I’ve spent the last two or three days really practising impressioning. Impressioning is more of an art than a science really, to me, at this stage. It is something with many variables that interact, and although there are impressioning experts out there who do this as their main way of opening locks, in the main it is something that most locksmiths never have course to use. There is a fairly large hobby up-take of it, as part of the sport picking surge that is taking place.

Of course, impressioning as a hobby locksporter vs. on the door shows that there are major differences. The main difference is that on the door you have to work everything out from scratch (lock pun alert!) whereas on the bench or when competing, you can get extra info on the cylinder you are making a key for.

The ‘standard’ lock for impressioning competition is the 5 pin ABUS 83c, which is generally a tricky lock to pick, built to the usual high quality of all ABUS locks. Knowing this lock literally inside out means that those doing this for sport have a huge advantage. The critical factors, the spacings, depths and MACS, are learned and practised, and so ‘bench times’ can be exceptionally fast. In fact, the current record is a mere 87 seconds in competition!

Why am I practising so hard? Well, the last 2 years I have failed to even open the competition locks! So, at last, I’ve put in a large time investment to really get good.

As it stands, I still won’t be winning anything soon – indeed, over-practising on a specific lock would be foolish – but next year I will, I hope, at least be in with a short of the finals!