Each of the little pins you see in the ring of that lock are equivalent to the pins in a typical pin-tumbler lock you’d find on a front door. The corresponding round cutouts in the edge of the key barrel set how far each one is pushed down when you insert the key.
Yes, there’s just one little tooth that rotates the lock, but only after each of those pins are pushed down to the correct depth. These are almost always really cheap locks, so you’ve only got to be kind of close tbh, but you do still have to be close.
You’ve just got a copy of walmarts keys. (Or a near enough approximation) nothing ‘universal’ about it. I don’t think you explicitly tried to get ‘walmarts keys’, but got lucky enough with whatever random key you bought that it happens to work.
There’s no such thing as a literal ‘universal key’. There’s commonly used keys (like what a large international retailer might buy and use in bulk…), and there’s lock picking tools.
Yes, they’re only relevant to purely warded locks which are largely nolonger used in the modern world (exceptions always exist, the world isnt black/white).
In the world of pin-tumbler or tubular locks - what we’ve been talking about - the closest equivalent would be a comb pick/key; which is a bypass tool (or lock pick) that only effects poorly designed locks with pin stacks shorter than the chambers they’re in, when they’re fully compressed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these for a tubular lock, but they may exist.
They literally look like this:
That’s just a key, presumably a copy of the specific key that your local walmart uses; there’s nothing ‘universal’ about it.
These are some of the cheapest locks you can get and all just use a single tooth to turn the latch.
Each of the little pins you see in the ring of that lock are equivalent to the pins in a typical pin-tumbler lock you’d find on a front door. The corresponding round cutouts in the edge of the key barrel set how far each one is pushed down when you insert the key.
Yes, there’s just one little tooth that rotates the lock, but only after each of those pins are pushed down to the correct depth. These are almost always really cheap locks, so you’ve only got to be kind of close tbh, but you do still have to be close.
You’ve just got a copy of walmarts keys. (Or a near enough approximation) nothing ‘universal’ about it. I don’t think you explicitly tried to get ‘walmarts keys’, but got lucky enough with whatever random key you bought that it happens to work.
There’s no such thing as a literal ‘universal key’. There’s commonly used keys (like what a large international retailer might buy and use in bulk…), and there’s lock picking tools.
Ever hear of skeleton keys?
Yes, they’re only relevant to purely warded locks which are largely nolonger used in the modern world (exceptions always exist, the world isnt black/white).
In the world of pin-tumbler or tubular locks - what we’ve been talking about - the closest equivalent would be a comb pick/key; which is a bypass tool (or lock pick) that only effects poorly designed locks with pin stacks shorter than the chambers they’re in, when they’re fully compressed. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these for a tubular lock, but they may exist.