First Successful Manipulation!
I had my wife change the combination with the sweet combination change key my buddy Oldfast sent me (Thanks!), and had a go. My first graph was beautiful, the contact points were very crisp and easy to discern. It left me with an obvious gate at 77:
So, I did a high low test, and determined 77 was the third number. Then I moved onto mapping out the other wheels, and found what I thought was a gate at 34:
My high-low testing of this number was very inconclusive. I thought it was the first number, so I proceeded to try combinations of 34-?-77. I got no joy. It was nearly 4 AM, and I was fairly certain I was on the right track, but I got impatient and looked at the combination (STUPID, STUPID! Don't make decisions like that at 4 AM!). Well it turned out the combination was 94-32-77. I had correctly identified a gate around 32.5, but my initial amplification must have been poor, and I incorrectly identified the number as 34 instead of 32. Additionally, my inconclusive high-low truly was sketchy, since 32 was actually the 2nd number, not the first as I thought it might be. Many lessons learned.
So, this morning I had my wife set a new combination. My initial mapping revealed a gate at 59, and my high-low determined it was on gate 3 as expected:
High-Low confirmed gate 3.
I then proceeded to map out the other 2 wheels again, which yielded a very promising gate at 5 (so promising, I just stopped graphing...)
My initial high-low was AGAIN completely inconclusive. I used a deviation of 10 (as last night), and it didn't tell me anything. I was fairly certain it would be the second number, since I knew that the 2nd number found yesterday was on the 2nd wheel - but I wanted to proceed as if I did not have that knowledge. I tried another high-low, this time with a 20 point deviation, and BINGO! I confirmed it was wheel 2.
So, I proceeded to check combinations in 2.5 point increments with ?-5-59, and at 42.5 - 5 - 59, CLICK! She opened! I then checked the combination and it was set to 42-6-59, so my second number was still off by 1 - but it was close enough!