[vincentbarr]

(1) I love your book recommendation; however, it dedicates maybe one or two pages to safe-cracking, so I would not recommend it for this purpose.

Instead, I would read the material that Deviant Ollam has published (http://deviating.net/lockpicking/resources.html) or look for an upcoming TOOOL meetup (http://toool.us/).

(2) I don't intend to be pedantic – and perhaps I'm mistaking hyperbole for fact – but how could you are opening a combination lock with an secret unbeknownst to you more quickly than your a combination lock with a secret known to you? Unless, you're shimming the new lock and avoiding dialing the correct combination altogether, in which case you would solve them all locks in the same span of time, this is unlikely. However, you said you're opening the lock by 'feel,' so I assume that's not the case.

[jsolson]

With respect to #2 -- "more quickly" could be a bit much, but there are quite a few combination locks (of the sort commonly found on cheap-ass high-school lockers) wherein getting within 2-3 digits of each digit in the combination is sufficient to open them.

Given that, I could easily see how "feeling" that you'd hit the right digit (give or take) might be faster than focussing on visually actually hitting the right digits.

[notatoad]

when i was in high school, the school issued old master combination padlocks to everybody and they had a very obvious audible and tactile "thunk" when the dial hit the right number, if you pulled down on them the right amount while spinning the dial.

and yes, it actually was quicker to open them by feel than by looking at the numbers on the dial.

[Broken_Hippo]

I saw a good number of folks that were able to seemingly jiggle the locker, maybe with a kick near the bottom, and it opened. Much quicker than entering in the 3 numbers on the dial and then lifting the handle.