Wrecking some padlocks

Joined
Apr 12, 2006
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There was a request in the Axe, Tomahawk, and Hatchet subforum to get pictures of breaking padlocks. It was a test I'd been planning on for a while, shooting some video of it, but hadn't gotten to that point yet. I decided to go ahead and test it out with shooting photos and get the video at a future date.

I tried padlock breaking for the first time with one of my Wreckers that I was hanging onto for myself to shoot some demonstration videos later. I wasn't as quick or graceful about it as Ryan Johnson, but I was successful. My spike doesn't fit as well in the shackle of the padlock as the RMJ does. Don't know if that will lead to changing the design down the road or not as busting padlocks is not the only design consideration with them.

Prior to starting on the lock, a standard Master Lock:



After the shackle broke:



Hard to tell from that pic. Let's take a closer look:



You can see that I struck at the body of the lock with the point of the spike. I honestly don't know if it was prying or striking that broke the shackle. It wasn't a dramatic event and I didn't see it was broken at first.

I decided to try it with a lock with a shorter shackle. It was even more difficult to fit the spike in with the heavy chain links. I ended up striking with the spike until the lock popped open. You could not re-lock it afterwards due to the damage.



Here's a close look at the longer-shackeld lock:



And the various places on the shorter one that got hit:







It was hard to get my camera to focus on the end of the spike's point, but you can see that while the steel wasn't untouched, it almost was exactly like it started out.



I still plan on shooting video of lock breaking sometime down the road.
 
Nice, James !
Haven't seen the the thread in the AT&H sub forum yet but I will.
Should put to bed some of the misconceptions of what some of the better custom hawks can do.
Looking forward to your vid whenever you post it.

Sorry I'm not more familiar with your work, my eyes are wide open now.
What steel was used in this one ?

Doug
 
Bigcountry1315 - I bet I can accommodate you. :D

Lycosa - Don't worry, your aikuichi won't come near a padlock like that. :)

Doug - There's so many quality makers out there now, who can keep up with all of 'em? This is 1/4" 4140. I really like 4140 for tools that will take a lot of force. Plenty tough, and a simple heat treatment. I've used it for my power hammer dies, hand hammers, more traditional axes, and these tactical 'hawks. I wouldn't want to build a general use knife from it, but for these kinds of applications it's great!
 
Storm Crow, now that's what I call 'hawk testing!!:thumbup:

I have your "War Chief" model with me all the time and it's one of my favorite tools. Next time I visit your shop, I may just have to try my hand at some "tactical" lock picking...:D
 
Jac_solar - It takes impact well and will hold an ax wood-chopping edge all day long, but it doesn't have enough carbon to hold a fine knife edge. In fact, if I was making an ax for the Scandinavian-style ax carpentry, I'd choose an alloy with higher carbon to allow for a fine cutting edge. But I come from more of a chopping-mesquite-root-balls-in-clay-with-big-chert-chunks background in ax usage, and am building these for military usage, so for these I want toughness and a wood chopping edge.
 
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