My guide was Mikeh727's Sentry Safe manipulation on Keypicking, so I copied the setup as best I could:
I wouldn't recommend packing tape, but it was stable enough here.
I wish I'd looked at the operating range before labeling, I only ended up using the range between 1 and 2.
A Kwikset SmartKey tool is a pretty good stylus.
I started working with the following info:
- By counting wheel pickups, this wheel pack has only 3 wheels, and manuals suggested 3-wheel models have LRL combos.
- The third wheel is designed to deter decoding and is shaped like a gear (as seen in Sparkfun's autodialer video). It has 12 evenly-spaced gates, and from previous experience, the true gate isn't necessarily the widest one.
- Tolerances on my previous safes were ±2, so I graphed every two marks to try and preserve accuracy.
- The handle was very mushy when applying force, but based on Mikeh's experience I hoped that careful hand pressure would be sufficient.
In the first round of graphs, I started with AWL and W3@73. There was a lot of jitter but 21 stood out, and I made two graphs assuming 21 as either W1 or W2. These mostly didn't go as deep as the first graph, so despite seeing something at L21, R25, L73, I moved on to graphing AWL with W3 at 23 and 98 to explore the possibilities.
AWL and W3@98 had deeper marks, which seemed positive, and gave another clear indicator around 21. But I'd already tried 21 as W1 and W2, right? Actually, no! I messed up when I tried W2@21, because I didn't correct for the non-movable posts, and the drop at L21, R25, L73 in graph #3 was that correction: W2@21 is actually W2@25 when moving right.
In the last graph, it seemed like there was a solid gate signature for W1@36, but no open... feeling frustrated, I just decided to run the gamut of W3 positions, in case I had somehow graphed through a false gate. And by luck, that was it!
After 3.5 hours, open!! L36, 25, 82. Nothing exciting inside, just don't want to risk it
