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How to pick ABLOY classic

PostPosted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 5:24 pm
by .45cal
I do not profess to be an expert and I welcome any corrections and or comments to this brief tutorial.

ABLOY locks use a set or disks not unlike those found in a combination lock you commonly find in high schools. The major difference lies in how these disks are manipulated.
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An ABLOY key has a series of angled cuts along its edge from 0 to 90 degrees to rotate the disks to a certain position. The first 90 degrees of the key turn is to set the disks in the lock the remaining 90 degrees operates the mechanism The deeper the angle of the key the less the disk will turn.
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This video will give you a good idea of how this kind of lock works


As the disks are rotated by the key notches in the circumference of the disks align with a sidebar allowing it to fully retract and the plug to turn (as illustrated in green)

In order to pick this kind of lock you need two tools. 1st a tool for putting tension on the plug and 2nd a tool to manipulate each of the 11 the disks individually. You may be thinking that 11 disks is going to be hard to pick but we know the position of 3 of them already! The 2 deepest disks are used to physically turn the plus and as such always have a 0 degree cut. The top most disk (the one you see) also has a 0 degree cut as the key only has 10 cuts. So we are down to 9 disks and we know where to apply tension to the last 2 disks!

(DISCLAIMER I USED THE "TAIL PIECE" OF MY LOCK FOR TENSION)
In order to apply the tension necessary you could fabricate some fancy tension wrench as some of you on this board are well capable of doing. Myself however am not, so I recommend cutting all the angles down on a key save for the 2 last ones. This will give you the tension you need.
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Now we need to manipulate the disks. I am not going to go into detail on what to feel for and such as I have only ever picked one of these and as lockpickers yourselves you know what to be looking for ;)
I used a wiper blade insert and a pair of pliers to make my pick
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You can see that the tip of the pick is small enough to be able to set each disk.
You now have the tools to open the lock. Just look for the disks under the most tension and set them in that order and hopefully the plug spins for you!

GOOD LUCK :!: :idea: keep in mind this is an abloy classic and these instructions may not apply to the newer models :idea:

Re: How to pick ABLOY classic

PostPosted: Tue Feb 03, 2009 9:30 pm
by R691
Merci beaucoup... friggin rights, mate.

Re: How to pick ABLOY classic

PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 12:58 am
by awol70
:idea: keep in mind this is an abloy classic and these instructions may not apply to the newer models :idea:

you are NOT kidding there,bro...they keep adding barrier after barrier,after warding,and so on...here are a few examples of my abloy profiles,
showing some of the restrictions the classic does not have....
and one cam lock i tensioned in much the same way as you,with the same successful results.

Re: How to pick ABLOY classic

PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 10:16 am
by morrowind107
sweet mate! made a pick. now i only need a tension wrench for it. cant make it out of the key that goes to the lock, i only got 1 key for it...

Re: How to pick ABLOY classic

PostPosted: Wed Feb 04, 2009 11:45 am
by awol70
morrowind107 wrote:sweet mate! made a pick. now i only need a tension wrench for it. cant make it out of the key that goes to the lock, i only got 1 key for it...

and lets just say blanks are a "little hard to come by" ;)

Re: How to pick ABLOY classic

PostPosted: Mon Mar 16, 2009 1:43 pm
by morrowind107
i think i have managed to make a tension wrench for the lock, but i don't know exactly how to pick it, is it the same where i start in the lock or do i need to pick in a special order? will try some more and see how it goes

Re: How to pick ABLOY classic

PostPosted: Mon Mar 16, 2009 5:48 pm
by .45cal
You should feel for the disks that offer the most resistance as those are the ones binding on the sidebar. Don't forget to check disk #1 to make sure it is not the one binding.

Keep at it! If you want to practice just picking the lock tension it using the cam in the back of the lock.

Re: How to pick ABLOY classic

PostPosted: Tue Mar 17, 2009 1:23 pm
by morrowind107
thanks, found out that the t wrench worked, still havent managed to pick the lock thou.
i can upload some pics of the t wrench as soon as i get a camera

Re: How to pick ABLOY classic

PostPosted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 10:30 am
by bumpin88
just curious but couldn't someone make a pick similar to
that of a tibbes-ford lockpick/decoder? that way you could manipulate
each disc individually. then use the pick to make a key ;) .

i'll assume this has been done, and probably falle-safe or some other company
makes a tool for these locks (just an assumption), and the other abloy line.

Re: How to pick ABLOY classic

PostPosted: Fri Jun 19, 2009 12:56 pm
by barbarian
Guy by the name of Jaakko Fagerlund is an expert on decoding Abloy locks. Google a bit and you will find his name. Also check out NDE magazine. Can't remember what issue number. He is on the cover.

Also http://blackbag.nl/?p=319

Re: How to pick ABLOY classic

PostPosted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 12:18 am
by elbowmacaroni
Yeah, alot of them are... unfortunate side effect of the great keypicking disaster of 2010

well and then there are the photobucket ones that are gone too... but that's another matter entriely

Re: How to pick ABLOY classic

PostPosted: Sat Jan 16, 2010 12:51 am
by Solomon
Piepie stop bitching that "pics are gone" and "attachments are gone" all the time, seriously. We know. If you insist on stating the obvious can you at least do it in the appropriate forum? ;)

Re: How to pick ABLOY classic

PostPosted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 9:24 am
by Wizer
I know this is an old post, but congratulations, .45cal & awol! Even if the lock is tensioned from the tail piece, its really hard to pick. Believe me, I´ve tried... I have tried to replicate your pick, but my version feels too inaccurate to get feedback from the lock. Especially making difference between true and false gates in the back of the plug. Not even a cutaway helped lot.
The tensioner would not work as described above. There´s just no room for the pick. See picture:
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I´ve tried to overcome this problem by making the pick go aroud the tensioner:
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I´ve alIso left the 2nd. disc part of the tensioner uncut, about 85% of Classics have this, but you can´t be sure. If the first cut is 0, maybe 80% of Classics have a 5 on the second cut. So because you must start with some position on every disc, I would start with 0050000000 to get most feedback from the beginning. The last disc or front disc is allways a 0, unless a shorter camlock is keyed to a normal housekey and the front cut happens to be different.
I can open an 9-disc PL318 with it, "picking" it in binding order, when I know the key bitting.
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When I don´t know the key, I´ve gotten it to false set, but the discs bind so hard, that I can´t get feedback with my feeble pick. An 11-disc 330 is yet to be "picked" even if I know the bitting.(I have not tried it many times.) This pick only turns discs one way, so I would have to have two picks, CV & CCV, and make them stronger so I could turn the discs back and forth to get feedback.
I´ve also been thinking of other ways of tensioning Classics. I think that camlocks could often be tensioned from tail piece with mica or just a credit card or similiar. And I found that you can tension the most commonly used padlock in Finland PL3020 by levering the plug next to shackle:
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Inside of the shackle has even more room. If I just could make your pick work, I could open this lock. Well, I guess I have something to fiddle with when I get bored at my shop.
If anyone is interested in trying different tensioners / picks and needs blanks, I´ve got some.
I will trade a cheap cylinder for a few blanks.
I hope to see some conversation about the lock, and I´m looking forward to see the first video of picking it.
Lets all tackle this one together!

-Wizer

Re: How to pick ABLOY classic

PostPosted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 10:29 am
by .45cal
Have you tried picking the lock in reverse that is rotate all the disks 90 and then pick back to 0?

Re: How to pick ABLOY classic

PostPosted: Fri Aug 20, 2010 10:52 pm
by Wizer
Sure, thats what I ment by starting at 00500... 0-discs must be turned full 90 dsegrees. But to make differensies between false and true gates, I have to turn the discks back and forth, so the starting position is not all that relevant.