Before you start reading this post, keep in mind that I made an extensive test just for the sake of it.
As I already said many times, in real life, after founding the first gate, true or false doesn't matter, it would be a lot quicker to stop the test and exploit it to better read the other wheels.
Looking for the first gate indication on the remaining two wheels or, even better if the gate is deep enough, for a complete test of one wheel.
I consider it a cheap approach but it works.
So after mounting my lock to its new stand I asked someone to change its combo.
Here I feel like a scientist and I'm trying to get the most possible fun and info out of this manipulation. So the first graph is complete, and reveals much more than I expected.
It took me one hour to make this graph. I only made a dot when the reading was different than the previous one. I then traced a line to fill in the empty spaces.
Another thing I make different is the amplification part. I read in 2 increments and make the full graph filling in only the even number positions.
Then I amplify every increment around the interesting areas but, instead of making some small graphs under the first one, I add the small lines at the odd locations that are normally empty.
It's important to take all the readings again to take consistent readings. So for example when I amplified around the gates you can see some number has 2 readings, like 12, 32, 60, 78.
After the first graph I made a "ruler" to help me identify the true gate, based on its position relative to the false gates. Using it on the graph was useful but, in this case, the combo this lock was set played me a joke. Back on this later.
So after completing such a gateful (full of gates) graph
As you can see the gates I found were 10, 31, 40, 60.5, 80, 96.5. Supposing that all these gates are on the same wheel, the false gate at 31 may indicate the gate at 40 is true.
I made other similar considerations and I tried to dial all the possible combos with three of this possible gates and failed to open the lock.
It was time to run some high low tests to find out which wheel was indicating the graphs.
I wrote tree numbers and the two contact points on their right.
To avoid missing the gate center, during the tests I always dial the direction I find the numbers. So all of these combos where dialed LEFT. Yes, I dialed left - left - left combos.
It's easier than find the gate centers again and much more precise than converting them.
I was a bit confused by all these gates, so I made many many tests. Some test with the usual -10 and +10 increments, some other test with another possible gate used as a reference. This confused but exhaustive approach took me almost one hour. I wrote which wheel was indicating where I thought I could conclude so, and a maybe where I felt it was not clear. I wrote nothing on the side of unclear tests.
A thing I noticed was that dialing 10 - 40 - 60 dropped the fence more than all the other tests. This lead me to believe that these combo had more than a true gate. Two true gates and a false one if I was lucky, one true gate and two deep false gates if I wasn't.
10 could be on wheel #2 or #3. 40 was on wheel #2. 60 could be on wheel #2 or #3.
In the last two conclusions only the number 10 was contradictory, so I decided to make a second graph checking wheel #1 around left, wheel #2 at right 40, wheel #3 at left 60.
I tried to find the center of the gate at 40 but couldn't feel differences dialing left or right. It was a pretty wide gate so I kept it at 40.
This last graph took me just a few minutes because "unfortunately" the safe opened at 20! So my combo was 20 - 40 - 60.
One reason why the test gave me confusing results is because many false gates were on the same position on more than one wheel.
Now I need someone to change the combo again. This time I'll let the combo changer use a
website to choose it, so I'm sure it's random.
Cheers
You do not have the required permissions to view the files attached to this post.