Combination padlock with key lockout

[jwhou]

I've seen plenty of combination padlocks with a control key override but I was wondering if there are any with a key lockout such that both the key and the combination are required to open the padlock?

[fjardeson]

I've seen cheap safes that work that way, but not padlocks. Anyone?

[jwhou]

I've seen cheap safes that work that way, but not padlocks. Anyone?

How cheap a safe would that be. I've just put in a really cheap Bunker Hill safe which was on sale at Harbour Frieght for $34.99 at the time ins order to have a place to put my wallet and checkbook while I sleep (caught a girlfriend lifting the atm card out of my wallet in April). It has a key over ride, obviously because it's a digital combination safe and hence has the possibility of a dead battery (that happened to me with a hotel safe in Rio de Janeiro once, they used a serial cable but still had to wait for the batteries to regain enough charge to slide the bolt open), but I would've liked to have a key lock out as well so that when I'm not present, somebody couldn't just patiently try out combinations. Fortunately this safe has a timeout penalty after three failed open attempts but I think that in terms of a shared accommodation scenario or as this case was an overnight guest scenario, the weaknesses of a keyed lock is that the key can be surreptitiously borrowed and the weakness of a combination lock is that combinations can be tried in your absence. It seems to me that a keyed lockout feature would address this problem for combination padlocks which are sometimes left unattended for long periods of time but where occasional short term keyless protection is also needed.

Currently, I tell people with shared accommodation complaints (surprise, that girlfriend is now complaining about not being able to trust room mates now that I've kicked her out and she's had to crash with her "friends"), to use a strong box or foot locker with a hasp, preferably two hasps and to use a good quality keyed padlock when they are not there and a good combination lock while they sleep, both if two hasps are available. The padlocks also allow for a security cable to anchor the box or foot locker to something more inconvenient to take such as a bedframe.

I guess the market for such a padlock must not be there while schools will be eager to bulk order combo locks with keyed alike over ride keys to resell to their students, the market for dorm safes are usually for integrated units rather than boxes with hasps.

[unlisted]

cheap, best way to "upgrade" your safe-

look for the area where the bolts retract. Find a lock you can mount just out of the way, but when the bolts are in the locked position, you can lock this additional lock, and it will prevent (at least) one bolt from retracting. for operation, just simply drill a new keyhole for the new lock into the safe door.

Not going to go into more detail, since this really is semi advanced stuff.. but I am sure you get my idea..

[jwhou]

cheap, best way to "upgrade" your safe-

look for the area where the bolts retract. Find a lock you can mount just out of the way, but when the bolts are in the locked position, you can lock this additional lock, and it will prevent (at least) one bolt from retracting. for operation, just simply drill a new keyhole for the new lock into the safe door.

Not going to go into more detail, since this really is semi advanced stuff.. but I am sure you get my idea..

That reminds me of a visit to Saudi Arabia back in the 90's. I was only there for a few weeks so I got to keep my passport with me but the other contractors all had their passport in the sponsors safe which already had it's lock drilled out and was held shut by a padlock on a hasp.

[Evan]

cheap, best way to "upgrade" your safe-

look for the area where the bolts retract. Find a lock you can mount just out of the way, but when the bolts are in the locked position, you can lock this additional lock, and it will prevent (at least) one bolt from retracting. for operation, just simply drill a new keyhole for the new lock into the safe door.

Not going to go into more detail, since this really is semi advanced stuff.. but I am sure you get my idea..

That reminds me of a visit to Saudi Arabia back in the 90's. I was only there for a few weeks so I got to keep my passport with me but the other contractors all had their passport in the sponsors safe which already had it's lock drilled out and was held shut by a padlock on a hasp.

LOL...

You are supposed to carry your Passport on your person at all times when outside of your home country unless it is taken away from you by authorized agents of the government of the country you are located in...

When traveling abroad ONLY your Passport is proper identification...

When you give your Passport to someone else for "safekeeping" you are therefore unable to provide on the spot proof to a law enforcement agent that you entered the country legally (a stamp proving that will be in your passport) or who you are with a form of identification that has been accepted by the government of the country you are in...

~~ Evan

[jwhou]

cheap, best way to "upgrade" your safe-

look for the area where the bolts retract. Find a lock you can mount just out of the way, but when the bolts are in the locked position, you can lock this additional lock, and it will prevent (at least) one bolt from retracting. for operation, just simply drill a new keyhole for the new lock into the safe door.

Not going to go into more detail, since this really is semi advanced stuff.. but I am sure you get my idea..

That reminds me of a visit to Saudi Arabia back in the 90's. I was only there for a few weeks so I got to keep my passport with me but the other contractors all had their passport in the sponsors safe which already had it's lock drilled out and was held shut by a padlock on a hasp.

LOL...

You are supposed to carry your Passport on your person at all times when outside of your home country unless it is taken away from you by authorized agents of the government of the country you are located in...

When traveling abroad ONLY your Passport is proper identification...

When you give your Passport to someone else for "safekeeping" you are therefore unable to provide on the spot proof to a law enforcement agent that you entered the country legally (a stamp proving that will be in your passport) or who you are with a form of identification that has been accepted by the government of the country you are in...

~~ Evan

All the Arabs consider themselves to be authorized agents of their government. It's a very uneasy feeling when in the middle east. As a business visitor, I was allowed to hold on to my passport but had to surrender it to the security guard at the gate to Aramco when at the office which meant leaving early to pick up the passport before they closed the guard house at 5. The contractors working there had to have letters by their employers giving them permission to go anywhere other than the local vicinity and their passports were kept in the sponsor's safe. In their custom, if you are working for them then you are their property hence they would hold on to your passport to ensure you could not leave without permission and you were required to have written permission to be anywhere other than would be expected of a worker. I was a business visitor so I was considered a guest which was why I could hold on to my own passport and travel as I pleased. You have to be careful, when you get a month business visa, it's good for one of their lunar months not for one of our months but unless you read Arabic, you might not notice that the expiration date is a little earlier then you thought. Fortunately, I rescheduled my return flight to be earlier anyways.

I flew out there because they wanted to shut down the supercomputer that weekend for a scheduled power outage, it took them a week to get me the clearance to visit on site so I ended up walking them through the shutdown and startup over the phone from the enclave residences. Fortunately, I was at the small one not the big luxury executive one where radicals went house to house executing foreigners. They actually offered me a job which would've made me a millionaire by now but I turned them down, might've gone for it except I was really tapped out due to my then undiagnosed congestive heart failure.

The identification that they liked the most was actually my AAA international driver's license which really isn't a license but just a translation of your actual driver's license into the various languages. As it could be opened in such a way that it was in Arabic, they tended to see that as the official ID, the car rental place didn't even want to photocopy my actual driver's license, just the AAA translations.

Great Sharwarmas though.

Every country is a little bit different, for example in Brazil, you're expected to keep your passport in the hotel room safe along with your wallet and watch. You kept a photocopy of the bios page from your passport with you and only carried the cash you needed plus some throwaway for the muggers. I've experienced four attempted muggings in Brazil. In Venezuela, I didn't have problems but some employees had problems with attempted kidnappings.

[unlisted]

Lets try to keep it on topic... ok?

[fjardeson]

@jwhou

The safes I am referring to are fire safes that you have to dial a mechanical combination (usually a direct-entry fence lock like an old Sentry Safe) and instead of a handle, there is a key lock. You dial the combo, then insert and turn the key.

No batteries required.

I'm not sure if they are made any more. They aren't very resistant to forced entry but they would surely stop a thieving girlfriend. They are usually sold as fire or record safes.

IMHO a lot of electronic locks these days get it wrong. Older hotel electronic safes used a dual-bit mechanical override key (the keyway is usually concealed by a sticker, the door's handle, etc). These were OK against non-destructive entry unless you run into an expert on those kinds of lock (often called "Italian multi-turn lever).

The new ones use a pin tumbler, sometimes tubular, that wouldn't stop an intelligent 10 year old. Even some (manufacturer deleted to avoid lawsuit) digital lever door locks use a simple pin tumbler key override. Fail.

[jwhou]

@jwhou

The safes I am referring to are fire safes that you have to dial a mechanical combination (usually a direct-entry fence lock like an old Sentry Safe) and instead of a handle, there is a key lock. You dial the combo, then insert and turn the key.

No batteries required.

I'm not sure if they are made any more. They aren't very resistant to forced entry but they would surely stop a thieving girlfriend. They are usually sold as fire or record safes.

IMHO a lot of electronic locks these days get it wrong. Older hotel electronic safes used a dual-bit mechanical override key (the keyway is usually concealed by a sticker, the door's handle, etc). These were OK against non-destructive entry unless you run into an expert on those kinds of lock (often called "Italian multi-turn lever).

The new ones use a pin tumbler, sometimes tubular, that wouldn't stop an intelligent 10 year old. Even some (manufacturer deleted to avoid lawsuit) digital lever door locks use a simple pin tumbler key override. Fail.

Hmmm, the cheapo safe that I bought has over ride keys with symmetrical bittings on both sides of the key, the machine marks seems to indicate six positions which is surprising considering how small the key is and a number of the cuts seem to be to the same level, the manual makes no mention of what kind of lock the over ride is. I wouldn't mind finding an all mechanical beast to lock up the over ride keys in.

I suppose that even if a combination padlock was found that had a key lock out instead of over ride, it probably wouldn't be a very secure key. So far, the closest that I've found was a combination lock box intended to hold a house key where the shackle to attach it to the door handle needed a key to be released and that keyhole wasn't accessible till the "vault" was opened by the combination. Not really a padlock, just padlockish.

When speccing electronic security access to computer rooms, we've always worked on the premise of something you have and something you know to give you security hence an access badge plus pin if security was a concern. I guess I thought that theme would've extended itself to mechanical combination padlocks as well. Well seems like I guessed wrong.

[unlisted]

Keep it non advanced material guys... or it will disappear into the advanced forums.

[fjardeson]

Keep it non advanced material guys... or it will disappear into the advanced forums.

Sorry didn't mean to step on the lines. I was discussing relative design merits, not bypass or manipulation

[unlisted]

Oh I know.. I just see where it is heading... in a few posts..

[jwhou]

Well, I think that the original thought of whether or not there's a padlock with a key lock out has pretty much panned out as a no, maybe a different approach. Obviously if something had two hasps, it could be locked with both a keyed padlock and a combination lock to achieve the security concept of something you have and something you know. Then the question would be are there any double hasps, strong boxes with two hasps, or some device that allows a single hasp to be locked by two padlocks?

I do see a legitimate use for these devices particularly in shared accommodation, dorm situations. A combination lock would be subjected to combinations being tried out while a key would be subject to being surreptitiously borrowed. Padlocks also have the convenience of allowing the easy attachment of a security cable to provide some nominal form of anchoring. I've been advising people to just have two padlocks, one keyed and one combination and swap them out when appropriate but I think having them both in use all the time helps to minimize the human error factor.

One would think that in all these centuries, surely every variation on padlocks must've been attempted at some point in time but I guess there still must be room for new ideas. Maybe a hockey puck hidden shackle dial combination lock, anyone seen anything like that?

[MacGyver101]

If you're looking for a reasonably cheap safe recommendation (which seems to be where this thread has drifted)... Sentry has recently discontinued a model (V330) that is actually pretty reasonable, and still available in some stores.

It's about $100, and while it offers no fire protection, it's a far higher standard of security than the majority of their models. (It has proper welded steel construction, a keyed lock that's at least better than a Kwikset, and a mechanical combination lock that's a grade up from their usual model.) I wouldn't call it "high security", but it's far better than most of what you'd find the "under $200" category.