How Locks Work

Video Transcript

"On behalf of expertvillage.com, I'm Jim Koch and today we are talking about access to your home when you've locked your keys in it or lost your keys. I am going to talk a little bit about how a lock actually works so you can understand a little bit more about how you would pick a lock. A lock consists of several pieces; the plug, the cylinder, the pins and the springs. The first part we will talk about will be the lock cylinder. Lock cylinder is the center piece that holds the bottom pins and as well, it holds the key. When the key is inserted, when the proper key is inserted, the pins will line up and it allows the plug to turn inside the cylinder. The cylinder actually holds the top pins and the springs and when like I say the proper key is inserted, that allows the top pins to stay in the cylinder and the bottom pins to stay in the plug and allows the plug to turn and lock or unlock your door. The next piece are the pins and the pins comes in various heights depending on the groove cut in the key itself. And those can be changed so that your old key doesn't work and your old key does. The springs basically sit on top of all of the pins and they put tension down on them to keep the pins down at all times and when you put your keys in, it allows everything to line up nicely and let's the lock work properly. This is my pin kit. These are what the pins look like. Like I said there are different heights, different widths and this kit right here carries about half a million pins and that is what it takes to be a locksmith. You literally have that many pins that you will use on a regular basis. This kit is a smaller version of the big one. This kit nearly costs the same as that large kit. This was is a little smaller and a little more specialized and whatever you do, you do not want to drop one of these kits. I did that one time and it took me 8 hours to rearrange all the pins and get them back where they belonged. "