Help with LaGard 3330!

[Manipulation]

So i'm fairly new to manipulation and have been only able to manipulate a s&g 6730. I have a LaGard lock that I cannot for the life of me manipulate. I graphed with red ink and the black is the amplifications. I also only did right contact points except when amplifying gate signatures. The first graph is an all wheels left where I found a classic gate signature and amplified it to find a gate center of 17. Hi-low tests told me it was on wheel 1. The second graph is graphing the first 2nd and 3rd wheels with the first on 17. I wrote wheels 1&2 being graphed but that's just a typo. A drop at 72 indicated a gate and clear hi-low tests show it's on wheel 3. I then did trial and error until....nothing! I opened the back and checked the combination. It's 29-60-89. Nothing indicates any of these numbers on either graph! Any help please? before I rip ALL my hair out!

[fgarci03]

Welcome to KP!
I am not the resident expert manipulator (not even close to the expert part ) but I'll try to help you out.

First of all, LaGard locks are known to have something other than round wheels. They have a slightly oval shape which messes things up.
In truth, what you are seing are high and low areas on the wheels. Sometimes you can see the gates, sometimes you can't.

The area around 60 might be the signature of a gate. Some times it happens like that. You should read Mark Bates interview on gate signatures: http://www.safeventures.com/news.php?id=16


Anyway, there are a number of things you can do:

- You can try the AWR approach and see what changes;
- You can try to investigate the low areas further.

To investigate the low areas, there is a method "being developed" by Oldfast which seems to be very promising and has good results. YOu can find it on this post: http://keypicking.com/viewtopic.php?p=72694#p72694.

You should also read that post from the begining, as it provides ALOT of info. And there is also another manipulation on a LaGard with oval wheels too.


I also have a post on manipulation about a lock with oval wheels. It won't provide you as much info as the last link, but hopefully will provide something: http://keypicking.com/viewtopic.php?f=100&t=7929.

You should also avail the fact that already knowing the combo, you could study that specific lock down to detail and see every angle of it. AWL, AWR, parking wheels, etc. It will teach you a lot.

The biggest advice I can give you right now it to read left contact points at least on amplifications. I almost bet they won't have a gate signature at those numbers. And try it also on 60. Maybe it has a gate sig there.

Let us know your findings.

Good luck!

[Manipulation]

Wow thanks that's great info! With what Mark Bates says about gate signatures though it's supposed to drop and never rise again. Is this reading left to right or right to left? Or does it work both ways? I haven't ever read anything saying which direction to read a graph. I always that that the area at 60 is a rise but if read from the right it is indeed a gate signature that drops and never goes up again.

[Libertyclicks]

Mark Bates says about gate signatures though it's supposed to drop and never rise again. Is this reading left to right or right to left? Or does it work both ways?

Hello "Manipulation" and welcome to Keypicking.

First off, good effort at Manipulating a LaGard. Sometimes they are very touchy. I learned on a 3330 and that might be the biggest mistake I ever made or the best thing I did, time will tell.

Anyway, I'm a little out of practice but I'll pick up my lagard in a couple days and see if I can make a graph or two for you. I can't really help troubleshoot what you're actually doing since I haven't seen your lock, and I'm not even sure you're doing all your graphing and hi lo tests correctly.

At any rate, what Mr. Bates offers about gate signatures (from my memory) is 3 distinct types of gate signatures that are produced by a lock (not just 1). These shapes are all assuming you "read" the graph in the same direction you "graphed" the graph. If that makes sense. So if you graphed starting at 15 and up as an example, then you would read it starting at 15 and looking up the numbers. If you graphed wheel right, then you would start at 100 say and look down the numbers on the graph. In the case of your first graph I don't recognize a gate at 60 if you did in fact graph low to hi with wheels left.

My experience with lagard is that 7 times out of 10 you have a long convoluted road ahead of you to find a solid number, but you never know for sure. Just keep setting wheels on known low points and in theory the lows get lower and lower and lower then it opens. That's all on paper, in real life it isn't so clear. 2 times out of 10 I just can't do it , and 1 out of 10 it opens without any qualms.

If you want my advice, don't do all wheels around other than to find a low that's common to all the wheels, then set that low on two of the three wheels and work one wheel at a time. Often the first time you "think" you found a gate, it probably isn't, but it's a new "LOW" and you can use it to keep working the lock further and further. You may get several LOWS on a wheel before finding an actual gate. So for a beginner like me opening a lagard can take much longer than a comparable S&G.

Welcome again, and good luck.
-LibertyClicks

[fgarci03]

Mark Bates says about gate signatures though it's supposed to drop and never rise again. Is this reading left to right or right to left? Or does it work both ways?

Hello "Manipulation" and welcome to Keypicking.

First off, good effort at Manipulating a LaGard. Sometimes they are very touchy. I learned on a 3330 and that might be the biggest mistake I ever made or the best thing I did, time will tell.

Anyway, I'm a little out of practice but I'll pick up my lagard in a couple days and see if I can make a graph or two for you. I can't really help troubleshoot what you're actually doing since I haven't seen your lock, and I'm not even sure you're doing all your graphing and hi lo tests correctly.

At any rate, what Mr. Bates offers about gate signatures (from my memory) is 3 distinct types of gate signatures that are produced by a lock (not just 1). These shapes are all assuming you "read" the graph in the same direction you "graphed" the graph. If that makes sense. So if you graphed starting at 15 and up as an example, then you would read it starting at 15 and looking up the numbers. If you graphed wheel right, then you would start at 100 say and look down the numbers on the graph. In the case of your first graph I don't recognize a gate at 60 if you did in fact graph low to hi with wheels left.

My experience with lagard is that 7 times out of 10 you have a long convoluted road ahead of you to find a solid number, but you never know for sure. Just keep setting wheels on known low points and in theory the lows get lower and lower and lower then it opens. That's all on paper, in real life it isn't so clear. 2 times out of 10 I just can't do it , and 1 out of 10 it opens without any qualms.

If you want my advice, don't do all wheels around other than to find a low that's common to all the wheels, then set that low on two of the three wheels and work one wheel at a time. Often the first time you "think" you found a gate, it probably isn't, but it's a new "LOW" and you can use it to keep working the lock further and further. You may get several LOWS on a wheel before finding an actual gate. So for a beginner like me opening a lagard can take much longer than a comparable S&G.

Welcome again, and good luck.
-LibertyClicks

Nice!
That was something I had the same doubt too. About the gate signature working both ways or not.
The idea of reading the graph the same direction as you "spinned the wheel" is logical, simple, obvious and..

.. FEKING unachievable for a long time by me!
Damn it LC, thank you!

[Oldfast]

Welcome to the forum! Your username caught my eye a couple weeks ago, lol.
Good to see your first post. Nice job with the 6730 & your first battle with a LaGard.

To investigate the low areas, there is a method "being developed" by Oldfast which seems to be very promising and has good results.

With "developing" being the key word. LOL
Honestly, I still find my LaGard quite troublesome.
I have yet to produce what I would call a sound method.

Libertyclicks! Good to see you! I haven't had much spin-time either lately.

All in all, good advice from both these fellas. As Filipe mentioned, working with a known combination could certainly help.
Also, if you're still at a point where you have to think hard on rotations and directions, you might even consider running a
few more manipulations through your S&G before moving on. If/when you make discoveries, please... do share!

[Manipulation]

Hmmm, that's a really great method Oldfast! I just read through and it seems very practical! I'll give it a try and report back soon

[Manipulation]

So i had placed the lock on a lower shelf of a bookcase and accidentally bumped the book case and the lock dropped about 3ft to the ground! It was on soft carpet so I thought it would be alright but there are several "scratchy feeling" areas around the dial including inside the contact area. I took the back off and took off the drive cam and spun the dial and watched the spindle as it spun. It's not in the center of the hole, the spindle is off center. The contact points are still able to be felt but the scratchyness is annoying the crap out of me. Could this be caused by a bent spindle?

Oh, and there is no problems at all if I have the lock resting dial up and spin. It's only if it's sideways or tilted at all. No problems with the dial facing straight down either.



EDIT: Something else I should add, when I mounted the lock, I was not able to put all four mounting screws in. The screws it came with were flat on the end and couldn't drill into the wood so i had to use my own. I also found that If I put all four screws in, the dial get's really hard to spin. I currently have three screws in and only one is tight. The other two are loose and the lock body is kinda just resting on these so the lock body is able to wiggle up and down slightly. Anything else I tried and the dial gets hard to spin. So I"m pretty sure I mounted it wrong too. All the parts are in good shape though except maybe the spindle which might be bent but I'm not too sure of that any more since it spins freely with the dial facing vertically.

[Libertyclicks]

Sounds like there is and possibly was all along a problem with your lock being mounted squarely. I had the same problem with my lock the first time I tried to mount one. I scrapped a few versions of my mount because it wouldn't sit nicely.
In my opinion it's hopeless to continue until you get that lock turning freely and correctly. You will probably have to remount it. Possibly drill new holes and realign everything to make sure it's all good.

I turned my Lagard here to give an example of what I came up with, I'm trying to find a way to upload it since IMGUR isn't working right now.....

sghrtymedtyj.jpg

So this is my first "graph" of the lock, I'm not trying to find any gates, I'm just looking for low areas that are common on all the wheels. There is no point to try to look for gates if w1 is shadowing the other wheels. (This was one of my big obstacles mentally when I started.)
In this case seems the lowest low is around 5, so my second graph would be w1 & w2 Right 3, w3 Left Around.
Update: I made that second graph and it was flat. What the? So I filmed the back of the lock while dialing by 10's....
(youtube link to video coming soon....)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-HCTLUwQMhY
The third wheel was turning seemingly with a mind of it's own. Seems it was dragging on the drive cam, so I never got the gate under the fence, thus a flat graph. I'll try to fix that then get back to you, if I can't get it fixed I'll get a different lock to continue my example.

@ Oldfast:
Good to see you to! Summer rolled around and I got insanely busy , feels like I've been down a rabbit hole for months. I hope you're keeping well.

LibertyClicks

[Manipulation]

This lock seems like so much trouble! I'll try to remount when I can and give an update on it, or sell it and put that money towards a s&g 6730. The one 6730 I manipulated is in the form of a safe sitting in a corner somewhere in my house so that combination isn't going to be changing anytime soon. It does seem harder to start with a LaGard 3330.

[pewpew]

on my La Gard 3330 i got 16 right as a contact point AWL . Is that ok? because on OLdfast graph i see 10 as a contact point. Maybe i make a mistake determination it?