It can be a hobby as well as a practical skill. While the process is simple and can be mastered with practice, lockpicking requires a great deal of patience. To prevent drilling, many tubular locks have a middle pin made from hardened steel or contain a ball bearing in the middle pin. Standard tubular-lock drill bit diameters are 0.375 in (9.5 mm) and 0.394 in (10.0 mm). Such locks can be picked by a special tubular lock pick with a minimum of effort in very little time it is also possible to defeat them by drilling with a hole-saw drill bit. However, the primary reason the locks are used in these applications is their lack of the depth requirement that most other locks require. This is primarily because they are often seen on coin boxes for vending machines and coin-operated machines. Tubular pin tumbler locks are generally considered by the general public to be safer and more resistant to picking than standard locks.
Tubular locks are commonly seen on bicycle locks, computer locks, elevators, and a variety of coin-operated devices such as vending machines. A tubular pin tumbler lock, also known as an ace lock, circle pin tumbler lock, or radial lock, is a variety of pin tumbler lock in which six to eight pins are arranged in a circular pattern, and the corresponding key is tubular or cylindrical in shape. I show how tubular pin tumbler locks work and how they can be opened using tubular lockpicks.
