Bruce Picks Away

Here's a few pics of me picking the deadbolt of my door.

Making Mr. Miracle

Someone broke into my house yesterday.

ME, BITCHES!

It took an half of an hour. Not more or less an half hour like less than an hour or more than a few minutes but exactly 30 minutes. That's as long as a TV show or it takes to make a decent supper or... well I'm sure you all know how long an half hour is but, but, but I'm just excited. This was my first time sitting down with them. I think I've found my calling - maybe I shouldn't be practicing to become Batman but rather should be trying to make myself an illusionist like Mr. Miracle.

Picks in the Post

I got my lock-pick set this morning. It's gorgeous. It's a 20 piece lock-pick set of from LockPickShop.com although that was my mistake - since ordering it, I found out that the maker, SouthOrd sells the exact same set for $10 cheaper than LockPickShop.

The MPXS-20 is a set of 14 picks and five torsion wrenches (there's also a key extractor - also known as tweezers). The picks come in a case which I like because it has a zipper rather than a button which most seem to have. These picks are called Slim, meaning that they are for narrow U.S. locks or European and Japanese locks. Narrower seemed like a better choice than wider to me.

The only other set that I really considered purchasing was the PXS-14 but it wasn't on sale when I ordered.

Batman Haute Couture

Masked vigilantes are en vogue this year. These cowled ladies showed off Narciso Rodriguez fall collection in New York last week. The blog Red Carpet Fashion Awards aptly identified these bucket hats as Batman-esque. I'm looking forward to high-fashion renditions of Batbelts, myself.

Suspicion

I stopped by a local locksmith's today to see if I could buy a set of picks locally instead of over the Internet. The lady who was working the shop came around from the other side of the shop. Because I'm fairly young, I made sure to use all the lingo that I knew when asking her if she had any. I asked if she had an torsion wrenches and picks for keyless entry. I was shocked at how quickly her attitude changed.

She told me, "We don't carry that kind of thing here" and when I asked her if she knew someone who might, she said "No" and returned to the other side of the store leaving me standing alone in her shop - a surprising thing to do to someone you suspect is a thieving criminal.

I've read in the Visual Guide to Lock Picking that picking a lock is not exactly the best method of fast, keyless entry. Drilling sounds easy or acid or if it's a pad lock simply cutting the BAR. That being said, I'm sure that there's a lot of superstitious cowardly thugs who could think of all kinds of crimes to commit.

Hopefully I'll tell you about bumping, shimming, skeleton keys and other keyless entry techniques beyond picking - the right tool for the job, they say.

Rolling Hitch

Good job, Plastic Man. You'll be able to sell that tape on e-bay or maybe bring it to the JLA's monthly poker nights.

It's very easy to make the clove hitch a little more secure. By wrapping the working end around the post one more time, we have a Rolling Hitch. Because this double turn reduces slipping, this knot is useful for situations where the pull is along the same direction as the post.

1) Pass the line around the post, going over the standing end once you make it around.
2) Make a second identical turn, which follows the first turn.
3) Finish the knot in the same way we finished the Clove Hitch: with a half hitch
a) Pass the line around the post on the other side of the standing end.
b) Feed the working end underneath the third loop.
5) Cinch the knot.

Clove Hitch

Sometimes a magic lasso is just the best fashion accessory that one could ask for.

Today's knot is the Clove Hitch. This is a great and super easy way to tie a line. It's so unbelievably fast.


1) Pass the line around the post or bar or whatever.
2) Pass the line around the post on the other side of the standing end.
3) Feed the working end underneath the second loop.
4) Cinch the knot.

The things that you should keep in mind are: a) leave a bit line past the knot since it might slip a touch before catching b) if wiggling the standing part will loosen this knot.

Figure of Eight Coil

You know, I don't think that this picture is the worst one I found...

I did get one thing done for Building Batman this month: I found a use for the figure eight knot. If you have a rope that you don't use very often - like the ice-batrope that goes along with the Bat-antarctic-suit or the underwater rope that goes with the Bat-diving-bell or... well you get the idea. What you need to do is coil your Batrope. But something nice like the Alpine coil (we'll learn that one someday) is more for short term. For storage you want something like the Figure Eight Coil.


1) Make the entire rope a bight (fold it in half).
2) Coil the doubled rope (the animation only shows one coil but of course you do as many as you need).
3) Wrap the working end (the bight) around the coil.
4) Once around the coil, feed the bight through the loop.
5) Pull tight and you have a coiled rope with a nice small loop to hang your batrope from.

Reach For The Sky

This is why you need to be born a millionaire to be able to become Batman. It's been more than a little while since I've posted on my blog and trust me I would have posted if I could have. My secret identity's life has been a hectic series of demands. My physical training has been off and on and I haven't developed any new skills. That being said, I was able to make an animation for a knot just now, plus I ordered a lock-pick set. It should arrive very quickly. I'm not promising that the rest of this month will be any easier on the ol' playboy persona but I will make sure to post many more knots than I have recently. And then we will be able to move on to lock-picking which promises to be very interesting although a couple of the knots that I have learned have proved useful on more than one occasion already and carrying a knot book and a piece of rope around has really entertained alot of people I meet in my day. Not many people are willing to teach me knots they know but they are often interested in trying out whatever knot I am trying to learn at the moment. Maybe knots are really a lost art.