Thanks Al,
That is what I surmised but it was not stated explicitly in any NI GOOP liturature.
So then, private methods are used in public methods or other private menthods and pass data between each other by wiring them together as usual. Public methods lock the atributes if it will change them and public methods can call other public methods only if it doesn't lock the atributes and if it is not critical that this entire method be completed before the atributes are changed by another process.
I have not noticed this connection between locking of atributes and public/private methods before in other languages like Java where locking and unlocking are handled automatically (I think).
Thanks again,
MAC