Fwd: [OPEN!] A Season of Secrets
Chris Jenks
From: TOOOL <membe...@toool.us>
Date: Wed, Nov 30, 2016 at 3:05 AM
Subject: [OPEN!] A Season of Secrets
To: Chris Jenks <rat...@gmail.com>
Happy Yuletide, lockpickers!
The holidays are a particularly wonderful time of the year for lockpickers, who quietly revel in the socially-sanctioned skulking that goes into preparing a surprise gift. Not to say that we at TOOOL are the type to shake our Christmas presents, but we do love secrets, and figuring them out. To get you in the mood for this magical time of year, this month we’re sharing some of the secrets we’ve come across in our lockpicking adventures.
Gramercy Park: The Secret Garden
In Manhattan, a key to the exclusive Gramercy Park signifies membership in some of the most rarefied air of New York high society. Regardless of your perspective on the privilege, keeping such a high profile parcel private is a challenging exercise. With approximately 400 keys in circulation, choosing a difficult-to-duplicate key like the Medeco m3 was a must (even if it’s not invulnerable), and yearly key changes are de rigeur. It doesn’t help that they regularly break the rule about posting pictures of keys, but ultimately their biggest asset is the exclusivity they’re trying to protect: with so few authorized users, interlopers--even clever ones--are easy to spot.
Popplocks!
We often talk about locks as “mechanical puzzles” or, as Dev has said, “Rubix cubes for the colorblind”. But actual puzzle locks are a real thing, too, and for some lucky few, their puzzle lock is a Popplock. Since 2006, mad German machinist Ranier Popp has been turning out handmade puzzle locks famed as much for mechanical elegance as for their brain-bending deviousness.
For your eyes only: The Kaba X-10
If you deal with real, no-joking-around, classified secrets--including the launch codes aboard U.S. “boomer” submarines--there’s one lock you see every day: the Kaba X-10 safe dial is the U.S. government’s go-to lock for securing sensitive documents. It’s designed to the (entertainingly thorough) specifications of GSA standard FF-L-2740b, which address not only brute force and robotic dialing, but also freezing, baking, X-ray imaging, vibration, EMP, and even 250 kV shocks. As an electromechanical lock, X-10 makes a mockery of everything you thought you knew about safe locks because it doesn’t use the traditional “fences and gates” design. There’s no numbers on the face of the lock; turning the dial powers a built-in LCD which shows the numbers...but only at a limited viewing angle. You don’t stop and reverse direction each time; in fact, the lock uses the pauses while turning to detect rotation that is beyond the capabilities of the human wrist and indicate an auto-dialer. We at TOOOL spend a lot of time good-naturedly mocking easy locks, but it's just as important to tip our collective hat to the real challenges out there.
Christmas Orders Cutoff: December 11
If you’re planning on giving the gift of lockpicking this year, remember that TOOOL members get a substantial discount off of anything in the TOOOL shop. To get your members-only discount or check prices, email the indefatigable Lady Merlin at lady....@toool.us. Get your orders in by December 11th to give LM and our (all-volunteer) elves times to pack and ship everything in time for Christmas.
TOOOL Welcomes New Members
This email is produced by The Open Organisation Of Lockpickers (TOOOL), an international organization dedicated to teaching and celebrating the art of lockpicking. Feel free to forward this email to anyone who might be interested in learning more about locksport and ethical lockpicking. You can always find the closest monthly meeting to you at http://toool.us/meetings.html, and new
lockpickers seeking to membership can join at https://members.toool.us/.
Open!
Preston
TOOOL DC Chapter Lead
@TOOOL_DC
United States
