How locks work,
and how they open.
Locksport is the legal hobby of studying how mechanical locks work by taking them apart, defeating them, and rebuilding them. This guide walks through the major classes of locks — from the humble wafer to a genuine Abloy disc-detainer — and the best-practice techniques used by hobbyists to open each one.
The lock classes
View all →Pin-Tumbler Door Lock
The residential deadbolt and the canonical locksport lock. Five or six spring-loaded pin stacks; single-pin picking here is the skill everything else builds on.
Read guide→Spool / Security-Pin Padlock
Security pins fake you out with false sets. Reading counter-rotation is the whole game.
Read guide→Dimple Lock
Pin-tumbler cousin read through dimpled keys. Tight tolerances, weak feedback.
Read guide→Wafer Lock
Flat wafers in place of pin stacks. Loose tolerances make these an excellent first lock.
Read guide→Tubular Lock
Pins arranged in a ring. Needs its own dedicated pick — nothing else reaches the pins.
Read guide→Disc-Detainer / Abloy
No springs, no pins — rotating discs and a sidebar. Genuine Abloy is very hard.
Read guide→Bypass Methods
Sometimes you skip the pins entirely: latch slipping, shimming, comb picks, and bump keys.
Read guide→