At 11:05 PM 1999-03-02 -0600, Marshall Ruskin wrote: >This November, I had lost the keys to my gas cap. I took my car to a >locksmith. What followed completely amazed me. >... >He examined the key, took out a file from his pocket, and proceeded to a >file a perfect working key from the blank. Interestingly enough, my fiancée just had someone do this in front of her last weekend, and was just as shocked. (The car in question was a BMW.) It's not necessarily a coating on the blank. When I was younger I studied locksmithing from a friend who had a home study course. A good locksmith can do it from the minute scratches that appear on the blank after a little wiggling. It's an iterative process, but not a particularly onerous one. It's even worse with the American cars. I've seen a little rubber "key" that one wiggles a few times, and opens almost any of certain vendors' locks right up. The more I learn about locks, the more I appreciate how much society operates on trust. |
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