Breaking, not picking, a lock?

Casey Karp · Oct 22, 2014

My character is trying to get into a locked garage. The people door has no deadbolt, just the standard lock in the center of the doorknob (key slot on the outside, that thing you twist on the inside.)

He doesn't know how to pick or bump a lock. For reasons too complicated to go into, he needs the door, frame, and knob to look at least superficially intact, so he can't just break it down, push it open, or pry the knob off.

He is extremely strong. Is it possible he could break the internal mechanism by twisting the knob hard enough? Or is there some other way he could get the door open without doing any obvious damage?

Marlys · Oct 22, 2014

If the lock is the right type, he can open it with a credit card.

Drachen Jager · Oct 22, 2014

That only works on really old locks Marlys. Any lock (at least in North America) made after 1960 or so has an extra pin to prevent that trick.

Kicking a door in really doesn't do that much damage. It wouldn't be visible from the outside anyhow (the wood splinters inward).

I think turning the knob really hard would just break the knob.

I've heard that if you take a center punch and a hammer to the tumblers, you can knock them right out of certain types of lock. It would leave a hole in the knob, but I suppose he might be able to put the mechanism back after.

jclarkdawe · Oct 22, 2014

Questions like this present an interesting moral dilemma. The answer is yes, there are ways. That type of lock and a minute and I can be through the door without leaving a trace. Problem is the technique is not commonly known, and I'm not going to go into it.

The trick for the writer is in those situations we create an image that seems to work, and miss a critical step. However, I don't know you and don't want to present something like this to someone I don't know how they will treat it. Hence the moral dilemma.

However, kick the door in. It doesn't do a lot of damage and it's a garage. Give him some wood glue, a hammer, and some finishing nails and let him "fix" the damage.

Kicking is fast and low tech. That's why it's so popular.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

Cyia · Oct 22, 2014

Drachen Jager said:
That only works on really old locks Marlys. Any lock (at least in North America) made after 1960 or so has an extra pin to prevent that trick.

Not all of them. I used to open my grandmother's locks for her this way when she'd inevitably lock the door behind her without a key. You can also pick a window lock with one.

Why can't he go in the window?

Casey Karp · Oct 22, 2014

Thanks for the suggestions so far.

A little more information: It's not his garage and he needs the person who owns the garage to not notice anything amiss if she happens to go out there in the next couple of days. Yeah, it'll all fall apart if she actually tries to use the door, but he's sure she hardly ever does.

And his time is rather too short to be making repairs.

Cyia: The window is a nice idea, but (a) it doesn't open and (b) he's too big to fit through it even if it did. (I said he was extremely strong; very wide shoulders is part of that.)

I'm not sure about the credit card trick. I've never had any luck with it myself--I've always thought that it was one of those things you needed to practice. Maybe I'm wrong, and I'm just a clutz at such things.

I hope I haven't written myself into a corner.

Karen Junker · Oct 22, 2014

I think you can easily use Jim's method, if you simply do not describe in detail how it's done -- just say "he drew on skills he learned in the joint and opened the lock, leaving no trace of the break-in" or whatever.

ETA: Or just make it an old house and the owner's never bothered to update the locks. The credit card thing is amazingly easy.

Cyia · Oct 22, 2014

In that case, ice pick + hammer.

blacbird · Oct 23, 2014

In some instances, it might be easier to break the door than to break the lock.

caw

jclarkdawe · Oct 23, 2014

There's no way to open a locked door without damaging it without taking some time, either before or after. Basically there are three times you're involved with here, prep time (before you arrive at the door), actual opening time, and repair the damage time (after you open the door). If you want a clean job, you've got to spend some time.

To fix a kicked in door you squirt some glue into the broken wood, pound in a couple of finishing nails, and if you've got any carpentry skills you can do this in about two minutes.

The best way to learn how to open doors is construction work and fire departments. Prisons are full of people who have no appreciation for quality methods.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

King Neptune · Oct 23, 2014

What do you have against picking a lock like that? The typical night latch has no more than five pins. Someone who is good at it could rake them open in less than a minute.

King Neptune · Oct 23, 2014

jclarkdawe said:
Prisons are full of people who have no appreciation for quality methods.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

That's why they are there.

Patrick.S · Oct 23, 2014

I've used a credit card to get into a church before. It sounds worse than it was. The door had been locked accidentally and I was supposed to be able to get in there. It was an old church, but is there any reason it couldn't be an old garage? Store loyalty cards work the best. More bendy.

Maryn · Oct 23, 2014

There are lots and lots of houses and other buildings with pre-1960s locks between (locked) garage door and the building itself. Homeowners tend to trust the closed garage door to protect them sufficiently, especially if the garage has no windows or windows too small for a person to get through if they broke it.

This house, built in 1964, had a lock like that between the garage and the house. We replaced it (and the house's other outside door locks), but who's to say every single homeowner in this development, all by a builder who was using such locks even though more secure ones were available, did the same? (Considering the general construction quality, I can safely assume these old-style locks were the cheapest.)

None of the previous owners had upgraded the lock in the years between 1964 and 2004. Clearly they felt secure enough protected by a lock our ten-year-old could jimmy with her mom's Wegmans card.

So it's not at all unreasonable to have an old-style, not-all-that-secure lock separating a house from its attached garage, if that's what best serves your story.

Maryn, whose front door is fortress-like, which is funny compared to the back having all the security of a bathroom door

Buffysquirrel · Oct 23, 2014

You knock the pins out of the hinges.

Sorry.

In my Fantasy novel I just had the POV character note that his friend "did something to the lock".

badwolf.usmc · Oct 23, 2014

Sledge hammer.

It would depend on the door frame, but most garage doors have weak frames so if you take a 15 lbs sledge and just using a little strength you can breach the door without it looking broken. There are youtube videos you can watch which show you the results of different techniques.

Casey Karp · Oct 23, 2014

Buffysquirrel said:
You knock the pins out of the hinges.

LOL. I've never seen an exterior door with the hinges on the outside, for exactly that reason. Though, in fairness, I should note that the idiot who built our house installed not one, but two sliding doors backward, which made it impossible to do the ol' "broomstick in the groove" trick because the groove was on the outside.

Buffysquirrel said:
In my Fantasy novel I just had the POV character note that his friend "did something to the lock".

Unfortunately, I've already used that trick elsewhere. His friend picked a lock earlier in the book, but she's not around this time.

All: I think I'm going to exert authorial privilege and assert that the house is old enough/cheaply built enough that I can go with the credit card trick. Heck, the fact that there isn't a deadbolt on the door is a pretty good indication that someone was cutting corners anyway.

Just need to figure a way for this character to know about/know how to do the CC thing, then make the scene in character and entertaining.

Thanks. Off to do some googling for instructional videos.

Buffysquirrel · Oct 23, 2014

Casey Karp said:
LOL. I've never seen an exterior door with the hinges on the outside, for exactly that reason.

Oh yeah, that one's for Escaping A Locked Room. Sorry!

Steve Collins · Oct 23, 2014

How about spraying dry ice directly into the lock then snapping it with a screwdriver? This article is pretty good:
http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2012-08/gray-matter-how-science-helps-bike-thieves

jaksen · Oct 23, 2014

Make it an old door with a 'finger lock.' You push your finger in a little hole, lift and voila, the door opens.

My grandmother had locks like this on her 'people' door in the barn, the garage and a connecting door from the garage into her house. No kidding and it deterred many a person who 'didn't know' how to open it up. I remember opening the door for a workman coming to see my grandfather about a job. Finger in, door opens and the guys says, 'How'd you do that?'

(My grandfather was in his office on the other side. He was a sign painter and worked out of his barn.)

The house, barn and garage (originally just a storage shed) were all built in 1888.

King Neptune · Oct 23, 2014

Steve Collins said:
How about spraying dry ice directly into the lock then snapping it with a screwdriver? This article is pretty good:
http://www.popsci.com/diy/article/2012-08/gray-matter-how-science-helps-bike-thieves

And -13 isn't especially cold.

Cyia · Oct 23, 2014

Actually, the easiest solution would be something like:

"He wondered how he was going to break in without his buddy the lock-pick, but fortunately, someone else had beat him to it. The lock had been broken, and the door shoddily repaired."

So long as it's not a plot-resolving Deus ex Machina, you're allowed a coincidence in a book. If it gets him into trouble down the line, all the better.

Darron · Oct 23, 2014

If you're still considering this since you said you'd use your writer privilege I had one more idea:

If you can change the knob to a handle, then your character can brace himself on the door frame (or the building if the door is sunk into the wall a few inches, like a brick's width) and with his foot push down on the handle until it breaks the lock. The handle spins around and the door can't lock anymore and all he would need to do is rotate the handle back in the original position and it would look like no one was there and now the door's open.

This way he can break in without messing up the look of the door and it builds on what you were thinking originally by twisting it to break. That's what happens with these handle doors, the handle just acts as a way to increase torque to the breaking (internally) point.

Magnanimoe · Oct 23, 2014

Some of the suggestions above require that the character has reconnoitered the door first. It seems to me that if he had time and inclination to do that, he would take the time to research the lock for vulnerabilities. If this is a rush job, as seems to be implied, the brute force idea seems the mostly likely method of entry. Maybe the guy gets lucky and finds it unlocked, and doesn't have to use the repair stuff he brought with him and worried about having to use. Or maybe the garage door itself is unlocked. It's also possible to clone a garage door remote. Older ones can be cloned with a radio scanner. Is there opportunity for that to happen, say, when the home owner leaves the house?

Casey Karp · Oct 23, 2014

Darron, I wish I had seen your post before I rewrote the scene! Now I'm tempted to go back and undo my changes. I'll have to sleep on that.

All: I appreciate the enthusiasm you're showing, and I hope some of the ideas you're throwing out will be helpful to future visitors to the forum, but for me to use them would require major changes to either the character or a significant plot element (or both!)

I'm going to either stick with the credit card or change the handle per Darron's suggestion, depending on what feels better on my next rewrite pass through the scene.

Breaking, not picking, a lock?

Casey Karp

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