The Master Touch: Schuyler Towne on the Art and Ethics of Breaking In

On November 14, 2012, Schuyler Towne joined Joshua Foer onstage at the Institute Library in New Haven, Connecticut, as part of the ongoing series “Amateur Hour,” in which various tinkerers, zealots, and collectors discuss their obsessions. Towne, thirty, is an expert lockpicker. Since 2006, he has competed in several locksport competitions, including the Dutch Open at LockCon, in Friesland. Towne’s other passions have included competitive curling as well as theater (which led to a brief off-Broadway career). The conversation that follows was recorded live and has been edited for brevity and meaning.

Joshua Foer: So we sent out an invitation to everybody who was coming here tonight to bring the most challenging-looking lock they own, and I see one that is very intimidating right here. Tell us a little about this lock.

This is basically the U-Haul version of a lock made by the Abus company called the Abus Diskus. It’s got a really tight keyway. Everything is at a smaller diameter, which means it can be annoying to work on with normal tools. The Abus Diskus and the Brinks R70 and the Master 40 are all basically the same lock, and they tend to be kind of a rite of passage in the American locksport community because usually, in order to pick them, you have to apply too much tension. Tension is very important when you’re picking locks. You usually want light tension. People say that you want three butterflies’ worth of tension on the end of the pick, if that’s a useful measurement. And with this lock, in order to overcome the force of the shackle, you have to apply very heavy tension, which makes it difficult to feel what’s going on inside.

I suspect that talking about lockpicking is a bit like dancing architecture. But walk us through what you’re thinking as you try to open this lock—and what’s that small case in your lap?

This case was given to me by one of my students because he got sick of me using all sorts of crappy cases. I use cardboard for my trays, and I use nickel tweezers for pinning locks. I’m really cheap about all this stuff. So he went out and got me a gorgeous pair of $40 tweezers and this beautiful box for picks and my practice locks, things like that.

All of these things look more or less like shards of metal.

Like dental tools. The best lockpicker in the world is a German dentist. Anyway, some of these are of my own design, like these here, which are chemically etched and were spotwelded in my bathroom. This here was one of the first picks I ever owned. These over here were made by a guy who goes by the handle Criminal Hate, a really good pickmaker. I have a couple here made by a guy who goes by Tooly McGee. I love his work. This is a hand-molded pick made by a guy named Legion. All sorts of stuff. I made this small tool from a piece of metal removed from a windshield-wiper blade.

Schuyler Towne. Colchester, VT, 2013.

(Christina Paige)

You made that?

Yes. I go to AutoZone after work when I close, at my job as a barista, and I pick through their trash and take as many windshield-wiper blades as I can. It’s a very good time of year for it right now.

Okay, so what’s inside this lock that you’re about to open, and how are you going to open it?

If you look at a key, you’ll see that it has several peaks and valleys on it. You can tell the number of pins in your lock by looking at the number of valleys. The number of valleys is the number of pins. The depths of those valleys correspond directly to the length of the pins. Now, in this case there are four pin chambers, and each of those pin chambers...