration pin tumbler there you go you can see that you have some driver pins at the top there are some key pins in the lock itself the key pushes those key pins all the way to a shear line you can then turn the lock once all of the key pins are lifted to the correct height pushing the driver pins out of the core or plug you'll notice that the key pins sit pretty high up in most of these standard configuration pin tumblers where the keyway is vertical like this that gives you an awful lot of room to put a picking tool you can either put it at the bottom then wind it around this warding or you can actually put your big tools in on this warding legend you get a lot of space to manipulate those pins now let's look at a dimple lock key way and you'll see that what we have is a key way which is now horizontal just look at where those key pins are resting they aren't resting on some warding towards the center of the lock they're actually resting on the bottom of the key way that means that you don't have very much room at all to put a picking tool in without the risk of over setting the key pins and pushing them up into the Bible and stopping the lock from opening that way so let's have a look at how one operates it actually operates exactly the same there are o key pins on the bottom and they will lift up in turn to let all of the sheer line and push these driver pins here out of the the coral plug along the lot turn if you look at the key itself you'll see this it has a bitting that is pretty much exactly the same as you'd see on a standard key albeit it has a limited height difference between the lowest and the highest pins just because there isn't as much vertical space in a horizontal orientation now many of the higher security dimple locks have this horizontal flat key way configuration and these locks are really common it seems all over the world but mostly outside of the United States for reasons are not entirely sure about however there is another dimple lock configuration which is extremely common especially in eastern Asia and these are what we call the smiley dimple locks so-called because they have a little key way which looks like it's smiling at you now these are incredibly common a lot of these locks come from China and they are not always well then pretty poor quality but they are also fun to pick and certainly you know worth having a little look at in this video albeit briefly one thing worth mentioning about dimple locks is that quite often manufacturers see these as their high security locks mostly because I think that seeing and picking these dimple locks is relatively rare to begin with and maybe the way that the keys are horizontal makes it's easier for manufacturers to put in extra security elements into their locks such as multiple rows of pins here you can see that you have a row pins at the top and a row pins at the bottom in this lock you can see that you have a standard dimple pin configuration in the middle but you also have a slider sidebar mechanism attached and you even have some locks which have magnetic elements as well as telescoping pin in pin locking mechanisms so what picking tools do you need to open up a dimple lock well for the most part although I have used them on very rare occasions standard pick and rake tools just won't work in these types of locks why well it's to do with that horizontal key way and the lack of space between the bottom the key weight and the pins so for example a typical Bogota like this will just won't be able to even get in to that key way is way too big at least four times too big even slim profiles like the city rake here just will struggle to get in and even short hooks like that again just you can't really force them into those key ways like I said there are rare occasions where this is possible but for the most part your standard set at picking tools isn't useful here what people tend to use are things called dimple flags flags because of course they look like little flags these are designed to go into the keyway like this underneath the pins at a flat angle and then lift them up switching see is happening here to that first pin this extremely thin tip stops you from over setting those key pins and accidentally putting them up into the Bible and stopping the core from rotating in most dimple pick sets you get pretty much three different types of dimple flags you get ones which are completely flat they don't have a left-handed or right-handed side and personally I really like these or beer they seem quite rare in a lot of kits most kits will have varying sizes and by that I mean Lentz and thicknesses of dimple flags which are either left handed or right handed flags and those are designed to obviously pick dimple locks where the warding in the key way makes it easier to pick one side of it or the other and then most kits will also have curved Flags these are quite extreme variants and again they can be different things is and Lintz and degrees of curve and they also come in left-handed and right-handed variants so what sort of kits are out there and are they any good well to beyond - there are so many kits and nearly all of them have their pros and cons a lot of it depends on your time and budget naturally I don't have every possible dimple lockpick set out there but I have I think quite a good representation of the types of kits which is out there I would suggest that with all of these things you research them and you decide which one is best for you based on your own personal time and your budget of course there are a multitude of dimple pic sets that come out of China for the most part and they can be really cheap talking about under $30 for a whole set my favorite one is the honest donkey set and these are made from some very sturdy material you will however notice and this is a incredibly common with a lot of the cheaper end pick sense you'll notice that they are really really badly finished they are so square and that will make them incredibly hard to use in the lock where you need to be able to rotate the pic inside the keyway and having such a square profile means that you end up having such weird feedback with the corners digging into the lock body feeling really rough catching on the warding just out of the pack pretty horrible and almost useless why do I like these well if you just have a bit of time somewhere around 20 minutes per pick and little skill you can take some files and a bit of sandpaper and you can make these into some really really nice dimple flags you file them down you can see where it's gone from Square to really nicely rounded and if you do that with all of those picks and again isn't just these honest bangshi sets there are multiple ones out there that are similar you'll end up with something really really good there are multiple kits like this one which have interchangeable tips those can be pretty good and you just swap the tips out depending on what your need is at the time and they are often pretty good value the steel is usually again pretty good but you do need to finish him off and here is another flat flag which I have rounded off as they come out of the pack they tend to be a lot more rough and a lot more square there is a pattern here with the cheaper end of picks but you know most of them whether they be fixed handle with you know rubberized handles or whatever else or or interchangeable tips they tend to be made quite well in terms of the material but you do have spend a lot of time finishing them off with files and sandpaper to make them well even slightly usable to begin with in terms of mid-range kits that many out there I know that South Lord do an inch angel tip pick set which I know some people like sparrows probably have one of the more famous mid-range sets so they have a double row of picks like this it's already well rounded as you can see on the the pics so they do come very useful out the pack can only have a load of tension tools as well some people have said that these are quite flexible I haven't really found a problem within myself but your results may vary it's definitely a good kick to explore just because of its price range and the fact that the picks are already finished off for you at the top end of the spectrum we have some really great choices we have the multi pick dimple lock pick set and we even have some hand finish picks by a company called spooks which will come onto it in a second we tend to pay for here is the quality of the materials and of course the finish the multi pick set not only look exceptional but have a very very high degree of finish on all of the picks in the set and whilst it commands quite a high price which is probably going to be off-putting - or lots of beginners if you have the budgets you get sewing which is completely usable out of the pack with no modifications and are very comfortable and very beautiful to look at another high-end pick are the picks which are sold by spooks and oddly these are hand finish me to an amazing degree look at this shine and finish on these but they're made from cheap Chinese dimple picks long-handled wanted Mittal ebert bonds which actually you know look very much like this to begin with all it is is somebody spent the time hand finishing them for you and applying a different sort of a hard a rubber handle so again you know there are some really exceptional high-end pics out there of course it all depends on your own personal budget so what if you don't have the budget for a new dimple lock pick set or you're waiting more to be delivered and you have a couple of dimple locks you want to explore in that time then well you can get away with gently using half diamond profile pics like these they are in their own way a bit like a dimple flag they are nice and flat they do have a flag like end albeit their profile is square you can get away in some keeper dimple locks using these half diamond picks in lieu of a decent set let me just show you I'm just going to apply a little autofocus to the lock and then you see how you can actually put the flag down and rotate it to lift the key pins there you go so you can use a half diamond profile on cheaper dimple locks with care albeit you could end up twisting and deforming these picks because they're just not designed for that purpose so are their rakes for dimple locks well the answer is yes of course a lot of the cheaper 20 sets will have amongst all the hooks and diamonds a pic that looks like this and you might be thinking you want earth is that there are many Barents on this theme looks like a little waffle board and these are designed for wide open key ways here is a dimple lock a very high-security one with 20 pins all different axes and I've actually seen people rake open these locks using one of these pigs so yeah they can be useful and some other Chinese kids actually have quite a range of different flat rate profiles like this but I won't focus on any of them in this video just because I find that even with heavy modification they're just not really that useful and it's much easier just to learn to single pin pick dimple locks in the first place rather than relying on looking out finding one of these rakes which even after head heavy modification is unlikely to get you into many locks some rakes which I do find useful and these are probably wafer lock rakes but I find them quite useful in dimple locks and these are the diamond rakes from a 24 piece kit which a lot of us know as the go so 24 piece kit there are many different variants with lots of different branding on there but you'll know when you see it and these are particularly good in locks in fact I will show how you can rake one of these Swiney dimple locks with them a bit later on so what do we use for tensioning dimple locks well a lot of the cheaper kits will just provide you with all sorts of what we call Zee wrenches because of their Zed shape this one's a particularly fancy one and sometimes just some standard L wrench tools frankly there's nothing wrong with these I keep a few in my kit because they are very useful if you look at dimple lock key ways is usually on ones which don't have too much wadding a nice big section here where you can slide in a tool like this the right side and you can apply tension using this tool quite nicely like that so you can pick these pins surprisingly good and there's nothing wrong with them at all but then most standard tensioners if put in the right place in a dimple lock can be used as well just like that a lot of kits will just have these well quite generic flat setter interests like this and again I have on all the time in my everyday kit they work brilliantly and the two different size really give you a couple of options in terms of thickness for these key ways there are multiple Chinese outlets which have well all sorts of dimple lock tensioning kits and these are actually very cheap but they're quite useful they come in all different sizes and thicknesses and I think that it's different were sort of getting one of these cheaper tensioning sets just because they offer you a range of different thicknesses of tools and sizes for all sorts of different warded keyways very very useful some of the commercial kits you can buy have really excellent etching tools the multi pick set for example has some extremely strong Zed wrenches which I'm very partial to and the Sparrow's dimple pick set comes with some really very strong tension tools which again I really really like as I said earlier though you don't necessarily need to go out and buy specific tension tools for dimple lock picking probably stuff you already have in your pick kit it's going to be perfectly good for attention a dimple lock essentially if it fits in the lock and it provides tension it's a tension tool for a dimple lock so don't overthink it see how it gets on with what you already have if you do get a dimple lock pick set see how you get on with the tools which were provided in that set and who don't like any of those then do look to some of the top manufacturers to see if they sell their dimple lock tension sets separately and and have a look at those as well so how do we go about picking a dimple lock well the first thing to do is find a tension tool which fits the lock it all depends on the warding inside but it's always best to go away from the pins as much as possible and find a tool which will attention the core of the lock without rubbing at all on the body of the lock itself so that you don't end up sort of binding the cornballer together with your tension tool which will not allow for good picking this Zed wrench here is perfect for this locking seeds resting entirely on the core itself and will provide excellent tension either this way or this way so clockwise or anti-clockwise depending on which way you're to pick the lock in terms of what pic to use well you're going to want to use a pic which will access the pins from either side of the pin itself and push those pins all the way down to full height so you can see that I have a right-handed flag I could access the pins on this side and I could push down on those pins and push them to full height or push them down as far as they go so this would be a good choice you could also attack those pins from the other side using a left-handed flag so here's a left-handed flag and again we might want to access it from here and push them all the way down that would work quite well from this side as well and again that's a matter of choice you could even maybe even pick these pins by resting the pic at the bottom of the warding here and use a curved flag to reach around and push these pins down now there is no right answer at all to this it all depends on work what works best for you in which lock I quite often use a flat flag like this and then I can pick from whichever side I want depending on how I feel like said there is no right or wrong you just have to choose the right approach for you the one Golden Rule however is generally speaking and sometimes you have no choice admittedly but when you are picking say for example pins clockwise so you are taking the flag this way you don't necessarily want to be tensioning clockwise as well that will just make things a lot harder on the pic itself and when there are spools give you feedback which isn't as good what you want to try to do is tension the opposing way to the way you're picking you will find that you have far far far better feedback on pins and I believe much better tension control as well so it ever way that you decide to pick on those pins if you're picking therefore clockwise like this you programs attention antique aqua if you are going to tension clockwise you probably want to pick anti-clockwise again some locks won't allow you to pick and tension in opposing directions that's just a type of lock it is a lot of them are found in padlocks but for the most part that's what you want to try to achieve so let's look at some basic techniques I got the lock in the vise it's just an odd angle you should be able to see the driver pins here and you should be able to see where the tips of the key pins are here and you'll see the pig tip go through the lock as well I will be using the flag in a clockwise direction turning this way to push the pins down so I'm going to be using the tension tool anti-clockwise like this lifting it up essentially and when I want to decrease the tension I'll drop it down to begin with just put the lightest amount of tension possible puts your flag in and just feel how it feels running across the tips of those pins and what you should feel is if you keep the flag really flat don't turn it in the lock just keep it flat you should feel the pins ride up and down the flag tip itself and you'll feel when you increase tension some of them even feel like you have to force the pick pass on if that pin one there definitely feels I have to force the pick past it and this is quite a nice chisel tip on there so it should be able to push past that pin but that means it's binding that means that this pin wants to be set so how do I set it I decrease the tension a little bit gets on top of that pin and then increase the tension and turn it could you hear that little click and you do the same stopping on two threes binding decrease the tension a little bit get on top and I think we're set for now they go they'll click five decibels set by moving the pick passed it six now they'll click seven is binding strongly so I'm just going to reduce the tension a little bit just a little bit not enough to drop all the rest of the pins then increase the tension and there we go picked it and we have an open just like that let's talk about dimpled rakes you can actually buy sets of these although Luck's that they do come in other kits as well like all rakes there isn't a magic one which works in all locks you have to buy a matter of elimination go through the rates in turn until you find one which works for the fitting of the lock you're trying to rank even though that these are incredibly slim these rakes will not fit a lot of dimple locks just because the height is so small in these locks it's just really tight the this one might be able to go into an angle but it's not really recommended to force it all into a lock you may end up damaging the tool and even the lock behind you're breaking off your tool with in it Lots which are very easily ranked are things like these smiley dimple locks because you tend to have a bit more space in these locks to insert these rake tools I find so I have one of these smiley dimple locks in advice and tensioning it well you just have to find a worse for you with these locks I find a little fix Y wrench like this gives me a good tension control other people put some wiper blade in and pull up there's all sorts of techniques whatever works for you is perfect like all raking techniques you're probably best putting the tool the picking tool in first and then applying a small amount of tension just enough to hold the core against the body so you're binding some of the pins and you're just just holding it there you don't need much more and then you can do your raking technique on the lock and hopefully you get an open like this so the vast majority of branded in Paluxy come across will have some form of security driver pin in there most likely to be a sport pin so I'd recommend finding dimple ops with sport pins in and practicing with those early on into your dimple lock practice just because they are so common so how do you go about picking them well like you would any standard pin tumbler with spool pins you would use like tension you'd feel for a false set you would pick those pins which provide counter rotation to move to a full set on the spool and then eventually the lock will open so I'm going to be tensioning lightly and clockwise and picking clockwise and just finding those pins so I'm going to use moderate tension find this pins with your binding and turn the dimple flag until I can feel them set and I'm just going by feel on this because that's it's all about not necessarily what pin you're on but you know what feedback you're getting from your your pick does it feel like you know I can feel like pin 7 there is set I can feel that pin 6 here has no consultation at all that feels completely set as well so you know you're just going through and just feeling your way through these pins seeing what is providing feedback and what isn't I feel that I'm strong to get pass pin 1 and that's the last pin to set you know it's it's it's really nice and you get that lovely feedback you if you re watch out you'll see the subtle movements on the core you'll see it kick all back and forth as I feel those four pins I just release some of the tension to get on top of them I increase the tension set them feeling that feedback as I go and it's really important to have that control where you are picking into the way you're tensioning so you can just let go of the tension sometimes and then increase attention in response to how the pins feel so what dimple locks do I recommend that you start to practice with well I had to think about this because I have a global audience which i think is fantastic and I do know that dimple locks aren't that common in in the United States North America in general it seems so try to think of lots which I know you can get from largely all over the world so a lot of companies which do distribute to you know quite a lot of the world in general and ones which are very consistent and have spool pins but not too many you know hard security features or or crazy wadding in the key way and this is what I've come up with before I go into these locks and you can probably see what they already but um I don't recommend even though I have these for demonstration purposes I do not recommend at all these see through perspex or critical whatever they are dimple locks they don't pick like normal locks they feel weird the feedbacks wrong they're good to learn from and learn your pic positioning and gets an idea of how dimple locks work but I would absolutely say to you avoid using these for practice the plastic wears out the pins wear against the plastic the body weighs against plastic they the feedback changes over time they don't last very long just really avoid these if you can for practicing perfectly good for buying for demonstration purposes and getting pic placements and see what you're doing absolutely but I could not recommend this for actual practice I would actually recommend buying one or two branded locks try to get in second hand if you can but if not then you might have to shell out reasonable amounts of money for these because dimple ox and general command a higher price and standard pin tumbler locks but sometimes I think it's worth trying to get hold of good quality locks for practicing with because what you end up with is a lock which is consistent gives good feedback it's smooth the tolerances are great and you'll know that when you pick it is because of your skill and not because of luck when you feel something in the lock you'll notice its feedback from the lock not bad manufacturing really would recommend it the first lock I'd recommend is and it sounds so weird to say this but it's a multi lock this isn't the pin and pin multi lock this is a 7 pin garrison these have really wonderful spools inside and the feedback on these is excellent if you look at the warding it's actually quite a nice wide open key way you've got lots of tension choices in there because a lot of pick position choices in here it's a wonderful lock it's very very consistent in its feedback yes it has spools inside it but you know they're not and much harder than a sporty finding any standard pin cylinder lock so I definitely would recommend the same pin garrison like I said sounds crazy recommending a multi Laak but um I really would another one which I'd recommend is the Avocet pioneer plus and here it is you can still buy these you can pick them up secondhand quite commonly as well and again these are just really nice locks I glue these are I think the same pin as well all the six minutes unlit want to be clear these are six pin locks but again they have spool pins in they are made very well they've got great feedback they're very consistent this is everything you want to practice with now there are other locks which I enjoy picking myself and would recommend savers in Europe or or or whatever but I think that you're probably more likely to get hold of these two locks in more places I could be wrong but definitely if you've got any more recommendations put them in the comments below because I think people will be looking for you know good quality dimple lot so they can practice with that they know are consistent and give good feedback but these are my top two choices so there you go I hope I gave you a taste of dimple lock picking what kits available what the pros and cons are how you'd approach a lock how you attention and pick a lock and what locks that you might want to purchase for practicing now clearly as you saw rise the beginning of it off the video there are so many different variants of dimple locks with so many different security features once it gets started it'll open up a whole world of different picking challenges for you the ones which are available in standard pin tumblers but again like I said seemingly more common in dimple locks I hope you enjoyed that video please give it a like if you liked it comment below if you have a question to ask subscribe if you like the content and I'll see you all next time you

Channel: Lock Noob

Views: 123,329

Keywords: Lock, locksport, lock pick, lock picking, locks, Padlock, open, pick, picked, picking, lockpicking, locksmith, fun, cool, spp, single pin picking, gutting, gutted, how to, guide, tutorial

Id: Rjl1aR2-4JY

Length: 33min 39sec (2019 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 27 2020