Let’s suppose you’ve lost the key to a certain padlock that you left locked a while ago and now need to open. Alternatively, maybe the spirit of the great MacGyver visited you, and you’re curious about the robustness of its lock. Cunning or brute force? Traditional models carry their share of weaknesses, and these videos will teach you to open a padlock without a key in seconds, taking advantage of two of them.
Fiction and reality
The most popular term in English for this skill is lockpicking, and we see it quite often in video games. I still remember well the puzzle in TES IV: Oblivion, so complicated that we can find ten-minute tutorials explaining how to proceed, and dozens of mods that simplify it. Personally, I never had problems with it, and I was a bit disappointed to see that in Skyrim it became almost irrelevant.
Of course, things are very different in the real world. Although it’s not difficult to find poor-quality locks (in fact, they are the rule, not the exception), the truth is that we don’t have the advantage of a transparent view or amplified sounds. If you’re interested in practicing, the best thing is probably to start with a padlock, since it enables other options. With that I mean that it’s not always necessary to intervene in the lock itself, but you can attack the padlock itself. Let’s see:
Open a padlock without a key in seconds: “Shimming”
The key behind Shimming (essentially, wedging) is the metallic wrapper of a normal battery, but it can be extracted from other objects (some soda cans, for example). The metal must be strong and thin enough to allow cutting with scissors, while the size of the “T” that serves as the template will depend on the size of the padlock.
According to the video description, the leg of the T is a square of 1 by 1 centimeter, and the padlock is 50 millimeters. The improvised tool is inserted deep starting from the outside of the padlock, and slides inward with a slight rotation. Once the leg of the T displaces the closure, the padlock opens.
Obviously, the trick only works on this type of basic padlock. The market offers a huge number of models resistant to shimming, and we also must not forget an essential factor such as the physical condition of the padlock. If the mechanism was destroyed by corrosion or received too many blows, its appointment with the Napoleon is guaranteed.
Wrenches
The video has been circulating on the Web for years, and has been recycled countless times on social media with animated GIFs. The wrench trick throws any attempt at finesse out the window, and bets directly on destroying the padlock: Hook both wrenches together and “pry”, the side area of the padlock basically bursts, releasing the mechanism.
If the padlock is too large, you can place a piece of metal between the two wrenches to serve as a contact point; otherwise, the wrenches will “dance” and you’ll never be able to develop the necessary force. You also need relatively large and strong wrenches, plus a good dose of muscle.
However...
... YouTube loves to teach perfect and ideal things, and opening a padlock without a key in seconds with two wrenches is no exception. The Lock Picking Lawyer, one of the main security experts (not to say “the principal expert”) we can find on YouTube, decided to explore this method in one of his videos, and came to the conclusion that the position of the wrenches when applying force is not optimal.
His recommendation is simple: Redirect all that force not toward the side of the padlock, but toward the weakest points of the mechanism. All you need is to place one of the wrenches at 90 degrees, so that the force on the mechanism is “vertical”, so to speak. His video also confirms that sometimes one attempt is not enough, and the user will be forced to repeat the trick.
