Hey everyone, thanks for joining.
I'm the Greek, I'm the chapter lead for TOOL in Colorado Springs, Colorado,
and this is my first DEF CON presentation.
So, even though we're not doing this in the real, so to speak,
I do know the tradition, so I'm going to carry it out.
Opa!
Shouldn't drink Lynn Leavitt like that.
Anyone who's familiar with the Fallout franchise of games
will know where the title for this talk comes from.
Are bobby pins more effective than lockpicks?
The answer is, you know, obviously no.
But, what if you don't have lockpicks?
Well, you planned poorly. You should have them with you.
There's only a few states that having them on you is a crime in and of itself.
Now, internationally, I'm not familiar with the laws,
but obviously check your state and local authorities to make sure that
it's legal for you to have them on your person in the state that you're in.
Like I say, there are some states that they're not legal to have on you at all times.
Virginia, Mississippi, Nevada, which is strange because that's where DEF CON's at all the time,
and there's one more.
Mississippi, Ohio, Nevada, and Virginia.
They're considered prima facie evidence of the intent to commit a crime.
So if you're in those locations, don't have them on you.
So if you don't have them on you in those locations,
what do you do if you need to pick a lock?
Legally, of course.
You do what we've always done.
You make your own, right?
You might have started with the paperclip.
You might have actually tried the actual bobby pin.
I don't recommend that you destroy your wife's or your significant other's underwire bra until you get permission to do it.
Just ask permission.
There's other things that you can use as well, like spark plug gappers.
These work very well, but there's a lot of material there that you have to cut away if you want to make this into a usable lock pick.
One of the things that I really like to use is street cleaner bristles.
Street cleaner bristles, if you walk down the street, you can find them after the street cleaner's gone by.
Or you can luck out, like I did.
I was driving home one day, and I was in my truck, and I saw on the side of the road a broken street cleaner head.
And so I stopped the pickup truck, and I got some street cleaner bristles now.
One of the things that professional quality lock picks have over anything improvised is generally the handle.
These are a HPC set here. These are out of the Tool Tremendous 12.
They have a substantial handle to them, and it's easy to hold on to.
It cuts down on fatigue while you're picking.
And it just feels better in the hand than if you were to just have this and try to pick with that.
So what I'm going to show today is how I improvise handles.
You can do several different things.
These are just swizzle sticks, some sort of a straw that I found to put over the outside of this homemade tension wrench.
I did the same thing with this double-ended pick here.
But these are all picks that I've made by hand using street cleaner bristles and a dremel tool.
And so that's what we're going to go over here today.
The basic idea is just to give some heft to the tool.
Something to hold on to, something to give it some rigidity.
There's multiple different things that you can get from hobby stores out there.
This is a plastic that can be used.
I tend to prefer brass.
But there is also, let's see here, a couple of them that I've used an aluminum tubing on.
And it all works basically exactly the same.
Whether or not you're using a square stock like this, which gives you a little bit more of a feel that's similar to this type of pick.
Or if you're using round stock.
Again, I tend to prefer the round stock.
Just maybe for aesthetics. I have no idea why.
There is a benefit to using square stock.
And that is that these flat picks and a square handle don't roll away.
So the first thing to do is essentially figure out which one you want to duplicate.
I like to mask things off and hold them in place.
Get a good piece of stock.
If it's rusty like this, I'll take a piece of, again this is improvised, right?
This is actually wood sandpaper, but I'm going to use it.
Okay, now that I have this relatively cleaned up, I'm going to take the pick that I want to duplicate.
I'm going to do this one from the Tremendous 12.
Man, I have the hardest time with that word.
Sinusoidal.
Yes, so sinusoidal.
We're going to duplicate this one.
What I like to do is match it up and then tape it in place with just some sort of tape to keep it in place while I trace onto it.
So that's the basic gist of it right there.
So now it's copied onto the stock and next I'll get out the Dremel tool and I'll cut it out.
So anyway, it's not identical. I can take more off of the one that I'm fabricating, but at this point in time, it's close enough.
Like I say, I can take more off as needed, but I also want to make sure I retain the strength of the pick.
OK, now for the handle, I'm going to use brass.
I want the overall length to be just about the same size as all of the standard picks.
So I'll kind of measure it and put a mark on it.
That will be the overall length of the pick approximately.
And then as far as the handle goes, how much of that needs to be handle.
Somewhere in there. It's not an exact science.
We'll cut the pick off with the Dremel, but we'll use a tube cutter for the handle stock.
I ended up making two. This one here with the round stock, and then I decided to make one with the square stock for the handle.
Go over what I do to secure the pick within the handle.
And that's essentially just some epoxy putty.
I forgot I was working on cardboard here.
JB Weld sets up pretty quick.
Put as much in the handle as you can.
Press it in there, and then press the pick in.
This stuff, I can hardly work with it anymore. It's almost completely set up.
But you still can do a little bit more.
Oh man, it's not even sticky anymore. It's done.
It is JB Welding.
So one of the things about working with your own picks is you can make your own designs based off of some need that you might have with a specific lock.
This pick is one that I use quite regularly. It seems to work fine.
Here's the one that we just made.
I'll probably clean this up over time.
And tighten up the cuts on it a bit.
Let's see how I like the square handle. It might be interesting.
Here's the one with the round handle. Basically the same pick, but just with the round handle.
I made that one today as well.
This is a pretty standard cross section right here.
This one I made quite a while ago. I actually even took solid brass stock and put it into the base.
I think that's probably a little bit too much because they do break.
But like I say, you can make the specific pick that you want.
This one has a larger diameter barrel for the handle than the rest of them.
Again, experimentation.
This is just a very tiny hook pick for a very specific lock.
Same with this here. This is a very tiny half diamond. Again, for a very specific lock.
One thing that's important to note is that street cleaner bristles have a tendency to snap when you bend them into a tension wrench like this.
This is similar. I put a handle on a tension wrench, but you'll notice that the bend is not super extreme.
Like you might find on a mass produced handle like this where it's got a nice bend in there.
You can get to that. I think it does make the metal a little bit more brittle.
But you can make your tension wrenches out of the same material. You just have to be a little bit more careful when you bend.
I think I showed... these are ones with a half bend in the middle.
And this one in particular is tapered to where it will fit a smaller keyway.
Again, the same thing that I talked about with regard to the specific picks that you can make that are specific to your lock.
You can make a tension wrench that is specific to the lock that you're trying to pick.
Let's see...
So, to the question...
Are bobby pins or improvised lock picks or homemade lock picks better than or as good as comparable to picks that you may buy?
I think that it's very situational.
The specific picks that I have made for specific locks were the only ones that I could get that would work for those locks.
I had to make them and then they worked.
The quality, I think, is better with the professional made picks, obviously.
The reproduction is better with the professional made picks.
But, I guess it's the trade-off between the purchasing of something and being able to make it on your own.
For years, I didn't have access to picks or any place to get them at.
So, I made them on my own and I think that's where the fulfillment, I guess, comes in with doing this yourself.
Thank you for your attention to this.
I would ask you, if you're interested in this, to please post some questions in the channel so we can answer them.
We can talk about different materials, different ways of fabricating.
We can poke fun at how bad I am with the Dremel tool.
Also, if you're interested in this, look for a local tool chapter.
Look for others that want to explore this lock sport with you and with us.
Again, I appreciate your attention. Thank you very much.
I hope you enjoy the rest of DEF CON SAFE MODE.
This is The Greek.
Yasu!
I'm not going to drink it like I did the first time. This stuff is too good.