by raimundo » 9 Jan 2009 10:28
Olson Burrys wolfdog lock appears to have two dark circles on the face of it. These are not in the usual places where press fit caps are normally hidden on brass body locks. Maybe they are just coffee stains,
Some old locks have removable press fit caps that are on the face of the lock, and the press fit is disguised by fitting into lines of the brand name embossment. Its been a long time since I have seen this but once it was quite common. Just a bit for those who like old locks.
Foil impressioning is a method that is experimented with on difficult or unknown locks, it requires some investigation to see what sort of foil you can obtain in your local area, then experiment with doubleing the thin foil or if you have heavy foil with the adhesive back, you may even want to do something to weaken it.
You can try a lot of things, includeing filling the cavities under the foil with some material that will have some give in it, to keep the process from going to deep to fast.
It would definatly be something that you may want to try if you are about decoding the lock.
but be prepared to have time to work with this method, you will have to lift the pins out of the foil with some thin pin lifting tool such as you could make from a feeler gauge.
For impressioning dimple locks for a one time opening, there is a youtube video on opening a dimple lock with a wooden coffee stirrer, by preparing it with a tool that breaks down the fiber of the wood under the points that the pins sit over. Realize that you could be breaking off a piece of wood inside the keyway, and probably try to turn the plug using a tensor rather than the wood
Wake up and smell the Kafka!!!
