"Jiggle Test" and the Four Fundamental Pin States 

That's great! I'm glad that I could help, and I'm also stealing your cockroach line. Lol

In this case I think he was just caught on the warding, so he pulled his pick out and went at it again, which went much easier the second time when he was dead on the pin. Sometimes pins get ornery and need some extra coaching but if you're pressing that hard, somethings probably off. Still, that was more of a temporary flex than a permanent bend. If he'd continued pressing harder, than it might have left a notable permanent bend. It happens. But if you find yourself often using that much pressure, you're probably either applying too much tension, or you're actually pressing against the warding. I did that to my Peterson #1 hook (my favorite right now), but I was able to bend it back pretty much to stock. However I would definitely not make a habit of doing that, as the pick will break eventually from the back and forth stress. Now I'm more careful to watch my pressure, angle, and depth.

"Balanced stacks" means that the combined height of the keypin and driver pin is the same for all of the chambers. So if you were to look into a cutaway like the one in this video, the tops of all of the drivers would make a straight line when the system is at rest without the key inserted. Balancing the stacks, makes it so all of the springs will be compressed equally, and that gives you smoother operation and wear on the key. It also prevents decoding attacks that measure the differences in spring pressure from stack to stack, but I'm not sure if that's actually a practical attack or just theoretical. And springs just make everything more reliable. Without springs, locks wouldn't work upside down, and they'd eventually jam up from little bits of gunk being blown in by the wind or injected by the key.

@@bleh222234 does using balanced pin stacks make a lock more difficult to pick?

@@howardtoob nope

Someone else can probably answer better than me because I've never picked a lock in that orientation. So this answer is just theory and guessing with zero practical experience. Or, I guess a more generous way to phrase that is that this is my thought process and how I would attempt to solve the problem. (My realest real answer is at the end) You can feel the spring on set pins and non-binding unset pins, so the core issue is differentiating between underset drivers and overset keypins. You can't search for keypins sitting at different heights because you're always going to get that with a spring-down orientation. So, that leaves you with the only difference being which pin is binding. With an underset driver, it's the driver that's binding at the shear line, and the keypin is just sitting there loosely. You should be able to hear and feel the keypin wiggle around a little inside the chamber when you scrub at it with your pick. You can see it a little in the video when I'm holding the purple keypin on the tip of the pick. The pin rocks side to side a little in addition to moving up and down. With an overset keypin, it's the keypin that's binding at the shear line. That means that it won't wiggle around at all when you try to jostle it around with your pick. That's what I'd look for. I should add that the best way to deal with overset pins is to stop oversetting pins. I know that sounds a little flippant or cheeky, but it becomes more true as you pick more locks. It usually feels a little different when you overset a keypin versus setting a driver, and you can often tell when you're about to overset. So stop when you get to that point. An overset pin tends to feel a little mushy and may cause the tiniest hint of counter rotation. Another immensely important piece of information is that the rest of the pins stop binding as soon as you overset a pin. So that tells you that the last pin that you pushed down went too far. Now you know that you shouldn't push that pin down as far next time.

@@MaRceL1412 Yep. The only real difference is that it's harder to detect overset pins.

This is one that I made myself, but some people do list them for sale on ebay. If you don't have tools, then that's probably your best bet, but you should realize that you're paying $20-$30 for something that you can make yourself with a $2 lock and about an hour of time invested. I used a hacksaw to get it started, a dremel with grinding wheel to remove more material, and then some jeweler's files for the final touches. Here's a good guide for the process: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fRy5IeF00e8.html I don't think he does this in the video, but I immobilized the plug by running a brass rod through the top of the bible. Makes everything a little simpler.

No I didn't. It starts here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-mK8TjuLDoMg.html&feature=shares&t=205 Oversetting is why I belabored the point about the pins being regularly spaced.