Commonly known as "shimming" ... My dad used to have an old brass Navy padlock that he used to lock his shed. My brother and I would always be needing to use tools to fix the billy cart or the push bikes or whatever, and we found that if you gave the padlock a sharp smack on one side, it would jiggle the locking bar enough that you could disengage it from the shackle and open the lock. This worked well for a couple of years till dad lost the key and my brother piped up with. "It's easy to open that lock dad.. see.." The lock was replaced with a much better one after that :( .. we didn't know about shimming back in those days, and the drink cans were made of steel anyway which is too thick.

A couple of years ago I went to garage sale and saw a couple of things shaped like a gun, flat on the sides with some wriggly probes sticking out the ends. When you pulled the trigger it made the probes, out the end, move back and forth in a fast erratic manner. When I asked the bloke what it was for, he says "It's a lock tickler"... He was an ex-copper.. lol...

thats amazing. good onya Vic.

And another good thing to remember... never use your ID card to try and open the store room door to the boozer... A bloke I knew many years ago in the RAAF (no it wasn't me.. haha) tried that and snapped his card off in the door jamb. The bit that got stuck was the bit with his photo on it.. hahaha didn't take them long to pick him up...

Actually it was at Laverton circa 1973. The guy was a clerk or general hand (I think), and a total P*** Head. He used to live on the ground floor of our barracks block opposite what was then ASCO and the boozer. Poor bugger might as well have had "Born Loser" tattood across his forhead lol.
Yes keeping well here, but a bit too much time on my hands at the moment since I was made redundant a couple of weeks ago. I should probably retire I guess. Hope you are well too mate. Cheers Bob

Aluminium is much too soft for this as it will bend as soon as it hits the ball bearing that locks the shaft,,got to be a shim plate

Trapper, that's why you need to rotate the shim and why it is designed with a parabolic curve. It does work with aluminium cans, it takes a bit of practice though, and some locks are easier than others. Same as using jigglers, you need to practice to get the technique for different locks.