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.

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.

This year’s theme for lockcon is the “makers view”. We have some of the best speakers in the field and it promises to be interesting as ever before.

On Friday people are welcome in the hostel from 15:00 on and dinner is served at 19:00.
Around 20:30 there is the opening speech followed by a ‘who is who’.

Saturday breakfast is served between 08:00 and 09:00
09:00 – 12:00 Peter Field will give one of his famous presentations about high-security locks
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch
13:00 – 13:30 Michael Huebler about the current state of The Open Source Lock
13:30 – 15:30 Prioritizing Pick Designs by Christina Palmer. An illustrated presentation and open discussion of picks and turners design.
16:00 – 17:00 ******* (No Press: presenter asked not to be mentioned on public site)
17:00 – 17:30 Warren Rockley: UAP locks, their security features and how to pick them.
17:30 Dinner
19:30 Alexandre Triffault about Moveable element in keys, how it works, it it’s defeated
20:00 Alexandre Triffault Abloy protec : duplicating a key from a photography and the use of a 3D printer
20:30 Impressioning championships. Abus was kind to sponsor the event again with locks and blanks.

Sunday
08:00 – 09:30 breakfast
09:30 – 11:00 Ken Person will demonstrate some of his opening tools and talk about their design.
11:30 Start “Dutch Open” lockpick championships
12:30 – 13:30 lunch
13:30 – 15:30 finals “Dutch Open”
16:00 Closing ceremonies
17:00 Diner

There will also be a Toool memberships meeting (ALV) on Friday. At this meeting the new Toool president Walter Belgers and vice President Jos Weyers will inform the members about the way Toool-NL will be run.

We are almost fully booked btw. If you did not receive a mail from Jos a couple of days ago please make sure to mail registration2013@lockcon.com to confirm your stay!

*Updated the schedule. Somehow the talks of Michael and Alex were missing in the timeline.

Mark your calendars, we have a date for LockCon 2013.

The weekend of November 22/23/24 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!

One of the topics will be me resigning as president of Toool. At the OHM conference Walter and Jos became the new Toool president and vice president.

The reason for me leaving is that I am currently very busy with my full-time job. More about that later. First we have to get LockCon going. If you want to visit or give a presentation please email us at registration2013@lockcon.com

* Edited August 11: put the correct e-mail address in place (Thank you Emiel!)

As some of you might know I run a small 24/7 locksmith in the Amsterdam area called Intact-Noodopening.nl

The idea behind intact is to open locks, doors, cars and safes without damaging the lock. Basically I am being paid to practice in the field what I teach in my classes.

Truth is that at this moment not a whole lot of work is coming trough. And I outsource most of it since I simply do not have much time.

Never the less I decided I needed a good logo for this venue. Instead of annoying my standard logo designer I took another route: putting it for bid on 99 designs.com . So far there are three designs thar stick out.

Can you help me by selecting the logo you like for a locksmith that specializes in non-destructive entry?

*UPDATE: The designers listened to some of the input and created better versions. Please have another look.

Thanks in advance!

Interesting news. The Dutch Toool division just released the locks for tenth Toool lockpick competition.

It does contain some interesting locks. A lot of people donate to the collection and my contribution are locks picked up in south–Africa and other countries.

Not all locks have been identified by Jos Weyers (who photographed all the locks). If you can help him identify some of the unknown locks that would be appreciated.

At the competition only manual hand picks are allowed. Electro-picks are not allowed. If they were, I know what tool to use. By far the best electro-pick on the market is made by Multipick in Germany.

I spoke with one of the developers at the Interkey locksmith show in Poland last weekend and got some impressive demo’s. They make the smallest, most powerful, most silent and (unfortunately) the most expensive electro-pick on my wishlist.

I hope Santa will not forget about me this year…

(more info on my trip to Poland via twitter: barrywels )

* Update 12 December 2012 VIDEO of the electro-pick

Just a short blogposting this time to get me starting blogging again 🙂

Last weekend had a great time near Prague at the Czech lockpick championships. The Czech are friendly, well organized and sure have a lot of very exotic locks.

Our German friends from SSDeV kept scores on their blog (in German).

Below a small video of one of the rounds in ‘freestyle’. Many electronic pickguns and very fast opening times.

At the end of the year there always is the CCC congress (see FAQ for details). Very informative and worth your time.

This year the congress will be in Hamburg (instead of Berlin like previous years).

Since Hamburg is the city where locksport more or less was born, it is the ideal place to organize an international lockpicker party. On December 28th all lockpickers are welcome at the party.

And this weekend there is the Czech lockpick championships. I am curious what kind of locks they will use!

Hope to see you there!

There was a little confusion how to call the championships at LockCon. Should we call them US open or World Championships?

To keep a long story short: I won the first US impressioning championships. And it was a close call.

The close call was whether or not I would participate. I did not prepare and did not even bring gear (suitcases were full of heavy stuff anyway). It was my new friend Ben Sherman who persuaded me to participate and generously gave me his file. And Jord gave me his spare handle. What followed was me winning all three rounds. And in the third round I was nicely focused and the only finalist to open the six pin lock in 60 minutes. We are all happy the title goes back to the Netherlands.

Even though I won a number of international championships, I am not really much of a competitive player. For me it is more important to be able to open a wide variety of locks in a decent time. This is what I teach at Lock-Experts (PDF) and rely on as a locksmith at intact-noodopening.nl. But I can not deny it is a good feeling to win.

LockCon 2012 LockPick championships … of the world?

Torsten Quast won the lockpicking games, followed by Julian Hardt and Jord Knaap.

I ended sharing the fourth place with “handcuff Ray”. And that is a pity because after a long number of elimination rounds both Julian and I were the only ones who were not defeated. But then I got into a pool of three people and lost, followed by a battle to the finals with Ray. And we both did not open any of the US Corbin locks ending us both at the fourth place.

All fun aside, Torsten seemed to like the idea of being the ‘unofficial’ world champion lockpicking. The Toool board had long discussions on how to organize the first “official” world-championships of LockPicking and Impressioning in the future (in corporation with other sportgroups like SSDeV, Fools etc). The way we envision it is that every locksport and (possibly) locksmith community in the world should organize their own championships and the winners of each of these competitions will be sponsored to fly to LockCon for the first official world championships. But don’t hold your breath for it to happen soon.

What else happened at LockCon?

Besides the warning for tornado’s all went fine.

LockCon was held at the LSI facility. A great place with its own museum. Good for ours of looking at special locks. There were unique locks and keys all over the place.

We organized some workshops on interesting topics. At the tour trough the S&G factory we learned they had the ultimate safe to protect what is precious to you.

Lots of networking was done at the late night parties. People would show off their latest tool development, reverse engineer interesting hardware, make new friends and drink till all becomes blurry.

Just google for lockcon and find lots of interesting archives full of nice pictures.

Thanks everyone for making LockCon possible and hope to see you soon at a new event!