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First post from a new guy. I bought a 6730 and made my own cutaway because MBA was out of premade ones. I got my first solve on it last night. Found a gate at 65, identified it as wheel 1. Then parked wheel 1 on 65 and identified a gate at 45 (which had showed a decent amount on the first graph also). Identified that gate as being on wheel 3 then brute forced wheel 2 until solve at 65-32-45. It worked but I know I spent way too much time spinning due to not grasping how to park wheels without dialing all 3 numbers.

Other than just a ton of practice is there a better way to grasp how to more efficiently move the wheel pack and park wheels during high/low testing and brute forcing the final wheel?

Thanks! And this place is great, so much info here. I initially cut the lever stop off when making the cutaway but glued it back on. It isn't pretty but it does work. Removing the lever stop does not make the lock non-functional, just causes you to have to push the lever down to lock it back.

Working on high/low testing after identifying an obvious gate and wondering… does rotation direction matter for this part?

The other day I was trying to follow along with the rotation direction as shown in the “Safecracking For Everyone” pdf and I seemed to identify wheel 1 fairly easily although I had trouble keeping up with the wheel rotation directions. Today I got totally lost and tried doing everything L-R-L. This seems to not be working at all.

Hello, Looks like you're getting it figured out. Hi/ low testing.....can't help you there. I try to avoid Hi/Low testing. I'm more likely to spin one wheel around by itself to see if the gate i've found is on that wheel. Maybe that answer will help?

This is my very first safe lock I’ve ever tried so I may be way overdoing it on the high/low testing. As I am so new to it, my measurements are probably not as precise as they should be on contact points yet. I know a lot of people don’t bother graphing but right now I’m being as meticulous as I can with it to give me something to go back over afterwards. Right now I’m ising a graph with 1/10 increments every 2 numbers. I’ve got to show my wife how to change the combo, what the forbidden zone is, etc…

Once I get the hang of this one I’m planning to get a Lagard 3330 and a Big Red CDL3 (hopefully both already cutaways). Once I get better at rotation directions and parking wheels I feel it’ll definitely be easier.

Thank you!

Also, with the 6730 having movable flies, will it matter for high-low tests which rotation I use to get there?

Welcome to the forum!

Movable flies sometimes still result in some offset when you reverse the direction of rotation. Also, the way the wheels can shift on the wheel post when rotation is reversed means that a low spot/gate you find in one direction may disappear entirely if you graph the same area using the opposite rotation, for example the indication could be masked by another wheel riding higher when rotation is reversed.

Always test/amplify any indications you find using the same rotation that you used to find them in the first place.

EDIT TO ADD : sometimes you can exploit the difference in wheel heights when rotation is reversed to find indications you would have missed otherwise - scanning a wheel/wheel pack in the opposite direction might show up indications that were absent when rotating in the other direction. Compare an AWL graph to an AWR graph on many LaGard locks for a good example of this.

…Mark

Looking at Oldfast’s posts that are stickied and I feel like this is where I’m getting lost or confused. With the wheel testing rotations. I’m going to sit down and spin a bunch and visualize which wheels are parking or moving and see if that helps. Being totally new to this it is pretty confusing at first.