"Can" you believe it

This is the third and forth key I have created using impressioning. The lock is a euro cylinder by E*S and I have no key for it at all. I was extremely surprised when the lock opened after very little work, although I guess the fact all the pins are set so shallowly does not detract from the security (and I have to guess) it does not fill me with great confidence. Luckily the lock is in a cardboard box not in a door.

The impressioning was MUCH easier than on the previous lock. The keyway is the same so I think I was wrong to blame the keyway, however, for a given keyway you have some leeway (poet) over where you place the pins, the Yale was further off to the side resulting in just bruising of the edges at first. The E*S gave the text book marks.

Then I was thinking again about the lead edged key, it would be fine to make a mould for a specific keyway but what if something unusual comes up and you don't have a blank and would you ever really want to have hundreds of moulds? I was looking at Yale master blanks online and they showed how the warding varied so that you could have various levels of master simply based on the wards. The super master barely had any material left, it was as if you took a blank and cut the grooves for all the different wards for all the keys out of it.

I wondered, what about just making something from sheet metal, especially a soft one! I quickly made a blank from some aluminium sheet, I would have used coke can but I did not have any so it is a little thicker. I spent some time forming it to fit the keyway and after a while had something reasonable. Then I tried impressioning. Obviously the key is not strong enough for the cranking part of the action so for that I used a screwdriver, I then just wiggled the key. Again the softer aluminium took the marks fairly easily, the fact it was thin also seemed to help. After a while I had a key that worked albeit with the need for a screwdriver to do the turning.

So don't lock me in a room with a coke can (and a pair of scissors and a round file and a magnifier and some pliars and a screwdriver) because I can escape!