Date:         Wed, 3 Mar 1999 00:56:50 -0500
Reply-To:     Bob Stratton <rslist@SDII.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Bob Stratton <rslist@SDII.COM>
Subject:      Re: key codes not required to make replacements
In-Reply-To:  <007e01be6533$64d6aa80$10e1e1df@marshall>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

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.