How good are jigglers?

following exchange

by the

poster, I was

effectiveness

jigglers and

personally, we do not use jigglers. work on your impressioning skills.

my2¢

Jigglers work, sometimes. Unlike impressioning they obviously don't net you a key. Consequently they are of more use to people who for whatever reason just need to operate a lock w/o the key, albeit not that quickly, than to locksmiths.

Jigglers: Only useful to part a fool from his money. Also great for making Bill Cosby look funny and selling Jello.

Impressioning: Very useful in many situations. But a man's got to know his limitations.

I was thinking more along the 'locked keys in a car' scenario.

/key/ et al - thanks for your advice to work on my impressioning skills but I'm afraid I am no locksmith by any stretch on the imagination :(

Regardless, I was really only asking from a curiosity point of view as to their effectiveness. I realise that picking 'normal' locks requires a degree of skill whereas, never having used/seen/owned a set of jigglers I wondered how good they were. I'm not doubting for an instance that a professional locksmith would probably use one of the specialised car entry kits (PRO-LOCK and the like) rather than a jiggler because with the right tools and knowledge its a 100% chance of completing the job rather than xx% by trying a jiggler.

If they are only good for seperating a fool and his money (and jelly sales !!:)) can there really be the demand necessary to sustain production? Surely someone must have produced some research on their effectiveness and concluded that 'Jigglers should only be used in situations where Bill Cosby needs to look funny' !! Maybe someone has a copy of such an article in an old issue of a trade magazine that could summarize it for me here (or off list)

It was precisely the lack of this type of information that led me to post here. And since the new sidewinder keys are meant to offer improved security, the emergence of laser jigglers sparked my curiosity.

Any other viewpoints gratefully accepted and thanks for the replies so far.

Never underestimate the gullibility of the buying public!

It doesn't have to work! (Well, jigglers do work, somewhat.) Look at the huge number of quack medicines sold - people buy them for "hope", not for demonstrated effectiveness.

In locksmithing - consider the "skeleton keys" still sold in magazines and on the net. Yes, they do work - but only for a very few locks (my guess is that 1/1000 of the front doors (or less) have this type of lock. But people go on buying them because they *hope* that this will give them the master keys to everything.

It is important to note that there are different types of "jigglers". Also called rocker picks and snake picks. I would reccomend those that are configured like a pick and double ended. Easily available from snap-on, Mac, Etc. VS those that are shaped roughly like a GM key with various profiles available from all the so called locksmithing distributors on the net. I don't know anything about the sidewinder tools that were mentioned. I would think that they would be less effective than the non-sidewinder variants simply because in a sidewinder lock the tumblers need to be manipulated in two directions vs one with a conventional pin or wafer lock.

If you are worried about a keys locked in the car senario your best bet is probably the specilaized entry tool for your vehicle. Check around online or check snap-on, Mac, Cornwell distributors and just buy the single tool or tools you need. Not the whole set. If you must use a jigger/rocker pick find the one that closely matches your key profile and make sure it will work the lock before you get locked out. You will still probably have to buy a whole set of them.

See past discussion. It is a foregone conclusion that when you lock yourself out, your picks will also be on the wrong side of the door... and the best emergency pick, the one that works EVERY time and is extremely cheap and widely available, is a copy of the key.

There are a _LOT_ of products on the market which don't work very well, or at all. Jigglers are a fairly high-profit product, and I suspect that has more to do with their being available than whether they work.

I tried jigglers some years ago. I successfully opened one car with them, once, but the success rate wasn't exactly encouraging so I shelved 'em in the "last resort solutions" pile. Your milage may vary.

lol - ;)

OK. Once again thanks to all for their input. It is much appreciated.

Are there any publications out there that review these kind of things? I imagine there must be some restricted circulations that do (available only to certified individuals/companies) but I was wondering if there was a resource to identify useful and less-than-useful tools for the professional as well as those that are just plain curious. Like me :)

It must be worthwhile for someone who has access to all of these tools to do comparitive reviews as I am sure that outcomes would be of interest to everyone.

Maybe we could get Keyman to review the software side of things ... Instacode, Trescat etc. I'm guessing but I know which one I think would come last !!!

I currently subscribe to two locksmithing trade journals (though I may only renew one for next year); a third went out of business and I believe there used to be a fourth though I don't know whether they're still in operation. They publish a mixture of product reviews (both tools and locks), tips-and-techniques articles, and manufacturer's "flack".

And of course you can get some review information here, though it may not go into the detail you'd like.

It really depends on what they are used for. From what I can tell, they worked very well on older Saturns and Toyotas.

Stu