I was salvaging stuff from my scrap heap this afternoon and found a good cable. The only problem is it's locked--not to anything, just to itself. I found a grid of numbers in the same case that looked like some kind of performance statistics but on the off chance that the combination was imbedded, I tried all the likely combinations I saw there.

The lock is "Douglas" (unless my memory fails--it's not here with me). It's a cheap lock but I could use it on my locker at the swimming pool or for additional security. I know I can have it lopped off but can a locksmith routinely extract lost combinations?

Is it the round-face kind of lock usually found on school lockers? If so, you can just listen to the clicks as you turn the dial to get the combination.

I don't know if a locksmith could open it, but my guess is that bringing the lock to a locksmith would get you the answer.

My suspicion is that even if you could get it done it would cost just as much as a new lock. However, if your motivation is to save a cubic inch of trash from the land fill for an ecological reason, then good luck... I see no other advantage to going through the process.

And if that fails a couple wacks with a big assed hammer should do.

"Assed" Can I write that?

Is it a dial type or tumbler combination padlock?

A lot of padlocks can be opened using shims. One of my friends put one of my DVDs through the slot of the wrong locker. I used a shim made out of a soda can to pop open the Master Lock and retrieve my DVD.

It would not be worth paying a locksmith to recover the combination of a cheap cable lock.

The only thing that protects combination locks is sheer laziness. If the other solutions don't work, you can dial every combination. Thinking, "That will take forever?" Wrong. On a standard 3-number lock there are only 1000 possibilities. At 2 seconds a piece, you can try every combination in 33 minutes, with a 50% probability of hitting it in 15 minutes. I've broken a cable lock (4-digit) that came with a thrift store bike this way. Richard Feynman was apparently good enough to play with combination locks behind his back while chatting away, but he was a genius of course.