Pick Guns
Often seen in movies and in the tool box of locksmiths, manual and electronic pick guns are a popular method used today for quick and easy ways of opening doors. The higher-end electric pick guns are usually made of aircraft aluminum and hard steel. The pick is operated by simply pressing a button that vibrates while the normal tension wrench is being used. A manual pick gun (or Snap gun) is used in a similar way but usually has a trigger that creates a movement which (like bump keys) operates on the same principle as Newton's cradle. It transfers sudden energy to the key pins which communicate this to the driver pins causing those pins only to jump, allowing the cylinder to turn freely for a brief moment, until the pin springs return the pins to their locking position. A pick gun is used in conjunction with a tension tool and the only skill required here is learning the timing.
Manual pick guns come in both up and down varieties and were patented in the 1920s making them a staple of the film noir and detective fiction generally.
Read more about this topic: Lock Picking
Famous quotes containing the words pick and/or guns:
“Many children grow through adolescence with no ripples whatever and land smoothly and predictably in the adult world with both feet on the ground. Some who have stumbled and bumbled through childhood suddenly burst into bloom. Most shake, steady themselves, zigzag, fight, retreat, pick up, take new bearings, and finally find their own true balance.”
—Stella Chess (20th century)
“At the ramparts on the cliff near the old Parliament House I counted twenty-four thirty-two-pounders in a row, pointed over the harbor, with their balls piled pyramid-wise between them,—there are said to be in all about one hundred and eighty guns mounted at Quebec,—all which were faithfully kept dusted by officials, in accordance with the motto, “In time of peace prepare for war”; but I saw no preparations for peace: she was plainly an uninvited guest.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)