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Toool on Dutch TV

Monday, November 13th, 2017

A while ago, we had the Dutch national TV at one of our meetings. A guy named ‘Klaas’ makes a show in which he says he can do anything. His challenge this time: to crack a safe. The show consists of three parts. In the first, Klaas meets up with Jos to learn lockpicking, only to find out it is a bit hard to do quickly. Then, he tries the brute force method, which is also not very practical. In the end, he resorts to a robo-dialler and manages to open the safe.

You can watch the video here, but the item is in Dutch (auto-translate is possible, but won’t work wonders):

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Toool Club Competition Winners

Wednesday, February 24th, 2016

For over 10 years, we have held yearly club competitions at Toool. We collect some 25 locks and allow all Toool members to have a go at them. At a normal competition, you get a lock you have never picked before and only one chance. In this club competition, you can really try to learn how the locks reacts, how different tools and techniques produce different results and you can have a go at really difficult locks. At the end of the competition, there are prizes awarded for three lockpickers who opened the most locks in the least amount of time.

The 2015 competition ended a few months ago and we finally handed out the prizes to the winners. The prizes are a plaque and a Tokoz PRO 300 cilinder, kindly sponsored by Tokoz. The winner is Walter Belgers, second place is for Christian Holler and Jos Weyers came in third.

We are already hard at work with the 2016 competition.

Club Competition Prizes

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The first Toool meeting in Groningen – aftermath

Sunday, January 25th, 2015

The first Toool meeting in Groningen was a succes!

One of the attendees was showing his homebrew snap tool:

The local television crew (RTV Noord) was also present. They shot some video (in Dutch).

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The first Toool meeting in Groningen

Sunday, January 18th, 2015

Toool Netherlands members have been gathering in Amsterdam and Eindhoven for years. But for some, the distance to either places is too big. Jord Knaap lives in Groningen and he is one of the members that is far away from both places. The good news is: he decided to take upon him to host Toool-meetings in Groningen! So with that, Toool is strategically placed throughout the Netherlands.

The first meeting will be held coming saturday, January 24th, starting at 17:00 hours at Cafe-Bar Jan Westerhoff, Rijksweg 4 in Groningen.

Jord is planning to have monthly meeting to start with. If you are interested, please go to the first meeting. This way, you can discuss what the best date and place is to have the meetings. Jord would like to know who is coming, so please also mail him in advance at jord@knaapjunior.nl. Bring some locks if you like, and spread the word if you have friends that would like such a thing as well!

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Start of a new era!

Thursday, June 19th, 2014

Since July, 2006, Barry Wels has been publishing great stuff about locks and security on his blog, Blackbag. May, 2014, he decided to stop.

Barry Wels is founder and long-time president of Toool, The Open Organisation of Lockpickers. In August, 2013, he stepped down from the Toool board to focus on his new company. I am the new president of Toool since then.

Barry has very kindly given Toool the opportunity to take over blackbag. We will be trying to get some interesting lock-related content on here in the near future! And there’s more good news: all the old content will remain available.

I would like to thank Barry for his outstanding work and hope to see all of you around on Blackbag in the years to come.

Walter Belgers

President Toool

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