Pie Palace

I’ve just tried the i-hacked tutorial on making shims to open combination locks. It works, although there are a few points they neglect to mention:

• The shims don’t seem to be reusable: with use, the tips are bent and folded back over on themselves. The folded tips make it difficult to wangle the shim into another lock. By widening the tip of the shim so that it is rounded, it may be possible to produce a more durable shim. Although making the shim out of two sheets of folded aluminum seemed promising, the two-lock barrier has not yet been broken (but the first lock is a bit easier to open).
• Using the shim involves a weird combination of pushing the shim into the lock, and pulling the lock down, relative the the “U”.

These tests were performed with the remains of a “Coke C2″ can.