[BlueWing]

Captain Ahab Jr - Nice contrast of old and new. What is the age of your home? My best friend lives in Belgium and he kids me about what I think are old homes. Where I live the neighboring town has the oldest four corners with the original structures here in America. Mid 18th century.

My home was first occupied and taxed in 1840. It is what I can say is my George Washingtons Axe if you all are familiar with that.

The thing about lockpicking is it barely serves a purpose anymore. Unless a locked item is of historical, personal or preservation need. The old days with expensive quality hardware with limited availability it was a needed service to be able to preserve the lock.

We were living in a time of minimal quality of life crimes. Today there is no respect so it is a smash and grab attitude. So the fact something is locked just means destroy what it is attached to and onto the next. The best locks will not prevail in a poorly structured mount.

The lock is only there to send a small message of I don't want you to have access but I can't stop you.

Commercially keys are still critical to assure positive secured areas with some accoutabilty. Physically secured with a hands on positive mechanical connection.

Safes had an image of solid and secure place to store any valuables. The truth is the majority safes are just fire resistant boxes using a combo lock and not a key to restrict who has access. If you have a modern safe look at the rating, probably just a rating of 15 minutes for attack unless it is a very high quality insurance company required unit.

So back to masraum' original post. I have to resharpen my picking skills for my hobby level. I have boxed up hundreds of pounds of my locks to move and when I get set up at my new location I will catalog all of them and build some sort of display. I still have all my key machines and thousands of keyblanks to keep me busy.

I have only one safe I'm keeping, a 1930s Diebold. It was my first safe opened when I had my locksmith service and took the safe in exchange for my service.

Terry