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Zen and the
Art of Lock
Picking
Chris Dangerfield, Director of UK Bump
Keys Ltd, talks to Locksmith Journal
about the mysteries of lock picking.
»»“It will probably come
as no surprise that one of the
questions I get asked regularly
is ‘how long will it take me to
learn to pick locks?’
“Unfortunately, it is not just
as simple as ‘how long until I
can pick locks?’ or even ‘how
long does it take? I wouldn’t
be surprised if one day I
got an email asking coldly,
‘When?’ Such is the nature
of our instantly gratifying,
disposable culture, where
the journey is considered an
obstacle and the destination
everything.
“Of course, we all want to
open the damn thing, but it’s
not the opening, that makes it
all worthwhile, if opening was
all there was to it, use a key.”
‘Of course, we
all want to open
the damn thing’
“I do my very best every day
to answer the zillion emails
I receive as an online lock
picking vendor, but it is always
this question that gets my back
up.
“If you ask me how long it
takes to learn to pick locks - I’ll
ask you, ‘how many locks?
“Lock picking is an art
inasmuch as it engages the
lock picker with a certain
pursuit of truth. There is
an element of dissidence;
the appeal of a protest to a
conventional security policy,
of what a lock is for, how it
should work and how it should
be used.
“Lock picking encapsulates
many of the themes that have
inspired man to move beyond
not only what is expected, but
what was thought possible.
Opening a lock is the same as
the sum of its parts. Picking a
lock is more, much more.
“Why, when I have a key do
I bother to pick? Why, when
I have a pick gun do I bother
to bump, then rake, then
impression, locks?
“The answer is zen-like
really! Opening the lock is
not my aim, I am lost in the
not-opening of the lock, and
somewhere within that endless
paradigm I will find myself.
My engagement is with the
poetics of a puzzle, of a logical
approach, of a mechanics
against an established
means.
“I’m pushing pins, I’m
holding the nth of a mm of
shearline to work my own way
around a different design.
It’s like dancing up the stairs
- there is an easier way to
get to the top, but it won’t be
remembered, the stairs will
dictate me beyond myself,
outside myself. By dancing
up the stairs I reclaim my
movement, I make a place for
myself in my own space rather
than be dictated by the usual
flow of forms.
“Lock pickers, in their dusty
jeans and faded T-shirts stepout in style, minimal, delicate
but brash, to the music of
slipped pins and tired metals.
So many pings and clicks
combine in this orchestra of
not-opening that as we sit
at this tiny opera, hunched
and frowning, we’re far from
the beaten track, we’re not
following a path we’re making
a new one.
“So how long will it take to
learn to pick locks?”
locksmithjournal.co.uk | jul/AUG 2015
‘we’re far from
the beaten
track, we’re not
following a path
we’re making
a new one’
Extract taken from Chris
Dangerfield’s forthcoming
book ‘Pure Picking’