Over the past year or so I've gotten into videos by the
LockPickingLawyer. He seems to be a master lockpicker, with over 1,000 videos of him showing off various locks and picking them on video, and sometimes he even takes them apart to show us how the internals work, etc.
As someone who has an interest in digital security, I've found it interesting to see how much of physical security is also largely easily bypassed due to "exploits" or design flaws that have been known about for decades but lock manufacturers keep making new locks vulnerable to them anyway.
He's also done a few "blind picks" where he picks a lock he's never seen before all in one take on the video, so you know he's the real deal.
And he also shows off some unusual (at least in the USA) designs or vintage/ancient locks:
I could go on with more videos but I'll stop there.
His channel got me interested in learning how to lockpick for myself. I see it as a kind of puzzle-solving hobby, like sudoku or crosswords, but potentially with practical, real-world application. So I got a lockpicking toolkit and an acrylic practice lock for Christmas (both of which are cheap pieces of junk from banggood which didn't arrive until about a week ago). After opening the practice lock a few dozen times in the first day, I started having more and more trouble with it to the point where I can rarely open it anymore. I think that due to the poor quality materials and workmanship of the lock, the keyway has slightly changed shape and so my turning tool can no longer apply torque properly. But I'm too much of a noob to know for sure what the exact cause of my troubles are. But all of that is tangential to this thread, so I'll stop blabbing about that, as well.
