I finally compared my uncle's old lock picking rakes against a basic hook set

Spent 3 hours last night trying to pop an old Schlage lock on my shed, rakes got me nowhere but the hook opened it in under 2 minutes. Has anyone else found that simplicity works better than all those gimmicky tools?

2 comments

2 Comments

wren_mitchell16d ago

Man, that's basically the lock picking version of bringing a Swiss Army knife to a gunfight. The rakes are like those infomercial gadgets that promise to slice a tomato and also mow your lawn, but really they just jam up and make you curse. I had a similar wake-up call with a Master lock on a storage unit, spent 20 minutes raking like an idiot before the hook slid in on the first try and popped it. It's like the rakes are trying to do a magic trick while the hook just quietly gets the job done. Makes you wonder if the whole "buy this 20-piece set" thing is just to make us feel like professional burglars, right?

ivan_harris16d ago

Oh man, I feel your pain so much. I remember picking up a cheap set off Amazon thinking I was about to become some lock sport wizard, and I spent a whole afternoon just raking like a fool on a basic brass padlock. Nothing. Nada. Switched to a simple hook and it literally took me maybe 45 seconds. It's like the rake is there to make you feel cool while the hook is the actual worker. I swear half those multi-tool kits are just designed to separate us from our money, not from the locks.