My New Keychain

Having built a garage last year, I finally put up a method to show my collection of 'funky' keys gathered over the last decade or so. It is a length of small link chain held to the ceiling by a pair of shelf brackets. Each key is then hooked by an open paper clip.  This photo shows about half of the first of two planned key chains

I have copies of all the common high security keys used here in Western Canada as well as some rarely used key types too. Some came from a large institutional client cleaning out lost and found and I have no idea what the key does.  Some were retired from service for one reason or other. And at this point, I do not even know how some came into my hands.

From a quick glance, I see the cheapest of all suitcase keys and dimpled keys to a fire safe.  At the far end is an RSA key.  Guess it is retired now.  The batteries died long before RSA had its breach.



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Laux Myth ... Thoughts From a Locksmith
By MartinB, Found @ http://lauxmyth.blogspot.com/ 

Backset Fail

I pulled all the photos off the 1 GB card inside my cell phone. I take numerous pictures and found this old gem. Somebody had installed a Weiser Powerbolt but had missed the step of changing the backset for the bolt. Since the bolt was 3/8 inch too short installed in this door so had set the face of the bolt into the edge of the door by 3/8 of an inch.

Seeing this old photo made me smile.

I could never be THIS passionate!

A different locksmith blog posted this commentary on being passionate and it is very funny. Do pop over there to watch it and ask yourself about your passion. I am perhaps compulsive about locks and for brief moments passionate, but it hardly sustains me.

http://www.discreetsecuritysolutions.com/blog/archives/176

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Laux Myth ... Thoughts From a Locksmith
By MartinB, Found @ http://lauxmyth.blogspot.com/

Lock nerd or lock geek?

I have been asking fellow attendees at SAVTA this burning question of deep importance to me. I fear I may get the answer wrong.

A bit of background. I have been busted checking the keyway and hardware as I open a door. Going past a bank, I have told a friend what kind of cylinder is in the night depository. I visited a small town historical museum with 3 rooms of 'stuff' including a big old safe. I was looking at its boltwork and lock for half the time there. And lets face it, I am using a week of vacation to be here.

So help me please. Am I a lock geek? Or a lock nerd?

"Do you cut keys?"

You all know the type, but none of US are THIS type. It could be some neo-hippy college student with wild dreadlocks and more tattoos than a tribe of Maori or some haggard middle-aged mom with 3 toddlers in tow or some small time property manager who does all the maintenance. Whichever person is walking in, the door has not yet closed when they ask it. However, he or she has had time to look up and see you. They see you and not the wall of key blanks behind you. It is almost out of Python's cheese shop when the words float innocently out.

"Do you cut keys?"

As I hear it, I have to remind myself that the wall behind me is covered from waist to over my head with blanks. The blanks are spaced one inch apart on more wall space than some banana republics use for banana plantations. I know the brass in this shop could be melted down to make some type of horrid modern art sculpture which high society would admire and civic governments would pay for. This art work would loom over the head of me and the person with the question.

"Do you cut keys?"

I know the simple answer. I know our shop is clearly labeled and it seems impossible some vague detour would find a person wanting a watermelon before me and even if it did, they should not want a key cut. However, I want to reach into the bin of miscut wonders and start to scream as I throw keys.

"NO, we do not cut keys. We repair locks only. We leave the cutting of keys to the professional at the big box hardware stores. The blanks you see behind me for 1000 different locks are here for show. They are a deception to fool the masses and it worked until you walked in here and asked that one question."

"Do you cut keys?"

"Of course we do. Let me see the key."
"How many would you like?"


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The contents of this post are released for non-profit or educational use in whole or in part provided this statement and the attribution below are kept attached.

Laux Myth ... Thoughts From a Locksmith
By MartinB, Found @ http://lauxmyth.blogspot.com/

Security Maxims: Feynman's Maxim

From Security Maxims
http://www.ne.anl.gov/capabilities/vat/seals/maxims.html

Feynman’s Maxim: An organization will fear and despise loyal vulnerability assessors and others who point out vulnerabilities or suggest security changes more than malicious adversaries.
Comment: An entertaining example of this common phenomenon can be found in “Surely You are Joking, Mr. Feynman!”, published by W.W. Norton, 1997. During the Manhattan Project, when physicist Richard Feynman pointed out physical security vulnerabilities, he was banned from the facility, rather than having the vulnerability dealt with (which would have been easy). [sic]

Many years ago, I read this book. Richard Feynman had a great analytical mind and was able to find methods to open the locked filing cabinets when he worked on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. They started as padlocks on rods and moved up to Mosler combination locks. (I should be clear about this. Sometimes he found bypass methods to take papers out of locked cabinets without opening the lock at all. Same difference really.) He used a remarkable set of problem solving skills often playing the people as much as the hardware.  Often it was a bit of both as he found he could quickly discover a partial combination from a lock when visiting a co-worker while the safe lock was opened. 

At one point he explains to a Colonel how he opened one highly classified safe and the order was given to not let Mr Feynman near your safe. The military guy did not take the advice from Feynman on how to eliminate this as a vulnerability for all people.

Read the book if you want some practical ideas on 'safe cracking'.  It is also one of the book which brought me into the trade.


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Laux Myth ... Thoughts From a Locksmith
By MartinB, Found @ http://lauxmyth.blogspot.com/

Shocking Safe Lock

While thinking of my last post, I thought of this one. Some days the ideas just flow.


For many businesses which use the safe to hold rolls of coin and floats, the number of openings per day wear out the standard group 2 dial safe lock. And worse, from a security point of view the staff see it as a hassle to keep redialing the lock and so leave the safe open or only locked by turning above the drop but then it is really not locked at all. A common and valid way to overcome this is to move to a digital safe lock where the the staff can open as fast as dialing a phone and once the door is closed it relocks automatically. The higher level of compliance generates better security overall.

Which brings me to my story of the safe in question which was recently converted from a dial lock to a LaGard digital as seen here. About a week later, a manager phoned to say the new lock was giving staff shocks when they operated the safe. In our shop, we reminded them it holds two 9 V batteries in parallel. The most juice this can give is 9 V and people would barely feel that if at all. Beside, a short would make it so the lock would not work and since the lock still works it is not our lock. Seemed to settle this for a bit.

A few days later, the store manager was back. While she did not think it was the lock either but that is all which was new, she would risk the cost of a service call to find out for sure. I was put in my job box.

I arrive and do nice introductions. The manager shows me the container and I test the lock. Works -- no surprise. Look behind at batteries and wires. Boring. She explains it does not always happen. As chance would have it, an assistant manager comes into the office as I start asking if there are any special situations which make the shocks happen more often. She does not know of any. He does.

"If you are holding onto the door frame, it usually happens." I should have been thinking better at this moment. I put my hand on the portion of the door frame where he was pointing which had the paint worn off. I touched the face of the lock. Nothing. (Wait for it.) I touched the body of the safe. YIKES!! It was REAL and it was not 9 volts. I can not recall if I metered the voltage but I really did not have to do that to KNOW it was not a 9 volt source.

I then looked at the back of the safe and saw two different power chords going behind it into a small space of maybe 3/4 inch or 2 cm. Since I know most plug-ins extend more than this, I knew the power was from those. This safe would have been just over 1000 lbs or 450 kg and moved easily out from the wall with a crow bar, wedges and rollers. Once out about a foot, I could see the damage. It had crushed both plugs into the receptacle which it had also smashed in. I pulled both plugs out after putting on some rubber gloves. Both plugs were clearing folded but on one I could see a tiny shiny copper surface.

For those outside the trade, safes do move back. The door is always a significant percentage of the weight and slams the safe back a tiny amount each time the door is closed. This movement adds up since there is nothing to bring the safe away from the wall. If you install the safe ahead of an electrical outlet and ideally you would not, you then place a solid spacer to prevent exactly what happened here. In this case, I sold the store a chunk of wood and wrote on it to leave behind the safe. I also explained these two appliance plugs are no longer safe to use and the plug-in needs works too. Since I am not an electrician, I leave it to them to get those items repaired.

It was a strange call but it all worked out to solve the problem and I had billable time. I think they were luck this was not found with a fire. Also, I have told this little tale at parties and now on the net. Seems electrocuting yourself is good for a laugh.


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Laux Myth ... Thoughts From a Locksmith
By MartinB, Found @ http://lauxmyth.blogspot.com/

Midnight Shift is Always the Last to Know

So it was 3:30 am or some other time at night when I was ASLEEP and the phone rang. As I regained consciousness, I was told the story from a manager at a fast food place which stays open 24/7 of her safe which would not open. It seems our company moved it for renovation on Friday morning and now she can not open it. I had heard nothing of this move but that is unremarkable with the volume of work we have in our shop. The evening shift had opened it but now she can not. She knows she is using the right combination on a LaGard digital safe lock. This seems plausible since when she is done entering the code she reports a double beep as usual and she is not getting lock out delays.

For those in the technical end, you know where this is going. In my stupor I could think of a few ways a safe could lock up from a move. You could drop a bigger safe than I expect this place to have and break the glass relock plate. It would lock up good and fast. Also, with a smaller box, it may be badly out of level and twist to bind the door but again you will see that in door-run and rocking at the install. (The staff member we usually have do safe moves has way more experience than I and is very good at such details. He would NOT miss this.) However, it was all I could think of so asked her over the phone if the door had some play. She confirmed you could move the door in and out but a very small amount and it was 'about the same as yesterday'. Hmmm ... what is the problem??

I explained the midnight rates compared to the weekend day rates and also explained I did not know how a move could generate this problem. I also explained that if it were from the move it would be a no charge job but if not the restaurant would be charged. It is only fair to fully disclose and let the client decide. Given this and my wish to go back to bed, we agreed I would arrive there between 8 and 8:30 in the morning to see this safe. She agreed to a free coffee either way.

A different manager phoned a few hours later and said the safe was now open. I never did find out what the problem was earlier but suspect it was the operators. I hope in my slurry state I invited him to call again if the problem came back. (I was going to call this a PEAKs error meaning Problem Exists Above Keyboard but looked it up and it is not as common as I thought. Thinkers on design point out often the problem is the machine does not give good information to the user it is expecting some action and when you give it input it does not expect since you can not know what input the machine is expecting, it is not valid to call it human error.)

But now to get a bit more serious. If you can think of ANY way a safe move could generate a lock out, please toss it to me by email or as a comment.


And yet this call brought me back to a call years ago when I was newer to safes. It was well after midnight and they needed a safe open and had the codes. This is a high security place and each staff member keeps many safe codes all in small books which are closely held. This safe would not open for their known combinations. Given it was a dial safe I did the thinks I knew then. Basically, you test for various mechanical failures and carefully feel for changes in the dialing behaviour in terms of sound and feel. I did the set I knew. I did them again. And again. I had the staff check the codes with other staff who knew the same codes by phoning other poor sods in their sleep. We received confirmation the combination was right and yet it did not open. We contacted a manager and were approved to drill the next morning.

I went home and slept some. I went to the shop and loaded up tools where I was joined by a more experienced technician. We phoned to see if now was a good time and spoke to a different supervisor than was on duty at midnight. The safe was open and he knew nothing of my visit at 3 am. The combinations were changed during the evening shift and were not passed on. Well, that explains why the locks felt like they were in good condition.

It is true that the midnight shift is the last to know.


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Laux Myth ... Thoughts From a Locksmith
By MartinB, Found @ http://lauxmyth.blogspot.com/

Its called "Key Attitude."

When a customer today laughed at this term, I knew it was a good item for the blog. Key attitude.

Lets start with a question. Have you ever had a lock you could unlock with your key but somebody else could not? You knew exactly how to hold the key ... how much to lift it ... how much to pull it back ... how hard to turn it ... how to comb your hair just right. You would insert the key and do a little dance with the key and you could get it to work every time. Good for you but that is NOT how a lock should work.

The engineering design is that a key should be inserted fully into a lock and you can let go of it. The springs in the lock and gravity will find a neutral place of rest for the key. Then you turn it without pulling it out or lifting it or tipping it. That is the ideal and lets put that in our rear-view mirror right now.

When you have to hold a key in some special way, it is called key attitude and it can arise for several reasons. Often the regular user of the lock has lived with a little of it for years as the key and lock wore out together so has learned the exact attitude for that key and lock. When that person passes the key to me, I find it almost impossible to work the lock. (I only hope I am entertaining as I struggle to get this key to work.)

Perhaps I should get more technical. A key fits into a lock in a keyway and the keyway always has to be a bit larger than the key. Some keys fit very exactly into the space given and really do not wiggle inside the lock more than a few thousandths of an inch. Generally these are new cylinders of the top grades of lock. As you look at more worn locks or less machined locks, the key has more air around it when in the lock and you can move the key up, down and sideways.

I guess I should say what exactly holds the key in place. Well, that depends on the lock. For the deadbolt in a house, the key should rest on the bottom of the keyway and the grooves on the side of the key should have matching ridges inside the lock to fit into them but not lift the key off the bottom of the keyway.* If the key is double sided like many cars, then usually you have springs from half the cuts pushing the key up and the other half pushing the key down. All you need to do is put 20 other keys, a cell phone, a collection of charms, a name tag and a small flashlight on your ring of keys and it will weigh enough to pull that double sided key out of the centre of the lock.

Since the fit of the key in the keyway is never exact, what attitudes are possible? Often you can lift the whole key if all the cuts on the key are too low. Also, the copy of the key can be tipped in either direction and sometimes to get it to work, you rock the tip of the key up and keep the shoulder area all the way down. Alternately, you can lift at the shoulder and keep the tip fully down. Am I done??

No. Keys are often duplicated with the blank not aligned correctly left to right in the machine. If the original is out of place, the cuts on the new key are too close to the shoulder and by the time you fully insert that key, the cuts have not yet reached where they should to operate. This key is taken back for a refund. More commonly, the copy is away from the shoulder when duplicated and this key will work if you pull it just a bit out of the lock. "Just a bit" is a precise way of saying guess and test.

And there can be one more problem but it is quite rare. When you wear a lock out, the keyway goes wide and the key can rotate slightly INSIDE the keyway before you start to turn the lock. For some keys, this rotates the cuts on the key blade out from under the pins and the pins move down and lock up the cylinder. This only happens in one direction or the other. However, if it happen when you turn the key clockwise and that is the direction which unlocks this lock, then it may seem like the key is wrong.**

(I will leave it as a homework exercise to find a solution to unlock such a lock without damage. Just had to say that. Old habits and all.)

Well, maybe this explains why it takes time to try out all the possible holding positions of a key before you find the exact key attitude to unlock it just once.

The job site which made me think of the topic was working with some safety deposit box locks. The client had keys labelled as working. One would work infrequently but a few others could not get the boxes to open at all. Safety deposit locks are not forgiving a poorly cut key and usually do not get high usage. If the key is wrong you hit a wall. I took the keys and tried a variety of attitudes with each until I had the boxes open. (Still faster and cheaper than drilling the door or destroying the lock which are the next options.) Once back in the shop, you can see where to correct the key by seeing what the internal parts are doing as you turn this key.

Do I like key attitude? Sure, it makes the job fun. Should you? A little is fine but do not make a copy of that key or you are likely to get a worse key which takes even more playing each time to open the lock. Also, most of the time poor key attitude is wearing out your lock faster than a correctly cut key. The key is generally a few dollars and can be replaced as needed without tools. The lock takes more time, money and skills to replace. Replace the key to preserve the lock seems good advice.



* I should get a prize for dodging the jargon of the trade. The grooves on the sides of keys are called millings and the shape of the hole used as a keyway is called the broaching.

** In a career as a locksmith, you will be given keys by ernest and honest customers who confidently tell you this is THE key for that lock. Later you open the lock to see the pins and it is not even close. This raises some customer service points I will discuss in some other post.


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Laux Myth ... Thoughts From a Locksmith
By MartinB, Found @ http://lauxmyth.blogspot.com/

Backset problems.

This is a Weiser Powerbolt installed on a pre-existing door preparation. Since the installer had the main bore with a 2 3/4 backset and did not seem to know how to change the backset of the bolt, the bolt face was recessed in. I was replacing the hardware and it proved a minor problem.

But since a picture is worth 1000 words ...



If you are doing this at home, read the instructions in the box. This bolt can easily be made to fit in a 2 3/4 backset installation.


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The contents of this post are released for non-profit or educational use in whole or in part provided this statement and the attribution below are kept attached.

Laux Myth ... Thoughts From a Locksmith
By MartinB, Found @ http://lauxmyth.blogspot.com/

Using Google News ... Toddler trapped in lolly machine

I love Google News. It does find the best stuff!

Having done a search for the word 'locksmith', the search is repeated once a week and I am sent results by email. In a quick scan, most have the word 'locksmith' in some incidental fashion but some are a bit better. This made me smile. From the picture it was just a matter of picking a tubular but not really clear. Either way, I would tell about this call the next morning over coffee! I am sure the locksmith involved laughs at it too.



Toddler trapped in lolly machine after climbing in for sweets

An Australian toddler was so determined to help himself to sweets from a lolly machine that he climbed through the tiny dispensing hatch, ending up imprisoned inside four walls of glass.

Cohen Stone, 2, climbed inside the claw grabber machine in an Italian restaurant, where his mother, Kyra, 24, had brought him to celebrate a friend's birthday.

Kyra, from Perth, in Western Australia, said: "I had been playing with him in the children's area but took my eye off him for two minutes as the food arrived at our table.

"When I turned back, he was inside the machine. My first thought was "Oh my God."

"I just couldn't believe what he had done in that space of time. He was there one minute, inside it the next, like a magician's trick.

She added: "The hole was tiny. I have no idea how he did it. That's when I started to panic. I didn't know how I was going to get him out."

A local locksmith was called to Siena's restaurant to free the little boy, who was released 45 minutes later.

Mrs Stone said she had trouble convincing her husband the story was true.

"I phoned my husband Calan but he thought I was joking. He kept asking me to repeat what I was saying. It was only that I was so upset that he realised I was not having him on," she said.

She added: "I took the video of him when he was calm and after I knew we were able to get him out.

"I'm glad I took photos now - even though I was panicking at the time. No one believes me until they see the video and it will make a great story."

Siena's has now removed the machine from the restaurant and has given the Stone family a £30 voucher.

Silly Exercise in Master Keying Desks

I have been looking back at notes from jobs I have done years ago and this post derives from that job. It was an office with file cabinets using IN8 keying which in these parts is most all of them. Some technician had set this up before me. I just had to add one more cabinet to one of the changes. While not a robust solution to the problem it was kind of neat to see.

First the background on this keying system. They are five wafer locks with each wafer being one of three possible sizes, namely 1, 3, or 5. When you move to the keys, you can use the powers of 3 to get the number of key combinations. The MACS (Maximum Allowable Cut Separation) is 4 which allows a 1 and 5 to be adjacent. The only 'rule' which strikes out key codes is the 'flats'. You can not use the key 11111 or 33333 or 55555.

So how many keys are allowed? 3^5 - 3 = 243 - 3 = 240

In practice, you should exclude the pullout codes too. These are code which step down or stay flat on successive cuts from the shoulder. After a bit of wear on the key and the lock, the key may pull out in any position whether the lock is relocked or not. The list is a bit long, but it would include such key cuts as 11335 or 13355 or 11115. The flats above are also pullouts. If you write out the full list you should get away from the computer more! However, be that as it may there are 21 pullout keys which should not be cut.

This leaves 222 good practical keys.

Now to master key with just this simple system. (While I wrote notes on this trick when I saw it, I did not record the real key codes. So I get to invent some here.)

The Master Key is A with cuts 31135.
There are two simple change keys.
A1 is 35135
A2 is 31535

The cabinets locks have a wafer dropped out which I will show with an X.
Cabinet 1 has wafers 3X135. This allows both the master and A1 keys to work. The keys share 4 cuts and in the space which is different there is no wafer at all.
Cabinet 2 has wafers 31X35. This allows both the master and A2 keys to work. The keys share 4 different cuts than above and again in the space where they differ there is no wafer. If you insert key A1, it will not turn due to having a 5 cut in the second position when the lock has a number 1 wafer.

Cool huh? Not really. This decreases the security of the lock by decreasing the number of wafers in the lock. (This is a bit minor from a picking point of view as I can pick this group of lock in under a minute in most cases.) Also, of the 222 keys above, 3 of them will open one of these cabinets. One is the master key, the second is the change key in use and there exists a third key which will also open it up. This is trivial in this situation really.

How far can I push this?
There is a 6 wafer version of cabinet locks and you could drop out one wafer at a time. This could be charted as follows with the wafers given in brackets after each key.

Master A is 131353
A1 is 331353 (X31353)
A2 is 151353 (1X1353)
A3 is 135353 (13X353)
A4 is 131553 (131X53)
A5 is 131513 (1313X3)
A6 is 131351 (13135X)

Gosh, was that tough to type! Imagine writing code tables by hand all day!

Can we push this further? As I show it here, it looks like you can give unique keys to only as many locks as there are wafers in the lock or cuts on the key. The mathematics gets more messy, but you can drop out half the wafers at any time and cycle through all the possibilities and generate more keys.

This is pushed even further in one line of high security lock you may never have seen. It is factory controlled and used in places like prisons. By using a system very similar to this, they can set up a master key with over 1 000 000 keys under it. (I was just now trying to find the actual numbers on the web and could not. I may update this post if I find it.)


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The contents of this post are released for non-profit or educational use in whole or in part provided this statement and the attribution below are kept attached.

Laux Myth ... Thoughts From a Locksmith
By MartinB, Found @ http://lauxmyth.blogspot.com/