I decided to have a shot at picking one of my Gege AP1000 cylinder locks (specifically #1 which is 55mm long and snapped.). The keyway and side profile of the lock can be seen in this earlier post. This is a green belt lock and I feel I need more practice at this level before moving on to blue.
I don’t know if this is common but before I start picking I have a feel around inside the lock with the pick to just get an understanding of what’s in there. I was immediately confused because I could only feel five of the expected six pins, pin three was apparently missing. I tried picking anyway but I was getting nothing. The five pins I could find simply didn’t seem to want to bind at all, even with a fair bit of tension. So i took it apart…
I can see now why this is a green belt lock. The driver pins one, four, five, and six are serrated. Driver pin three is unusual in that it’s not round, it’s roughly a rounded hexagon, this is very clear if you try and roll it on the desk. This can be seen in this photo where pin three (right) is put up against one of the others.
I also noticed that the pin stack (key and driver) are shorter on pin three measuring just 11mm. The other pin stacks all measure 12.4mm (pin stack one seems to be 12.7mm, that might be measurement error though). I suspect now that pin three was lower than I was expecting and is probably binding first, and possibly engineered that way.
Time to put the lock back together and try picking it again with my new found knowledge.
A Note on Removing Circlips
The circlip on this lock was the most difficult to remove design I’ve ever come across. I was able to remove it by putting it in the vice and then knocking out off with a flat head screw driver and a hammer.