Euro-Locks

April 25th, 2015

April 24th, a delegation of Toool visited the Euro-Locks factory in Bastogne, Belgium.

Sales manager Jean-Louis Vincart welcomed us and talked us through the history of Euro-Locks, the factories and products. After that, we visited the actual production facility. The Bastogne factory is huge and almost all of their products are completely build here. We spoke with the R&D people creating new molds, saw molten zamac, steel presses, chrome baths, assembly lines and packaging, so everything from the raw metal to the finished product. It’s interesting to see so many products (both in range of products and the actual number of produced locks) being made here, and having no stock of the finished product.

Thanks to Eric and Martin for making the visit possible.

Posted in Keys, Locks | 1 Comment »

Gendarm lock

March 16th, 2015

Jos showed up with an interesting lock. It’s a German lock for a cash drawer. Instead of using a key, you need to press several levers to open it. If you press the wrong ones, an alarm goes off (all mechanic!). One lever was not operational. Jord fixed it and made a small movie demonstrating the lock.

Posted in Locks | 1 Comment »

Adventures with an old time-clock

March 11th, 2015

Sometimes, the people who visit Toool are there for a specific reason. They are collectors and have in their possession an old apparatus with a locking mechanism but no key. They come so we can try to open the thing without destroying it. As you can read elsewhere on blackbag, we’ve opened quite a few WWII crypto-devices for instance.

Yesterday, somebody visited us with an old time-clock. The lock looks simple indeed, but took considerable time to open, revealing the interesting mechanics on the inside. The owner was happy and so were we!

Posted in Locks | 1 Comment »

The first Toool meeting in Groningen – aftermath

January 25th, 2015

The first Toool meeting in Groningen was a succes!

One of the attendees was showing his homebrew snap tool:

The local television crew (RTV Noord) was also present. They shot some video (in Dutch).

Posted in General, Gatherings | Comments Off on The first Toool meeting in Groningen – aftermath

The first Toool meeting in Groningen

January 18th, 2015

Toool Netherlands members have been gathering in Amsterdam and Eindhoven for years. But for some, the distance to either places is too big. Jord Knaap lives in Groningen and he is one of the members that is far away from both places. The good news is: he decided to take upon him to host Toool-meetings in Groningen! So with that, Toool is strategically placed throughout the Netherlands.

The first meeting will be held coming saturday, January 24th, starting at 17:00 hours at Cafe-Bar Jan Westerhoff, Rijksweg 4 in Groningen.

Jord is planning to have monthly meeting to start with. If you are interested, please go to the first meeting. This way, you can discuss what the best date and place is to have the meetings. Jord would like to know who is coming, so please also mail him in advance at jord@knaapjunior.nl. Bring some locks if you like, and spread the word if you have friends that would like such a thing as well!

Posted in General, Gatherings | 2 Comments »

What brand of lock is this?

November 5th, 2014

At the Toool evening, Maurice from kluisspecialist.nl showed us one of the locks in his collection. It is a really interesting lock. I’ve never seen a lock with such a key before. And it’s old. But that’s about all that we know. Do you know more? Please leave a comment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The keys are in a protective metal holder and they have 5 hollow pins.

The lock is opened by inserting the key fully and the retracting it. The mechanism is such that closing the lock after it has been opened, resets the lock mechanism. On the key you can see a horizontal stripe, this is a metal strip that, when removed, allows the key to be re-keyed.

Here’s a short video of the lock in action:

Posted in Locks | 4 Comments »

Lever Locks

October 22nd, 2014

At the Toool evening, we had a visit of Maurice and Sander from http://www.kluisspecialist.nl/. Having 20 years of experience opening safe locks, Maurice has created a lovely collection of lever locks. All locks have been given a plexiglass shield so you can see the inner working.

Among it are some interesting ones, like one from a church, with letters on the wheel and a nice rekeyable lock.

 

And here’s some more.

Thanks Maurice and Sander!

Posted in Locks | Comments Off on Lever Locks

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.

Posted in LockCon, Conference | 4 Comments »

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:

Posted in LockCon, Decoding | Comments Off on LockCon 2014 addition

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.

Posted in LockCon | Comments Off on LockCon’14 is “ON”! (It giet oan!)

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