Toool (or actually its predecessor NVHS) started in 1997 in Amsterdam. They met at the Hippie Hangout, a sort of hacker space, when hacker spaces did not yet exist. Later, they moved to a variety of pubs and even a sports accomodation. I have been going to these meetings from the start in 1997. Living in Eindhoven, visiting these sessions meant travelling over 1.5 hours one way every time.
Late 2005, I decided to start a Toool chapter in Eindhoven so I did not have to travel so much. To kick start it and get local people to participate, I wrote and submitted an article for a local newspaper, who sent a photographer for a picture to add to the article. The first meeting was helt January 25, 2006 and a lot of people, who had read about it, were present that day. That means that todays’ meeting celebrates 20 years of Toool Eindhoven!
The main local newspaper got wind of the meetings and attended the third meeting, where the then president of Toool was also present. That resulted in another article.
Where Toool Amsterdam had several locations over the years (they are now meeting at the Amsterdam hacker space Tech Inc), Toool Eindhoven has stayed at the Trafalgar Pub throughout the past 20 years (even though by now, Eindhoven has its own hacker space Hackalot).
At today’s meeting, we were presently surprised when they treated us to some Dutch warm snacks.
Yuri brought a dual custody money box to the What Hackers Yearn 2025 (WHY2025) lockpicking village, and challenged us to pick it. Several lockpickers gave it a fair attempt, but with limited tooling the box remained shut. After WHY2025 I’ve brought it home, made custom lockpicks, and eventually managed to pick it and open the box. This blog is the complete story, from receiving the box to making a key for it.
WHY2025 (https://why2025.org/) is a quadrennial outdoors hacker event, a conference where people teach other people. This edition was from the 8th to 12th of August 2025 in Geestmerambacht in the Netherlands. Toool has a long track record of teaching lockpicking at these events. When you become a regular, others will start to plan for it as well. Several hackers brought the locked objects for us to pick.
One such challenge, Yuri’s box with two keyholes and just one key, appeared in the village. Yuri wrote on the chest, ‘Trash or treasure? Let me know if you open it!’ and included their contact details. After several people attempted the box, we were nearing the end of the event. I’ve contacted Yuri and discussed options. Them was fine with me bringing the box home to give it a fair attempt.
The chest was curious to me as it has two keyholes, which can be a dual custody, a mechanical version of the four eyes principle. To open such a system, both key owners need to be present with their key. Several variations exist. Either where key A or B open the box, where key B is used after key A, and very rarely the dual custody where key A and key B need to be present at the same time. Without any knowledge of the internals of this specific chest, your guess will be as good as mine. My guesses were that the key didn’t belong to the chest, second that both locks are independent, and third that one lock rotated clockwise, and the other counterclockwise. Of course, all three assumptions were wrong, as we’ll see later.
I’ve started my investigation by making a few simple lever wire picks, and quickly progressed to making custom 2-in-1 lever tools. The process is quite nice, even if it takes some trial and error to get right. I’ve ended up making two, one from brass and one from 304 stainless tubing. For the picking tips, 1.5 mm thick brass was cut into 4mm wide strips. One side gets a concave cutout to match the shape of the tube, to which it is silver soldered with high heat. The tips are then cut to the correct length, and rounded over with a file. While these tips can be shaped with needle files, it’s a tradeoff as they can’t stand much abuse.
After attempting for an evening without luck, picking, I chose to use a fiber scope to look inside the lock. It was slightly tricky to position the fiber and interpret what I was looking at, but I eventually determined there was just one bolt and both locks should rotate clockwise. I was slightly confused by the left-hand side (LHS), which appeared to have a form of warding in the keyway. This turned out to be a stop for the LHS key.
I’ve managed to pick the lock by inserting and rotating the key in the LHS clockwise, and inserting the fiber through the same keyhole to observe the lever at the RHS. With this, I’ve managed to pick the RHS of the lock. Even with all of this, it still is not an easy lock to pick.
The box was quite dirty inside and required a quick clean and some disassembly. In the pictures below, you can clearly see the mechanism, a ten lever lock spread over two keyways. With the lock open, I’ve opted to design a quick lever lock key builder in OpenSCAD and printed a fully functioning key. While not the most durable, in the correct printing orientation, PETG is fine for a temporary key. The key can later be copied to a metal blank.
The box is a treasure, and the box held Fl. 0.31 inside. Three dubbeltjes, and a cent. This would be about €1 in 2025 after inflation. The newest coin was from 1959, which usually means that the manufacturing date is before ’59. Digging further, I’ve found the markings “D.R.G.M. 1468402” – which is the German patent number from 1939 according to Wikipedia. Other scribbles were not too useful. However, a tiny bird, not even five by five millimeter, whispered the chest was made during WWII.
Through the great invention called the internet, I’ve found an owner of a similar chest. Their box was stamped 1940, with the ugly bird, and the full name of the factory, “Louis Walther & co, Chemnitz”. The document below from https://sachsen.digital/werkansicht/233660/1 completes the history for me. While we still don’t know why Germany desperately needed dual custody geldschranken, what the patent was for, or how it traveled to eventually end up with me.
Blog CCBY4.0 Jan-Willem Markus @ Toool Blackbag. If you want to play with the chest someday, do let me know. You may borrow it without keys, nor tools, so you can open it from scratch 🙂
In the Toool NL competition, the Toool members compete by picking a selection of locks during Toool meetings. This year was the 19th Toool competition, with 45 meetups and at least a hundred hours to attempt these locks. However, only the quickest opening time for each competitor counted.
The points are assigned by opening times, where the quickest opening gets ten points, the second-quickest gets nine points, and so on. Sometimes points are shared when several people have the same opening time, or opened the lock within five seconds. (We count these as the same opening time, as we have a lockpicking competition and not a stopwatch operating competition.) The full breakdown of the competitions, locks, statistics, and the rules in Dutch can be found on. https://toool.nl/competitie/
The competition went strong, from the first meetup after LockCon already many competitive times were set. More locks were opened every meetup, and the opening times were significantly reduced. The locks which were predicted to be difficult were not, while difficult locks were underestimated. The competition remained close until the end. The analysis on lock difficulty is found at https://blackbag.toool.nl/?p=4684.
Walter won the competition and received a Multipick Ares Disc detainer lockpick. Henri, with second place, chose the new Multipick Elite dimple picks community edition. Tom, who place third, won the Sparrows Vorax set. These prices were kindly sponsored by Multipick and Sparrows.
The next competition has started. Do you want to join this one as well? Become a member, and join us at the Toool meetups in Amsterdam and Eindhoven. May the best picker win. https://toool.nl/competitie2025/
The 19th Toool NL competition is concluded (https://toool.nl/competitie/). The Toool members worked on lockpicking a set of 27 locks over a period of one year, and registered the quickest opening times. The full competition details can be found on https://toool.nl/competitie2024/.
Before we started picking, Walter asked the Toool members to make a guess on the best opening times for each lock. With this data he expected to see which locks are perceived to be difficult, but were not, or vice versa. Four lockpickers made their guess, and we analyzed the data.
Please note, the final opening times are heavily skewed in favor of short opening times, as the locks are picked several times at the Toool meetups and only the lowest time counts. A lock may be opened in 15 minutes during the first attempt, but during several meetups the final opening time can be reduced to five seconds. Many of the locks in the competitions are perfectly suitable locks, and us opening a similar lock in five seconds, shouldn’t be the reason to replace yours.
We found this data isn’t easy to visualize in a single graph, as each lock is unique. We chose to break down the analysis results and report on the five most underestimated locks and the five most overestimated locks.
Cylinder
Brand
Fastest
Lockpicker 1
Lockpicker 2
Lockpicker 3
Lockpicker 4
T1906
Abus E60
66.50
74.00
630.00
5.00
20.00
T1907
GTV
36.43
5.00
940.00
30.00
15.00
T1910
EVVA
39.00
420.00
304.00
60.00
15.00
T1915
Mul-T-Lock Classic
216.04
360.00
312.00
120.00
45.00
T1924
Sargent
27.64
150.00
925.00
5.00
5.00
Underestimated locks from the Toool NL competition 2024
Cylinder
Brand
Fastest
Lockpicker 1
Lockpicker 2
Lockpicker 3
Lockpicker 4
T1913
DOM iX 5KG
47.41
240.00
985.00
120.00
200.00
T1916
ISEO
8.31
180.00
781.00
60.00
25.00
T1918
ASSA 500
5.00
120.00
610.00
180.00
45.00
T1919
Best SFIC
5.00
240.00
558.00
180.00
20.00
T1926
Medeco Biaxial
5.00
132.00
121.00
600.00
180.00
Overestimated locks from the Toool NL competition 2024
It is quite interesting that only a few locks were underestimated, while most locks were overestimated. Several of the underestimated locks have a tight keyway, but this in itself is not a guarantee for the lock to be difficult. For example, it’s common for the old Evva to be full of standard pins. The biggest surprice is the Sargent lock, which is much better quality than they are usually given credit for.
On the overestimated side, we have locks which are usually quite secure. The Medeco has good tolerances, and the SFIC rely heavily on their double shearline for security. While the Assa 500 and DOM IX are well-made locks from Europe. However, with the right tools and techniques, they just opened without too much difficulty. (The Medeco was raked several times.)
This analysis and report may not have solved the mystery of why some locks are easy, and other locks are difficult, but it was interesting to analyze these nonetheless. We will not take guesses for the 20th Toool competition, but do take a look. https://toool.nl/competitie2025/ We chose to save all the keys of this new competition, which enables us to see if the bitting is what makes the difference after the competition concludes.
Tickets to LockCon are still available as of 20th of September. We will close the registration on the 25th of September. Please see ‘LockCon 2024 registration is open!’ for more information. https://blackbag.toool.nl/?p=4627
Hi Everyone, we are hoping you are doing well! With this blog, we like to show you this program we have created for LockCon 2024. It’s a great mix of the competition you expect, and loads of new and exciting content.
Thursday is the first day of the event, we will use this day for catching up as well as building up the conference room. The cadence of the rest of the event is talks in the morning, a competition in the afternoon, and an evening program which includes a variety of activities.
For the competitions, we have Friday evening reserved for the Dutch Open in impressioning, on Saturday the Dutch Open in Lockpicking will be held, and on Friday we will start and Sunday we will conclude all the ongoing smaller competitions: Lever lockpicking, Disc detainer picking, Felix’s Breakout and Pic Tac Toe by FoxPick, and safe manipulation. The rules for each competition are published here: https://blackbag.toool.nl/?p=4652
The schedule will be available in the conference room on large sheets of paper. The Schedule is not set in stone, where you are allowed to fill the gaps, or take the stage with your own last minute talk. Last year, a panel on RFID was assembled on Sunday to fill one of these gaps. Please discuss large changes with the organisation.
Thursday
17:00
Arrival (Hotel check-in is possible from 15:00)
19:00 – 20:30
Dinner (with prior reservation)
20:30 – 22:00
Conference room build up
22:00 – 01:00
Socializing in the hotel bar
Friday
07:30 – 10:00
Breakfast
10:00 – 10:15
LockCon Opening
10:15 – 10:30
Dennis van Zuijlekom – Shoot all the hackers
10:30 – 11:30
Zeefeene – Why Your Unpickable Lock Sucks
12:00 – 12:30
Michael Hübler – 3D printing working keys for TSA008 and (all versions of) TSA006
13:00 – 14:00
Lunch
14:00 – 19:00
Dutch Open Impressioning competition
19:00 – 20:30
Dinner
20:30 – 21:00
Introduction to the evening program & ongoing competitions
21:00
Start of disc detainer & safe manipulation competition by Toool
21:00
Start of lever lockpicking competition by Nigel Tolley
21:00
Start of Pic Tac Toe and Felix’s Escape by FoxPick
With this mail, we like to announce registration for LockCon 2024 to be open. The event will be from 17th to 20th of October 2024 at De Werelt in Garderen, The Netherlands. This is the same venue as last year, which was previously known as Westcord Hotel Garderen.
The program
We will welcome the attendees from Thursday afternoon 15:00 with a get-together at the bar. On Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, we will have a program with talks, workshops, and competitions. In the program there will be plenty of room to socialize, and pick locks. LockCon closes on Sunday afternoon, 17:00-ish.
If you are unfamiliar with what we usually do at LockCon, please read https://toool.nl/LockCon and the LockCon 2023 recap https://blackbag.toool.nl/?p=4357. The schedule for this year’s event will be quite similar, where the competitions are usually in the afternoon, and the remaining program are talks, workshops, and socializing.
How to participate
LockCon is an event organized by Toool in the Netherlands for the extended Locksport community. This means, we try to be welcome to everyone with a healthy interest in the lockpicking hobby and the community. The attendees of LockCon are mostly friends, and friends of friends. You are also welcome if we have never met before. While it is easier for you to have a friend vouch for you, but this is not required.
The venue
This event is hosted at a hotel at which we have rented a large conference hall, and enough rooms to host a hundred guests. We are able to use the other hotel facilities, like the bar and restaurant. The hotel has additional facilities like a sauna, but these will have an additional charge and are booked at the reception.
The ticket price for LockCon 2024 is €430 per person, this includes three nights in the hotel with breakfasts, lunch, and dinner in the restaurant. Some options, like a single person room, have an additional charge.
We are happy to announce the date for LockCon 2024. The event will be from 17th to 20th of October 2024 at De Werelt Garderen. This is the same venue as last year, which was then known under the name Westcord Hotel Garderen.
Registration isn’t open yet, but hopefully this announcement will help you plan ahead.
Hopefully we will see you in October, LockCon Team
Hugo and I taught Safe cracking to a group of eleven at Hackerhotel 2024. It was great sharing the knowledge and inspiring others. Much respect goes to the attendees, which after a busy conference still had energy to take on this mighty challenge.
Every training needs to start with a good basis. We started with an introduction on what safe locks are about and how they operate, specifically group two safe combination locks. From there, we built knowledge from practical examples and exercises. From simply operating the safe lock by dialing 4L-3R-2L-1R with a known combination, to exploring contact points and graphing.
For this two-hour session, we worked with locks of known combination, and usually only get to complete one and a half graphs in this time. Around six graphs were completed in total, and some even finished all three graphs within the session.
While any training is mostly satisfying a curiosity, we expect this training gave the attendees enough knowledge to give it a try on their own later. Maybe even getting obsessed about it in the process 🙂
Hi all, I want to take the opportunity to look back at the year 2023, and discuss our achievements of the last year. The first post on Blackbag of the year was on a modified electric heater. While the post was off brand (as in: not a lock), it helped several pickers to save hundreds of euros on the heating bill. I’ve used mine ever since.
Our first event of the year was in February, a luxurious hacking experience at Hackerhotel. It was a good conference where we talked with our friends from other Dutch Hackerspaces. The talks were everything from community discussions to creativity and security topics. Toool hosted three impressioning workshops a day, and Jan-Willem gave a talk on experimental lockpicking techniques. Which includes, analysis of the Bowley Rotasera, and lessons learned on the Kromer protector.
Wendt hosted a well received lockpicking competition end of March. Walter and Henri competed, and several others joined for the exposition and side events. In case you have missed it, Wendt invites you to join their open house 2nd and 3rd of March 2024.
In May Toool was at the last HITBSecConf2023 in Amsterdam. Toool has hosted the lockpicking village for HITB Amsterdam from the beginning of the conference, and we made great friends along the way. It is truly an end of a decade. The lockpicking village has always been one of the more consistent and popular side events at the conference, and we hosted it again with great pleasure.
During the summer, several Toool members from the Netherlands went to Defcon and visited the lockpicking village hosted by Toool US and to promote Locksport. I, myself, went to the Chaos Communication Camp in Germany. This is the largest German hacker camp hosted by the Choas Computer Club. Jascha from Sportsfreunden der Sperrtechnik, SSDeV set up the lockpicking event, which was a great success. I’ve run a few sessions in English, it was good fun.
LockCon was in October hosted at the Westcord Hotel in Garderen. We hosted close to a hundred guests from all over the world. Where in the three days we ran four competitions, a dozen talks, and many locks picked. It was great to meet our friends again. The recap of the event is worth a read.
ACF organized their annual festival in December. Walter traveled to Paris for the event and competition and won the third price. Walter shares his thoughts in this post.
Next to all these big events, we went twice at Tkkrlab, Hack42, and several other small events. On average we have run a side event a month. Furthermore, we hosted a lockpicking meetup almost every week, as well as published several blogs on locks, tools, and more, here on Blackbag. In case you have missed them, here are the highlights.
Walter looks for interesting locks and published a series of small unusual locks. For example, Walter found a 28mm double euro cylinder from Keso which is unique as it is operated with a standard length key. This short 6-pin euro cylinder from Dom is also quite clever. The Evva Elus is also a curiosity. Given the lock has electromechanical master keying.
Henri wrote about a clever implementation of multi tenant lever locks. These and other lever locks are quite rare here, sadly. It’s a wonderful, but forgotten technology, which still has a place in high security systems in the UK and Italy. Hopefully, Henri will write more about those in a future Blackbag post.
If you see something you like, please leave a reaction below the post. It’ll help grow the brand as well as motivate the writers to continue putting in the effort. If you want to share your project on Blackbag, do reach out as well.
Best holiday wishes from me and the rest of Toool, May many locks open for you in 2024 🙂
Jan-Willem Markus Secretary of The Open Organisation of Lockpickers
The Toool NL competition is a lockpicking competition which is available at meetups for the members. About twenty locks are selected, and the members improve the picking times throughout the year. Opening a lock in the best time gives ten points, 2nd best time nine points etc. The member with the most points at the end of the year wins the competition. https://toool.nl/competitie2023/
Jos, Henri, Jan-Willem and Rob made a quick start in the competition at the first meetup. At the Eindhoven meetup, Walter took the lead, and kept the top score throughout the year. There was more competition for the second and third place, and was held and lost by many. (Week by week: https://toool.nl/competitie2023/tussenstanden.html)
Walter won the competition with 215.5 points (out of 240) and received a Multipick Kronos Electropick. Tom won the second with 178.5 points and received the Multipick Elite Meister 19-parts lockpick set. Jos won the third price with 170 points and received a Sparrows Vorax pickset and a Sparrows pinning mat.
Kudos to the dozen people who have opened at least one lock in the competition!
