LockCon 2014 – the aftermath

September 22nd, 2014

Wow – we are all still buzzing with energy after this years’ LockCon! With a fully packed program spanning three days, there was something to learn and do for everyone. People showed up from all over the world, making new friends, discussing new locks and lock opening techniques and just having a good time in general.

An important part of LockCon is the Toool Dutch Open Championships in lockpicking and impressioning. And, thanks to Jord, this year we also had a lever lock opening competition.

Unfortunately, the impressioning competition was nullified due to irregularities. Therefore, there are no winners.

The lockpicking competition was exiting, with for the first time a Dutch winner. In an exiting final, all three final contestants opened one out of three locks within 15 minutes. The fastest time was for winner Walter Belgers, with Christian Holler getting second and Marc Bromm third place.

The lever lock competition was won by Tomás, who opened all four within the 3 minute time limit per lock(!). Oli Diederichsen became second by opening three locks, Lars Jelonnek was the fastest opening 2 locks making him number three.

And finally, the Toool competition, open only to Toool NL members, was won by Walter Belgers. The second place was for Christian Holler (quite a feat since he only had one day for it) and third place for Jos Weyers.

Our thanks go to all the participants who have made this LockCon a great event. Also many thanks to the sponsors. Abus sponsored all the locks and keys for the impressioning contest. Prizes were sponsored by TOOOL.US, Storm Lock Picks, Sparrows Lock Picks, EVVA, M&C, Knaap Junior, Oli Diederichsen and Douglas Bryant.

This year, other than previous years, we will be selling the remainder of LockCon 2014 clothing. So, don’t wait until next LockCon to see if we have reduced the price, we aim to sell the limited stock this year. Instead of T-shirts, we have made high quality embroidered polo shirts sporting the Toool logo on the front and an image of the Sneeker Waterpoort on the back. These will go for 35 euro including shipping. We also have a few VIP “key figure” polo shirts for 45 euro. To order, send your request to merchandise@toool.nl. The first few people ordering will get a LockCon 2014 badge that doubles as a pin tray, courtesy of Datagram. We’ll be posting better pictures soon.

LockCon 2014 addition

September 15th, 2014

Not many people have experience in opening pump locks (locks using a push key). However, one of the guests at LockCon 2014 has ample experience. And: he has built his own tool to open these locks. This is what it looks like:

At LockCon, you will be able to see the tool in action with live commentary from the maker. You can see a 17-second sneak preview from the ELF conference here:

LockCon’14 is “ON”! (It giet oan!)

September 8th, 2014

LockCon logo

In a couple of days Toool will host the international LockCon conference in Sneek.

If you planned on spending the Thursday-night at the Hostel, but haven’t stated so when registering: DO register! Spaces are limited and going fast.
Also some of the “old-timers” seem to think they don’t have to register anymore to get in. But as our maximum numbers are set, we kinda need a headcount beforehand.

If you haven’t already, register! If you didn’t get the registration link, please send an e-mail to lockcon2014-registration at toool.nl.

You wouldn’t want to miss out on all this goodness:

the opening will be at 19 Sep 10:15
the closing will be at 21 Sep 16:00 after which we will have dinner.

Jaakko will talk about the process of tool-building (looking for weaknesses, choosing materials and the actual build)
Alexandre has an innovative way of doing dual-component impressioning
Michael will give a talk about locks in German alarm systems
there will be a safe manipulation workshop, lecture and championship
Jord will host a workshop on working with some new safe opening tools
Legion303 will take us through the process of building lock picks
Rob will do a fun talk about lockpicking in movies
on Friday night we’ll try something we have never done at LockCon before (and can’t yet tell you about) -No Press-

datagram will host his famous tamper workshop
decoder will shed some light on the mediahit that is 3d printing of restricted blanks
Marnix will bring some 3D printers, so we can get some hands-on results
Legion303 will show us how to defeat the cyberlock
Jaakko will show his new safecracking tool
we are very grateful we will host our annual impressioning championship on C83 cylinders donated by ABUS.

Alexandre will show us a technique to manipulate and decode Disec locks
And off course we will be hosting the annual Dutch Open Lockpicking Championships.

Ample reason to head to Sneek it seems.  See you in a couple days.

Printing your own nylon bumpkeys

August 2nd, 2014

This is amazing. Our German friend ‘Decoder’ just came out with a video showing the first 3D printed bumpkey (made of nylon).

Here is the youtube video:

3D printing of keys

July 26th, 2014

Companies have been offering 3D-printing services for keys for a while now. Apparently, not everybody is aware of this, so when Jos talked about this at HOPE, it caused a bit of a stir. Wired wrote an article about it that you can read at http://www.wired.com/2014/07/keyme-let-me-break-in/.

The article describes professional key duplication services. A few weeks ago, TOOOL member Tom decided to spend an afternoon to see if he could make a model of a standard key to be printed on a cheap consumer grade 3D printer. Here is the first result:

3D key

And here’s a picture of two printed keys with an original. The cuts were measured and printed.

3D keys

Here you see the key is working, although you can feel you have to be careful not to apply too much force.

3D key working

The thing the consumer grade printer has most problems with, it first printing separate blobs of plastic that only connect to the rest of the key as the profile is being printed. This means the key had to be lightly filed after printing, to make it operate the lock.

TOOOL at HOPE X

July 23rd, 2014

The tenth Hackers On Planet Earth conference has just been held in New York, USA. One of the topics has been lockpicking and people from TOOOL-US as well as Jos from TOOOL-NL have been demonstrating the sport. He can be seen on the right in the picture that Hackaday put online at http://hackaday.com/2014/07/18/hope-x-lock-picking-and-lock-sport/. The official homepage of HOPE is http://www.hope.net/.

Update: video (over 3 hours!) at http://new.livestream.com/internetsociety/hopex1/videos/57118496.

Dates for LockCon 2014: September 19/20/21

July 1st, 2014

LockCon logo

The weekend of September 19/20/21 we will be in the good old youth hostel in Sneek for another edition of LockCon.

More information can be found here and the request for talks / presentations is open!

This year, we have three full days, so there is more time for interesting lectures and workshops. Of course, the Dutch Open lockpicking and impressioning championships will also be held during LockCon.

 

Start of a new era!

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

End of an era

May 9th, 2014

So long and thanks for all the fish

Becoming the first impressioning world champion really paved the way to become a full time lock-professional. After that I left my comfort zone and signed a contract with Lockmasters Technologies, Inc in 2012. I am one of their European distributors and assist them in any way I can (working from Amsterdam). So far it has been a dream come true.

Besides the work for Lockmasters Technologies, Inc I run some lock-related classes from Amsterdam (and on location in Europe) with my private company Wels Security Solutions / Lock-Experts.com.
Last but not least my company “intact locksmith services” opens doors, safes and cars in a non-destructive way. In reality I forward a lot of the intact support calls to locksmith colleagues that do have time to take the job. So working for Intact has my lowest priority but is a nice way to keep my skills sharp and stay in touch with what happens in the real world.

I could never have come this far without the help of my friends in the locksport community. I am very fortunate with the friends I have made over the years. And I am happy to see that others have made the step to the lock industry as well. Just to name two: Han Fey and Dr. Torsten Quast are now working for Assa Abloy, the largest lock manufacturer in the world. It is my believe many “lock enthusiasts” will follow…

I decided to transfer my Toool (NL) leadership position in 2013. New Toool president Walter Belgers and vice president Jos Weyers are perfect for the job and have my full trust and support.

One of the things they did is to extend LockCon by one full day. The dates for the three day event are: September 19/20/21. This is the weekend before the security show in Essen (to encourage international travelers to come). The extra day will be used for more presentations and workshops and I am already looking forward to attend it. The LockCon request for talks / presentations is open.

The end of an era

All good things come to an end and so does this weblog. This is the last post before it closes.

This does not mean I will be completely off the radar. Lockmasters Technologies, Inc just started a newsletter that I am contributing to. I am sure you will enjoy some of the articles there.
And there is the regularly updated “Intact locksmith services” facebook site for you to visit and “like” (thank you!).

I have not made up my mind what to do with BlackBag’s content. If you want to capture any of the information: the blog will be at least up until September and I will make a decision after that.

Thank you for your interest and support over the years.

Feel free to contact me for anything related to locks and security.

Blackbag signing out.

Transporting safes

December 17th, 2013

Jord Knaap from KJS tools has come out with a new line of products in his 2014 catalog.

With one of his products he solves a problem that is encountered by safe-technicians around the world: how to transport a heavy safe with just one person? Or how to transport a heavy safe without a specialized hydraulic van?

Jord solved this with his KJS-safe transporter. And I really like it a lot!

With this simple tool just one person can transport a heavy safe. As you can see in the video it’s pretty simple to load and unload and transport it. The nice thing is that you can also use it for transporting other objects the size of a euro-pallet.

Jord does not have all his tools available online. If you are a safe-tech (or high-end locksmith) and want his new ‘2014 catalog’ I suggest you contact him directly.