Making your own door opening shims

Not sure if shim is the right word, you’ll probably recognize it better if I call it “opening the door with a creditcard”. If you’ve never heard of it the following website explains it really nice:

http://www.wikihow.com/Open-a-Door-with-a-Credit-Card

I find it rather annoying to break my credit cards or other plastic for that matter on this, so I thought there must surely be a better way. The following shops do have a better solution, namely MICA cards:

• http://www.thelocksmithshop.co.uk/mica-card-x-5-assorted-48-p.asp
• http://www.lockpicks.com/supermicamaterial.asp

So I was on the verge of buying one, when I read the description again:

Gone are the days of cutting up old washing liquid containers! Super Mica card will open just about any retracting sprung & live latchbolt, and will also work where there is little tolerance between door and frame. Will also open some window catches as well as many other uses.

See the bold stuff? Now doesn’t that invite you to just try it out yourself before buying? I’m sure the DIY version is of inferior quality, but hey for just a couple of tries and not spending a single dime that’s pretty sweet. So I followed their advice and grabbed a washing liquid container (or at least what I understood by it):

Then I just grabbed two of my favorite cards to shim doors and put them on top to mark the spot I had to cut:

I first cut the container in half, since I know I’m kinda bad at doing this kind of stuff, that way I can get two tries. After your cut it all up it will kinda look like the following picture:

Well like you can see my cutting skills are not the best, but it’s OK for now. The plastic is a bit flimsy though so I’ll have to pick a container with stronger plastic the next time (or just buy the mica cards and try them out). Anyhow these things are great to carry around in your wallet for when you forget your keys or those times when you are doing social engineering and you discover that the juicy stuff is behind a door which has been pulled shot, but not locked.

Feel free to comment and suggest better stuff to make the shims from.