Any sources for training material or large lock demos?

[nostromo]

Looking for some help in finding training material for a Keyless Entry course I teach to Law Enforcement Officers. Contacting Schlage and Medeco has gotten me no further than voicemail jail. The local locksmiths don;t know of anything, though I'm hoping the next ALOA might have some goodies.

What I'm looking for are very large transparent or cutaway demonstration locks so that students can more easily get a feel for pin, wafer, sidebar, warded, tubular and chisel pin locks (in that order of preference). Videos are helpful, and I do have some cutaway pin tumbler stands but with a class size of 24 students having even one cutaway for each student (or pair of students) is pricey, even at wholesale.

I've been able to make a few cutaway pin tumbler demos from Schlage KIK cylinders, which allows you to see action at and right above the shear line, but they would seem to get the concepts better with fully transparent locks.

Demos made by carving up foam noodles and fomcor board don;t quite make it - the action isn't really there. Those flat steel wreath hangers are great models for standard tension wrenches, and they also make great bump hammers with a bathtub plug, btw

Your suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated. Sources for other training materials would be greatly helpful and appreciated, too. I would be happy to pay for materials and shipping and have a lot of locks, picks, tools, materials to swap, too.

[raimundo]

I don't know the source, almost certainly medeco, but you mentioned large lock demos and I recently saw a medeco m3 cutaway lock with a key that was probably a foot long, and the lock was to this scale. Everything was very large, I asked the guy behind the counter how long they had had it, what it cost etc, and he suggested it cost upwards of $400 but it was very well done, undoubtedly from medeco, and probably only available to medeco dealers, but I didn't see any serial numbers on it, which could be related to any medeco enforcement of keeping them out of public hands and if you think about it, this sort of thing will eventually get into public hands as everything eventually does, locksmiths die or go out of business and the widow sells everything in a quick and dirty sale, just to get rid of it, some day this will appear on ebay, Or if you could find a medeco locksmith who would be willing to obtain one at cost plus baksheesh, you could examine it for a serial number and drill out a few numbers or examine it under long and short wave black lights for identifiers to be removed to keep medeco from getting harsh with your source, that would be a very cool thing to have,
In any case, worth a casual visit to any of your local medeco dealers to see a model if there is one on the counter. Maybe we could have a contest here on the lp101 to see who can post the first photo of one of these, I do take photos but haven't got this thing yet, and I almost never post photos here, as it requires me to open an account at a hosting site, and they would just close the account anyway after I don't use it for 90 days or so.

[loki-aka]

Generally, large scaled-up models of locks are intended to be shown, especially at trade shows, conventions,
conferences- with the notable exception of engineering models and prototypes seen only by select few.

The manufacturers marketing department is usually responsible for these and other instructional/promotional material;
posters, countertop displays, PowerPoint documents etc. Try contacting the mfg marketing or trade show coordination people.

[eppiotic]

I've seen that huge Medeco lock it was awesome! Yeah other than the factory I can't think of a place that would sell them.

On a related note there is a video on YouTube that has a friggin huge Primus key in it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuH2akWG80Q

And a blown up pin tumbler lock seen on Modern Marvels when they covered Kaba-Ilco (7mins 30 seconds) http://www.kaba-ilco.com/common/video/key_systems_player.asp?file=kaba_ilco_modern_marvels_rocky_mount_download.wmv&title=Modern%20Marvels%20(History%20Channel)&video=http://69.90.200.10:9090/video/kaba_ilco_modern_marvels_rocky_mount_streaming2.wmv