Smartkey kw1 de-coded

[Jaakko]

The simple truth is, the pins are a constant. It's the wafers that merely change position.

How do the pins stay constant when the wafers do not?

They can move up and down in the slots of the plug, if I understood your question correct.

I would really advice on purchasing one cylinder and disassembling it, or try to search for the thread somewhere around here, I think it was Zeke who made the topic about one.

[Lauren]

The pins are all the same length. The wafers or the rack (whatever you want to call it) are what change position on the cleet of the pins. When you measure reference points from the pin tip relative to the rack, decoding is possible. When the gate cut is visible on the rack (in the space I look at), then cuts 1,2,3 are not probe-able. This logic makes decoding easy. One probe can detectect 1 of 3 cuts. If any of these cuts are detected, this eliminates the other three cut possibilities. This is a simple deductive method.

[NKT]

I first saw one of these the other day (Wednesday?) and I came up with this method after looking at how it worked. I'd not had time the first time I saw the prototype in Sneek a year ago (2 years?) to do anything but stick a pick in it for 20 seconds, and I've not seen them for sale in the UK, as KnK locks are very very rare.

Anyway, I hit upon the above way of doing this fairly quickly. I see a machined, slightly oversized blank being the answer, with the blade set just a fraction higher than normal. The middle part is milled out, to leave a space for the probing, and the reason it is slightly taller than a regular blank is to (just) give access to the 3rd cut depth. Hopefully (as this hasn't been trialled yet) this will give a decode of 1/2, 3, 4, 5, 6. With just 5 pins, this is very close to opening it.

To get the decode of the side parts, a visual method would work just fine with a tiny mirror and a scope, but the best way would be to have a machined part that simply went into the middle section of the milled blank, and took the readings for you. I'd suggest a wire on a guide as the obvious choice, which should give readings in a few seconds, and free from the errors of handheld interpretations. The other way would be to use a small probe, which you would simply learn to read by eye through the keyhole. If you placed all the probes first, then did the reading, the cuts should easily be determined, much like a lever lock decoder, where you can tell what is higher or lower and so determine what is what, even without any absolute reference.

With a make-up key, this should give a very fast opening, or with a blank or perhaps two, it will get you in with a working key.

[Lauren]

It sounds like someone finally got the message on how to expose all the notches nesessary to decode this lock. I use a flat piece of metal .020 in. thick to act as a blank to do the job. The probes are .030 wire, made from contour gauge material. The tips are carefully bent to a callibrated ninety degree angle with special ground tips. The probes are inserted into the space that you are talking about (flat) and then rotated ninety degrees. I do a quick probing in each pin slot with one of three probes to eliminate 3 of the 6 possible cuts. If I don't get a .030 in. displacement pulled out of the cylinder, then by default the other three cuts are a sure thing. After this sloppy probing, I carefully probe in the lower half or upper half of the window that the probe inserts into. I use special shims that control the horizontal position of the probe.

[NKT]

So, this design fails.

[doppleganger]

so has anyone made a vid of their technique on this lock? I was able to mess with re-keying one the other day in while in lowes, but that was about it so far.

Dopp.

[Eyes_Only]

Actually I think Lauren's method might be somewhat practical and useful. If you can reliably decode just two or three of the pins/wafer/whatever then maybe you can deduce what cuts are possible and then you can use the tryout key set that has like 237 keys to open the lock.

All you need to do is develop a chart showing how many different combinations can be covered by each key and just use those select keys instead of going through all 237 of them to open the lock. Kind of like how you would make a key for the old Ford 10 cut lock. What do you think?

[Lauren]

Exactly right! Just by quick probing for the warded cut on the rack attached to each pin, you can cut your try out keys in half. For instance, if you don't get a .030 inch displacement out of the cylinder with one particular probe, that instantly means the cut has to be a 3,2 or 1 depth cut. It's that simple!

[Archive555]

I would love to see some pictures of this...
As I still don't quite understand it. Don't worry about explaining it to me, it just baffles me how it works

[Eyes_Only]

Yeah man, you gotta make a picture guide or video or something showing how to do this, please, pretty please.

[Lauren]

I hope this helps:

http://i127.photobucket.com/albums/p130 ... DERKW1.jpg

[Lauren]

Here's some more pic's:

[Lauren]

Through careful measuring, I redesign the decoder with just two probes.

[Lauren]

Here's how to bend the probes: