The Hope number six conference in New York is great and it is a pitty
today is the last day.

The lockpick workshop with Marc Tobias went ok. Not the best ever (due
to bad video display) but it still went fine.

 

(Image by Jake Appelbaum)                       The conference deserves
a compliment for outsourcing the camera work to www.ncrsusa.com.
Trough magic these folks sell a DVD of the presentation the moment it
is finished. And for just $10. A great service. It is nice to hear the
lockpick workshop sells real well. I did not have time to visit all
the presentation I wanted to see so I bought some DVD’s myself.

At hope number six there are lots of nice people who are into locks,
and there even is a complete lockpick village set up. But more about
that later.

And I wanted to share the design of our new pickset. It was made to my
specifications, and people who know me will tell you I like
hook/finger picks. The more finger shapes and sizes the better. But
you can not live without rakes for speed-opening, so I threw in a
couple of them too. And four different size tensioner ends on the
classic Toool tensioners. 

The steel if the best material I have seen so far. Thin yet very strong.

Hope vistors seem happy with it. And so am I ….

Eindelijk.

Na meer dan een jaar research verschijnt Sander Terbrugge’s
slagsleutel artikel in het technologietijdschrift ‘de ingenieur‘.

 

Lees een voorproefje van: “Sloten en het gemak van inbreken”

In Europe lots of locksmiths use computerized key cutting machines, or
machines to make one on one copies. I am currently visiting the US and
find that most locksmiths can not live without their mechanical key
punch machine. This machine mechanically makes code cut keys instead
of one on one copies. The design of the machine is nice. It is very
easy to operate and from what I have heard and seen the device is very
accurate and fast.

 

I just had to shoot some video of a friendly locksmith who was kind
enough to demonstrate his ‘Blue Punch key machine’ for you and me.

http://blackbag.toool.nl/video/bluepunch.wmv (5 minutes, 18 Mb)

It’s not fair.

I have spent many hours fighting PhotoShop before I came up with a half decent logo.

And it only took Eric less then 45 minutes to make something that was much, much better.

Thanks Eric!

And I owe a big ‘Thank You’ to Elisa for setting up this weblog.

Thanks Elisa!

Han Fey finished yet another article for the toool website.

This time he wrote about a special and exotic lock, the Drumm Geminy shield.

 

This lock actually is protecting the original lock in the door against
vandalism. It’s a very clever design and the article is well worth the read.

Han always spends a lot of time writing his articles and I am sure you
will enjoy it.

Other articles from his hand are:

Cutaway locks
Abloy classic (part1)
Abloy Disklock/Exec (part2)
Abloy Protec (part3)
Abloy special products (part4)
DOM IX dimple lock