this chapter is not intended to make you into a professional locksmith, it is our hope that, with a bit of practice, you’ll be able to open a padlock of your very own. Or your front door.
The first tool is called a tension tool or tension wrench. It keeps a slight turning force on the lock as you attempt to raise the pins. You’ll need a stiff piece of metal – an ordinary paperclip would bend too easily. Examples can be seen below. Note that they all have a sharp bend in common.
Types of tension tool
Some hooks and rakes
The idea is to insert the tension tool into the lock and maintain a constant clockwise turning pressure as you insert the lock pick. That pressure strains the pins slightly so they remain in place as you adjust them. It also means that if something goes right and the lock is freed, it turns immediately. In practice, we got used to keeping gentle pressure on – beginners usually press too hard – until it suddenly turned, sometimes quite unexpectedly.
The second tool is the actual lock pick – a hook or a rake. The rakes might look a little like a key, while a hook is designed to raise pins to the shear line one by one. That is why a stiff hairpin with a bent end can be used by a skilful locksmith.
Practise on a cheap padlock – as large as you can find, so that the pins are obvious. Begin by looking into the lock and seeing where the first pin sits.
When you are ready, insert the tension tool, moving it as far out of the way as you can. Put a little pressure in the direction the key would turn the lock. Then insert your lock pick. If it is the rake style, you’ll have to fiddle it back and forth, getting a feel for the pins within. That action can result in lifting the pins into place, so try that first – just move the pick back and forth like a key a dozen times, while keeping that gentle turning pressure on. Alternatively, if your pick has a bend at the end – the one known as a hook – you’ll want to reach right to the back and feel the ends of the pins, one by one, raising them up to the shear line.
The first time we tried this on a proper padlock, it took about two minutes. We decided there and then that we were lock-picking geniuses. Unfortunately, that overconfidence led to the lock being snapped shut again. The second attempt took well over half an hour of constant fiddling with both a hook and a rake. It was harder than we’d realised, but the wonder of it was that it worked at all. For those of you, like us, who have never understood how lock picks, or indeed cylinder locks, worked, this was a thing of awe.
In our research, we also came across the idea of a ‘bump’ key. These are keys for cylinder locks that do the job of a rake and tension tool in one go. They are inserted into a lock and either wiggled back and forth like a rake or tapped. We’ve included an example to show what they look like, but we had no luck in using ours at all. Lock picks are clearly better.
The most satisfying combination was the padlock pictured, opened with a hook and a broad wire tension wrench.
Finally – enjoy the knowledge and the skill. One day, it might even come in useful.
EXTRAORDINARY STORIES – PART ONE: ERNEST SHACKLETON
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‘For scientific discovery, give me Scott; for speed and efficiency of travel, give me Amundsen; but when you are in a hopeless situation, when you are seeing no way out, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.’
Raymond Priestley, part of Shackleton’s Nimrod polar expedition team as well as Scott’s Terra Nova expedition
Born in Ireland to an Anglo-Irish family on 15 February 1874, Ernest Shackleton came to England at the age of ten and was educated at Dulwich College in London, of which more later. Along with a small group of elite explorers at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, Shackleton chose to pit himself against the last truly unknown continent: Antarctica. When things went wrong, he called on depths of character and courage that still inspire today. Wherever leadership is taught around the western world, the name of Shackleton is spoken with quiet reverence.
Shackleton learned his seacraft in the Merchant Navy, joining at the age of sixteen. In 1898, aged just twenty-four, he passed as Master: a qualification to command a British ship anywhere in the world. When he was twenty-seven, he joined the 1901 Discovery expedition under Robert Falcon Scott, mapping the first part of the Antarctic continent. There, Shackleton fell ill and had to be sent to New Zealand to recover. He was bitterly disappointed.
Three years later, Shackleton returned as leader of his own Nimrod expedition – named after the ship. Shackleton and three companions made an attempt on the South Pole in horrific weather conditions. They came to within 97 miles of it, but by then they were dangerously low on food. Shackleton made the decision to turn back, though they had come closer than anyone before them. Wryly, he told his wife, ‘I thought you would prefer a live donkey to a dead lion.’ He came home a hero and was knighted by King Edward VII. However, the Pole remained unconquered – and Shackleton had caught the bug for the strange ‘white warfare’ of the south.
Antarctica has never had an indigenous population. It is a frozen wilderness larger than China. A range of mountains cross its heart and winds there can reach speeds of 200 miles an hour as they roar and scour in blizzards of astonishing ferocity. It has a good claim to being the most hostile place on earth. In 1911, Robert Scott launched his own ill-fated run at the Pole, reaching it in January 1912, only to discover the Norwegian Roald Amundsen had beaten them to it. Scott and his team died on the return journey. The story of that brave expedition and the extraordinary character of those men is told in the first Dangerous Book. It didn’t seem possible to include two ‘Extraordinary Stories’ of Antarctic exploration at that time – but the world turns and here we are, with a story that deserves to be told.
As the Pole had been reached, Shackleton set his cap to be the first to cross the entire continent on foot. The plan was to sail as far as possible through sea ice, set out on foot to the Pole, then continue through to the other side. It was, to say the very least, a massive undertaking. It was simply impossible for his men to carry enough food to keep them alive over such distances, so Shackleton needed two ships. Endurance was a solid Norwegian three-master, designed in oak to smash through half-frozen seas. The captain would be a New Zealander named Frank Worsley. Endurance would land as far south as possible and, if necessary, provide a base during the first hard winter. The second ship, Aurora, would make key supply drops on the other side of Antarctica. It became the ‘Endurance’ expedition, a name taken from both the ship and his family motto: Fortitudine Vincimus – ‘Through endurance, we conquer’.
The trip was mostly privately funded and Shackleton himself wrote to those who might donate. Public schools raised money for the dogs he would need and he named each dog after the school which had raised the funds for it. Given that he had seventy dogs, he ran out of those names fairly quickly. After that, the dogs were called things like Satan, Bosun, Sally, Fluffy, Sailor and Shakespeare.
Shackleton