If the key to something you do not use every day is lost, it can take a little while before a locksmith is called. In this case it took them a couple of hundred years to find us!

But that is ok. I like mysteries, especially if I can help solving them. Last week was good for mystery solving and there still are some to be solved (edited 8-july: solved!) .

We were invited into some sort of museum where they had four 17th century treasure-boxes without key. They did send some images that allowed me to do some Research (via barrywels on twitter).

When we arrived we inspected the boxes and padlocks with endocsopes and decided they could probably be picked with simple steel wire bent in an L shape. Click on the image below to see how a similar mechanism is opened using two hooks. One hook lifts the hammer while the other moves the bolt.

In a little while we did mange to open a number of padlocks and one of the boxes.

Currently three 17th century treasure boxes are waiting to be opened and at least one of them contains a number of ‘heavy objects’. This is interesting, especially if you consider the boxes were used to transport valuables in ships.

Jord was asked to make a key for the lock(s) and that is quite a task with the special warding. Hopefully I can make a blackbag posting out of that too as it is an interesting process to create such a key. (more nice keys on http://www.duke.edu/web/isis/gessler/collections/locks-keys.htm)

The exact location of the remaining boxes has to be kept secret for now not to give anyone any ideas. There will be a follow up soon (after LockCon.US) and hopefully we can solve some more mysteries then.

If heaven exists, LockCon is it for us mortal lockpickers. And in one month from now it will be held (July 17/18/19)!

LockCon 2012 in the US

After a number of very successful LockCon conferences organized in Europe, this time the circus will travel to the US.

It is never easy to find a good spot for this kind of event but this year we found the best possible location: the headquarters of LSI (Lockmasters Security Institute) in Nicholasville, Kentucky.

The LSI facility is just perfect for LockCon because of the many areas where the LSI instructors normally train their customers on how to open various kind of locks. These rooms will offer the right atmosphere for our hands-on sessions and championships. And of course there is the in-house Harry Miller lock-museum (that offers napkins so you do not drool over their rare locks)

One thing that I would like to point out is that we have the same agreement with LSI as with Peter Field. Both LSI and Mr. Field will not talk to us about how to open locks. LSI only lets us use the facility on certain hours of the day and Peter Field will only talk about locks in general (in a very nice and detailed way I might add). As he said before: “I am here to talk about locks. How to open them is up to you ….”.

The US Championships in lockpicking, Impressioning and combo-manipulation

Besides many presentations (by Peter Field and others) and hands on sessions (spectacular!) LockCon will also host the US championships of lockpicking, safe combination-lock manipulation and impressioning! There will be people coming from all over the place (to name a few: Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Spain, UK and of course the US) to see who will be the fastest lockpicker in the world. And there are very nice prices to win as our sponsors are known to be very generous. I am curious how people like Julian Hardt and Jos Weyers will do against the people in the US.

Want to join or compete?

There are still a few seat available although getting in may not be as easy as it sounds. We do have a rather strict policy of having to know you before letting you in. Having said that, we can always be persuaded if you have a kick-ass presentation to give on lock-related topics. Memebers of Aloa and/or Savta are also welcome to (try to) register.

You can always try to register or visit our CFP page and see how far you get.

Hope to see you all in one month from now in Kentucky!

Sorry for the low volume of blogpostings but I am currently involved in many projects. For example: with Lock-Experts I am preparing some private classes that involve interesting locks to study and come up with solutions.

And with the help of some friends I have set up a locksmith service with the name intact-noodopening.nl (intact emergency opening). The idea behind intact-noodopening is to practice what I preach during the lock-experts classes and open locks in the field without damaging them. It is the best of both worlds: make people happy by opening their locks make some money while learning. For the moment Intact-Open is active in the Amsterdam region in the Netherlands. For special projects we are available wherever needed.

Especially the safe-opening jobs are interesting and rewarding. It is a great buzz to open safes without damage and it is highly addictive. In a few cases I have manipulated open some mechanical Sargent & Greenleaf and LaGard combination locks while in other cases I have picked and decodedsome lever locks for customers.

There is a group of locksmiths/specialists that will (try to) answer the phone 24/7. So fee free to give us call (or send us a mail) when you are in need of a locksmith.

There is a lot to say and write. Lots of interesting things happening. As always. And 2012 will be an interesting year. In many aspects.

Instead of writing an exiting blogposting I wasted some time on making a puzzle. How many lock related terms/names/organizations (etc) can you spot? (click on the image for a bigger version)

Note: there is no hidden message, just a bunch of words. Any foul language you find is purely accidental.

Somehow this exercise reminds me of a trip I took with Han Fey in 2007. Except this time I am with some other people and in a different country. But the idea is the same: first time at an exhibition trying to explore new markets.

I have a good feeling about it. If you are visiting MiliPol be sure to stop by our booth in Hall 1 B093.

The LockCon 2011 announcement It’s about time

The big question always is: how to pack a four of five day event in just one weekend? The answer lies in the (preliminary) LockCon 2011 schedule:

Friday, October 21 2011

Visitors are advised to arrive before 18:00 (if possible). Toool representatives will be present in the hostel from Thursday on, and be available all day to assist visitors and assign them rooms and explain the (simple) rules of the event.

18:00 – 19:00. Dinner will be served. We hope the kitchen stays open till 19:30/19:45 for latecomers.

Friday 20:30 – 21:30 “Masterkeys for a non-masterkeyed system” by Han Fey

Han Fey likes to investigate. On the second hand market he found locks from a facility with180 individual locks. These locks were not masterkeyed. Han did however discover a flaw in the system, allowing a relatively small set of try-out keys to open all the locks. In this presentation he goes into detail how he identified the flaw, narrowed down the keyspace and optimized his attack. Fascinating material.

Saturday, October 22 2011

08:00 – 09:00 Breakfast.

Saturday 09:00 – 14:00 “5 hours, 50 locks, 500 slides” By Peter Field
(Includes Lunch around 12:00)

As many LockCon attendees know, Peter Field has an extraordinary way of looking at locks. Like a pathologist, he cuts locks in many thin slices and captures the result with high quality photography. This unique methods of creating a cutaway view is world renowned. With it he has set a standard many people tried to copy but only very few can even get close.

We are proud and honored to have Peter over for yet another long presentation about the different elements in high security cylinder lock design. Combining his unique cut-away imagery with illustrations from old patents, he will explain how engineers classify the cylinder elements, modify them, develop new ones, and re-combine them all to invent new products for the constantly evolving security market. You will leave this presentation with an outline and a clear understanding of the design constraints and functions of most of the various elements you may find in any lock cylinder.

About Peter Field: he started locksmithing in 1960, and in 1978 was asked to join Medeco Security Locks, where he is now Director of Research. He has over 15 US Patents pertaining to high security locks, with several more patents pending. Being a employee of Medeco one thing is clear: Mr. Field will not discuss any opening techniques. As he told us in previous years: “I am here to talk about locks. How to open them is up to you ….”.

15:00 – 15:45 “State of the art locks in the Stasi era” by Oliver Diederichsen

Oliver Diederichsen managed to get his hands on some unique material: complete Stasi manuals of the department responsible for covert entry operations. Many of the techniques and tools can still be converted to work on modern locks. Oliver will highlight one part of the files that talks about the state of the art in locks around the late eighties, and how far the stasi got in bypassing them.

16:00 – 17:00 “Magnetic locks and how to defeat them” by Datagram

Datagram is a well known expert in the field of lock forensics, but also does lots of other interesting research. Magnetic locks are still considered amongst the most high-secure locks. And in some cases rightfully so. During his presentation Datagram will show what progress he made on bypassing some of these magnetic locks, and demonstrate his custom made opening and decoding tool.

17:15 – 18:00 “Impressioning Abloy Classic” by Jaakko Fagerlund

Jaakko Fagerlund is a big fan of Abloy locks and knows a lot about them. And of course he is interested how to tackle the system/ Together with Jord Knaap they improved on Barry Wels his ‘reduced contact area‘ impressioning technique for disc-locks. They found a way to get better marks and make the process more easy, and share their findings in this workshop.

18:00-19:00 dinner

20:00 – 23:00 Impressioning championships.

Impressioning is the fine art of opening a lock by filing a key from a blank. It is an ancient technique that still works on an amazing number of (high security) locks. The championships speak for themselves: who will be the fastest filing a working key to a lock his year? The impressioning championships will be played by the new rules. Meaning 45 people start with impressioning the same lock, and the first six people to open the lock will move on to the finals. Abus reserved some old stock just for these games and donated the C83 cylinders and blanks again this year. Thank you Abus!

Sunday October 23

08:00 – 09:30 Breakfast.

10:00 – 11:00 “Fichet F3D lock analysis” by Michael Huebler

The Fichet F3D lock is one of the most intriguing locks that came out in a long time. Not easy to get, quite expensive and contains many, many parts. The innner working of the lock also is quite interesting and unique. Michael will take you trough the lock step by step, and there will be an interesting discussion on how this lock maybe could be bypassed.

11:30 – 15:30 Dutch Open lockpick championships.

We are not going to play the one-on-one, and ‘winner takes all” that we did last year. It will be fair and balanced how we do it, and it will allow for many small picking contests against a direct opponent. In these games two people will be playing against each other, and the one with the most locks opened, or the fastest time if the same amount of locks are opened, will go trough to the next round. If the two contestants do not manage to open any of the locks they are both out of the game. In case we have an odd number of contestants, there will be three people competing against each other and the fastest two go trough. The last man standing wins!

There always is question about the selection of locks that will be used in the game. The brands will be kept secret, but we will try to arrange just two types of locks and make sure one of these locks is ‘relatively simple’ to open by an experienced picker. The locks used will be ‘standard’ five or six pin locks (so no dimple locks or special high security locks in the finals).

16:00 honoring the LockCon champs

17:00 Early dinner for those who need to travel

More information on how to register for LockCon2011 can be found here.

Expect this posting to change a little in the days to come.

Just a quick reminder: Lockon 2011 will take place in the weekend of October 21-23.

The location is the good old Sneek hostel, and the rules are more or less the same as last year(s). I expect to come out with more news on LockCon around Monday September 12.

We are still looking for people who want to give a presentation (although we already have quite some excellent talks scheduled).

Places are limited, so if you would like to come now would be a good time to let us know.

Hope to see you all there!

It is time to come out with my new company: lock-experts.com

Over the years I have been being hired by some of the most serious players in the lock industry. Normally for things like training, presentations, workshops, education, plain advice, R&D, special toolmaking and more. It is work I love to do, and with the help of some friends I am going to expand it.

More about lock-experts.com soon. I hope the website is up before visiting Aloa …

(small update 19/07/11 : created a PGP key)

Jos Weyers got another notch on his guitar. He won the German impressioning championships in Hamburg yesterday. For those who know Jos this will not come as a surprise. And right after Jos came Arthur Meister. Arthur is as steady as Jos, just a fraction slower. And after six locks this adds up.

Jord Knaap turned out to be the surprise. Before this weekend he barely impressioned a lock, but after an evening of practice with the ‘meisters’ he managed to get into the finals and open all six locks. Scoring a solid third place!

Impressioning heavyweights Oliver Diederichsen and Dr. Manfred Bölker became fourth and fifth.

There was a time it was unthinkable to have a non-German people win these games, let alone the top three contain two Duchies 😉

I knew I was not likely to end in the top three in this competition (due to lack of training) and scored a sixth place.

Thanks everybody for a great weekend!

Just a quick post before going to Hamburg for the German impressioning championships.

We have a date for LockCon! It is going to happen the weekend of October 22-23, and already some interesting speakers have promised to give a presentation! The location most likely is going to be the good old hostel in Sneek, but if other options (in the Netherlands) come up we might be persuaded.

Hope to see you all there!