TIL my antique lock-picking hobby reached 50 working keys after 18 months, and the purple ribbon from the Stark County fair is sitting on my shelf | Ask a Weird Expert - Pinecone Attack
TIL my antique lock-picking hobby reached 50 working keys after 18 months, and the purple ribbon from the Stark County fair is sitting on my shelf
Yesterday I finally got my 50th skeleton key to open the old farmhouse lock I bought at a Canton flea market last spring for $14. My neighbor Dale got me into this back in March of last year when he handed me a rusty key and a lock and told me to figure it out. I keep every key on a pegboard in the garage, labeled with where I got it. The hardest one took me three weeks, a brass key from a Pennsylvania estate sale with a worn bit. The fair judge in August gave out a purple ribbon for my display case, which felt silly until I saw 12 other people standing in line to look at it. Anyone else here pick locks or work with old keys, and how do you store yours so they don't rust?
My lock picking skills are so bad I'd probably pick the lock and then forget which key did it. For rust, I just keep mine in a sock drawer with those little silica packets from shoe boxes and they've stayed fine for years.