mdc5150's Manipulation Steps and Missteps
Last weekend was awesome getting the safe at the shop open, it was a real confidence booster. I have been practicing at home on a small safe door with a 6730 on it and I have been able to get it every time a combo has been set. This morning I opened it while free spinning for the first time and pretty quickly.
Two days ago I went out on my first attempt to manipulate a safe for a customer. The safe was an Amsec Amvault with a 6730 on it. I set up at 6am and started spinning.
It was very difficult to hear the contact points even with the amplifier. The first thing that worried me was that the contact points seemed to be wildly different from one increment to another. When I got to 58 on my first graph I thought maybe that was it but I kept my head and remembered I am as green as it gets still and kept making my graph. At the end I was fairly positive 58 was still my number and proceeded to start on graph 2.
So graph 2 was even more frustrating that 1. Increments showed the contact points varying as wildly as 7 numbers, it blew my mind. At the end of that graph I wasn't sure of anything.
Not knowing what to think at this point I went AWL at increments of 2 and measured. 46 seemed to catch my eye but it was only because the right contact point was consistently lower here. I went AWR and got the same thing but in my mind at the time (in the customers garage it was about 105 degrees at 6am and I was sweating and frustrated) it still was not significant enough to pursue. I will kick myself for that mistake for a long time to come.
I had a two hour time limit to work on the safe and had to call in my coworker to bring the drilling equipment down. We drilled a hole and scoped the change key hole. The combo ended up being 12-46-58. But I ran out of time and had already defeated myself. Even though the graph didn't quite support 46 all the well I should have run it down.
The customer was thrilled because we didn't have to drill the lock it's self and we charged him a minimum amount for drilling since I had been out there in his garage for a couple hours.