Fri Sep 20, 2013 10:42 am
Newb's First Safe Crack!
Hello,
I joined the site two days ago after discovering that info on the subject of manipulation was pretty hard to come by. When we remodeled our house last year, we discovered a Major floor safe in the closet that had been covered over with the last owner's carpet. I did some basic research at the time, but remodeling was the priority so I saved the safecracking project until now. I didn't (and still don't--it's in the mail) have a practice lock so I was learning everything from scratch on the locked safe.
Last Sunday night, I began in earnest. I read the Matt Blaze paper, a few less than helpful posts on Lockpicking101, and got started with graphing. I found that I had a tough time accurately reading the change in contact region, but my initial graph indicated something was going on AWL at 30 and 75.
The next few nights, I broadened my understanding and added a vernier scale from the analoghacking.com. Huge improvement! It allowed me to read to 1/10 graduation very consistently.
I didn't trust my original graph, so I started over again with the vernier scale and found again that something was happening AWL at 30 and 75. I amplified and found 29 and 76 seemed to be the center of the drop in contact region, but I really couldn't be sure that I was feeling a gate since I had never tested this on a practice lock.
On Wedensday, I found this site and joined immediately. I want to thank femurat, daggers, and oldfast for the posts that really got me going! I had been using the Matt Blaze paper instructions for how to find which wheel my gate was on, but the description of the Hi/Low test from daggers was really helpful in the sense that it also taught me how to park wheels.
AWL 29 had the most significant gate signature, but I couldn't figure out which wheel it was on. It seemed like all my Hi/Low results were really "flat" with no significant change when it was tested on any one wheel. I now believe that there was a high spot on another wheel(s) that was "masking" the indication for the correct wheel. Anyway, I settled on wheel #3 (wrong) and started graph #2 Last night. I had been at this until about 1AM every night during the week. My back hurt from being hunched over the floor safe and my eyes were all bloodshot. I was getting discouraged.
So with wheel #3 parked on L29, graph #2 totally sucked and looked really flat. I thought maybe I saw the gate indicator of a drop and then staying level at wheel #1&2 R82.5. I was grasping at straws and this turned out to be bogus. I tried Hi/Low again for R82.5 on wheel and had crappy results. Still, I decided the largest contact region was probably when 82.5 was on wheel #2 and started dialing Lx-R82.5-L29 advancing by twos. 50 combos later, I was stumped.
Then I decided to look back at my first graphs and dial some random combos using the low points I originally found at 29 and 76. I knew something was happening at those points, but I had serious doubts about my Hi/Low tests. When I tried combos with 76 at the last number the contact region got very small! It was pretty dramatic, and I was now pretty sure that 76 was the last number!
So I decided to try Lx-R29-L76, but the contact region didn't get smaller. I now had to accept that I had only one number: Wheel #3 at L76.
I went and had a beer and talked to my wife. She had been really good about listening to all my safe banter, and she is pretty analytical. I was ready to give up on L29 as a number, and she said, "But you had such a great indication on 29."
I looked at her and realized that dialing 29 RIGHT as the middle number in my test combos was not the same as finding 29 AWL! So I figured out how to convert (thanks Daggers!) and decided that IF my AWL indication at 29 was actually on wheel #2, it would be R27!
I dialed a few x-27-76 combos and the contact region shrank again!
I went for it and started 0-27-76, 2-27-76, 4-27-76. BAM! it opened. I couldn't believe it. I was about 17 hours in and an estimated 1,500 revolutions at that point. I am very confident that if I had figured out the conversion thing (and maybe had a practice lock!) I could do it in significantly less time. But I am super pumped that I opened it! Empty, by the way...
I want to thank everyone on the board for all the help! I'm hooked!
One last thing, can anyone tell me what model of lock I cracked? It doesn't have a model number on it.
I joined the site two days ago after discovering that info on the subject of manipulation was pretty hard to come by. When we remodeled our house last year, we discovered a Major floor safe in the closet that had been covered over with the last owner's carpet. I did some basic research at the time, but remodeling was the priority so I saved the safecracking project until now. I didn't (and still don't--it's in the mail) have a practice lock so I was learning everything from scratch on the locked safe.
Last Sunday night, I began in earnest. I read the Matt Blaze paper, a few less than helpful posts on Lockpicking101, and got started with graphing. I found that I had a tough time accurately reading the change in contact region, but my initial graph indicated something was going on AWL at 30 and 75.
The next few nights, I broadened my understanding and added a vernier scale from the analoghacking.com. Huge improvement! It allowed me to read to 1/10 graduation very consistently.
I didn't trust my original graph, so I started over again with the vernier scale and found again that something was happening AWL at 30 and 75. I amplified and found 29 and 76 seemed to be the center of the drop in contact region, but I really couldn't be sure that I was feeling a gate since I had never tested this on a practice lock.
On Wedensday, I found this site and joined immediately. I want to thank femurat, daggers, and oldfast for the posts that really got me going! I had been using the Matt Blaze paper instructions for how to find which wheel my gate was on, but the description of the Hi/Low test from daggers was really helpful in the sense that it also taught me how to park wheels.
AWL 29 had the most significant gate signature, but I couldn't figure out which wheel it was on. It seemed like all my Hi/Low results were really "flat" with no significant change when it was tested on any one wheel. I now believe that there was a high spot on another wheel(s) that was "masking" the indication for the correct wheel. Anyway, I settled on wheel #3 (wrong) and started graph #2 Last night. I had been at this until about 1AM every night during the week. My back hurt from being hunched over the floor safe and my eyes were all bloodshot. I was getting discouraged.
So with wheel #3 parked on L29, graph #2 totally sucked and looked really flat. I thought maybe I saw the gate indicator of a drop and then staying level at wheel #1&2 R82.5. I was grasping at straws and this turned out to be bogus. I tried Hi/Low again for R82.5 on wheel and had crappy results. Still, I decided the largest contact region was probably when 82.5 was on wheel #2 and started dialing Lx-R82.5-L29 advancing by twos. 50 combos later, I was stumped.
Then I decided to look back at my first graphs and dial some random combos using the low points I originally found at 29 and 76. I knew something was happening at those points, but I had serious doubts about my Hi/Low tests. When I tried combos with 76 at the last number the contact region got very small! It was pretty dramatic, and I was now pretty sure that 76 was the last number!
So I decided to try Lx-R29-L76, but the contact region didn't get smaller. I now had to accept that I had only one number: Wheel #3 at L76.
I went and had a beer and talked to my wife. She had been really good about listening to all my safe banter, and she is pretty analytical. I was ready to give up on L29 as a number, and she said, "But you had such a great indication on 29."
I looked at her and realized that dialing 29 RIGHT as the middle number in my test combos was not the same as finding 29 AWL! So I figured out how to convert (thanks Daggers!) and decided that IF my AWL indication at 29 was actually on wheel #2, it would be R27!
I dialed a few x-27-76 combos and the contact region shrank again!
I went for it and started 0-27-76, 2-27-76, 4-27-76. BAM! it opened. I couldn't believe it. I was about 17 hours in and an estimated 1,500 revolutions at that point. I am very confident that if I had figured out the conversion thing (and maybe had a practice lock!) I could do it in significantly less time. But I am super pumped that I opened it! Empty, by the way...
I want to thank everyone on the board for all the help! I'm hooked!
One last thing, can anyone tell me what model of lock I cracked? It doesn't have a model number on it.
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