Car Security
Posted by admin in Home Security on January 21, 2010
Stopping Crime on Your Vehicle
Locking wheel nuts can help keep your alloys safe
Deadlocks
Deadlocks stop the door from opening, even if a thief breaks the window to use the interior handle. ‘One- touch’ deadlocks are set whenever you lock the car.
Marked parts
Have the glazing etched with the vehicle identification number (Vin). Better still, go for a traceability scheme where the glass and other parts are marked and recorded on a secure database. Future buyers can then cross-check the car’s ID with the database.
Secure storage
Genuinely secure, lockable cabin storage is still rare, meaning you have to remove all valuables when you leave the car – a real nuisance if you’re only going for a quick loo break.
Secure stereos
Becoming the norm on new cars, but check that the stereo is Pin-coded, vehicle-specific (won’t work in another car), or multi-part (display is separate from main audio unit).
Locking wheel nuts
These need to be better than the two-pin socket-secured parts some car makers supply. Go for locking wheel nuts with a laser-cut groove to make it harder for thieves to pinch your alloy wheels.
Laminated side-glass
This ’security glass’ isn’t impregnable, but it takes much more time and energy to break than standard toughened glass. The extra disturbance also increases the chances of a thief getting caught in the act.
Tracking devices
Tracking devices can be invaluable if a car is stolen, but remember they usually need an annual subscription – you won’t have any protection if this isn’t paid.
Physical locks
If you have a driveway, consider a lockable bollard. If not, a wheel clamp can make life more difficult for thieves. Always lock car doors and boot, and close windows (even when paying for petrol or other quick activities). Take your keys with you.
If your car doesn’t have an electronic immobilizer, consider using a strong steering-wheel lock to help safeguard your car overnight.
American Locksmith
Posted by admin in About Locksmiths on January 20, 2010
from the Collections at Historic Bethlehem [PA]
| May 19, 1765 | Chars. Folck for mending 2 rifles | £ – 4.9 –* |
| June 30, 1756 | Sebastian Graf for a Lock & iron and iron Bands about a chest for his daughter | £ –.8. – |
| Jan. 31, 1757 | Oil Mill for mending a shovel | £ –.1. – |
| Feb. 24, 1757 | For lock and hinges on a box | £– .8.– |
| March 22, 1757 | For Tin work & 6 screws on the Coffin | £1.10.– |
| March 31, 1757 | For saddle mountings | £ –.4.– |
| May 31, 1757 | Dyer for an Iron Ring on a Kettle | £ –.1.6 |
| July 30, 1757 | Potter for incompasing with Brass and graving out a mould for stoves | £ –.4. – |
| May 31, 1758 | Joyner for Locks, Hinges, Screws &c. | £ –.16.6 |
| Sept. 18, 1758 | John Lischer Dr. to Locksmith for stocking & repairing a Rifle | £1.5. – |
| May 31, 1759 | For mending a Coffee mill | £ –.1.6 |
| July 31, 1760 | Pewterer for mending a Spoon mould | £ –.2. – |
| Aug. 30, 1760 | For mending a saw | £ –.2. – |
| Oct. 30, 1760 | Sope Boiler for an Iron Ladle | £ –.5. – |
| July 31, 1761 | Tanner for mending a Chafing dish | £ –.2. – |
| *prices are given in pounds (£), shillings (s), and pence (d) in the form £.s.d | ||
The ingenuity of the locksmith was challenged in the arranging of the impediments, or wards, within the lock case. These circular fins, attached to one or two plates of the lock, were placed concentrically with the keyhole and created the need for the various slots, called steps, in the bit of the key. Their value from a practical point of view was greatly overrated, for a clever “lock-picker” could take a key with a blank bit, cover the bit with wax, and quickly get the impression of the wards on the key. With the imprint of the wards on the bit, he could quickly file or saw them and open the lock. It was also possible to fabricate a key with a narrow bit with a wide end, which would miss all of the wards, but still throw the lockbolt in the usual manner. These keys were usually long and thin and were called “skeleton” keys.Tubular Lock Picks
Posted by admin in Locksmith Supplies on January 15, 2010
Tubular lock picks are designed to give picking aficionados and professionals a chance to pick complex tubular locks. Traditional methods of lock picking rarely work effectively on these kinds of locks. To those who are comfortable picking standard locks, tubular locks can present a bit of a challenge. If you come upon a tubular lock without adequate equipment at your side, you could find yourself spending a lot of time with that particular lock.
A standard tubular lock pick will only contain seven or eight pins. The name comes from their cylindrical shape, which matches that of the locks that they pick. Tubular lock picks have been used since the 1930s to pick locks on most coin-operated vending machines, like laundry machines, cigarette machines, jukeboxes, and pinball machines.
Using Tubular Lock Picks
Tubular pin tumbler locks are generally considered to be safer and more pick-resistant than standard pin-tumbler locks. Tubular locks are found on many vending machines such as coin-operated washers and dryers, bicycle locks, and are even used in many retail stores to lock jewelry showcases.
Tubular lock picks are made to compromise the 7 or 8 pins present in a given tubular lock. Tubular lock picks are specialized tools and require more skill to use than “standard” lock picks. Take a look at our selection of 7 and 8 pin tubular picks, and specialty tubular picks.
Tubular picks are inserted into the lock and turned clockwise with light to medium tension. As the tool is (gently) pushed into the lock, each of the picks is slowly forced down until they stop, binding the driver pins behind the shear line of the lock. When the final pick is pushed down, you’ve aligned the pin segments with the shearline allowing the lock to open. Voila! With patience and practice you’ll be able to open a tubular lock very quickly.
Here at LockPickShop, we offer many different kinds of picks for use with just about any kind of lock. Our picks are made from high quality, US made stainless steel for long-lasting performance. We offer picks in many different sizes, many compatible with foreign-made locks, and we market these quality tools at low prices. Many professionals and hobbyists won’t shop anywhere else once they start dealing with us.
If you are looking to practice the art of lock picking, we also carry a range of training materials at LockPickShop. Find out for yourself how fulfilling lock picking can be. For more information about our many lock-picking products, contact us. For immediate answers to your questions, take advantage of the ‘Live Chat’ option–this allows you to send an instant message and speak to one of our representatives live during business hours!
Senior Citizen’s Crime prevention
Posted by admin in Home Security on January 13, 2010
Of all the age groups senoir citizens ususally have a lower crime rate with the exception of purse snatching, home repairs, frauds and scams. Crimes of violence are most feared by older people because these types of crimes get so much press attention. These types of are least likely to happen to a senior citizen. Most murders and assaults are usually committed by a relative, friend not by a stranger. This is not to say not to be wary of strangers but to also be aware of your surroundings with all people at all times. A rape of a woman over 65 rarely happens. Always walk and show confidence in a relaxed manner. Make breif eye contact with approaching strangers. No matter how a senior citizen is victimized the crime has a greater effect emotionally and financially. Crimes to older people can be very devastating. We all have heard the expression, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.” Be sure your home has good locks, and use them. One thing you might do is replace the striker plate screws with longer 31/2″ screws. They will be long enough to penetrate into the door jam not just the door molding. Know your neighbors and have some idea of their family routine. If you see something out of the ordinary call your local law enforcement. They would rather do that than show up on a crime scene. Form neighborhood watch group in your area. If you start experiencing a higher crime rate start walking in groups in your area. Some neighborhood groups patrol in cars and have citizens band radios. Post signs in the area informing would be criminals of the watch group. Let your neighborhood know your home is a safe haven for a child and they can go to it in case of an emergency. Install a “wide angle” 
peep hole at a level that will be comfortable for your height. Don’t let anyone into your home unless they adequately show proper indentification. Even then confirm the person with the company they represent. If you have any suspicions don’t let them in. Tell them you will call for help if they need it and call the police of this contact. Trim all shrubbery to waist level. Don’t have any shrubbery that will block windows or provide a place where an attacker my hide. When you return home before unlocking you car doors, look around you and be sure there in no one is present or have followed you home. Some attacks have ocurred while a person was getting out of their car or walking to get into their home. If possible have the outside light on a timer if you will be coming home after dark. It’s not good to have it on during the day. It will be a clear beacon that might let a criminal know you are not there but will be coming home after dark.
Evil Locksmiths in the UK
Posted by admin in About Locksmiths on January 12, 2010
Please someone tell me that I’m not the only victim of locksmiths from hell.
First let me admit that I’m to blame for starting this disaster. My only defense for doing something as stupid as locking myself out of my house is that I’ve just moved and hadn’t yet worked out the new front door.
But what followed definitely wasn’t my fault.
But only one of three texts had the local code – and that number was unobtainable.
That left me with two 0800 numbers, which is what I wanted to avoid, but what was I to do? For all I knew, there was only one local locksmith, and he’d closed down.
I called one of the 0800 numbers and got UK locksmiths (www.uklocksmiths.net and www.unitedkingdomlocksmiths.com). So I asked the obvious questions: how much and how long.
The answers were £55, which seemed reasonable, and “he’ll be there very, very soon”, which sounded great.
Both answers proved hopelessly wide of the mark.
That first phone call of mine was made about 9am.
At 10.45 I was told: “He’s ten minutes away.”
At 11.20: “He’s just around the corner.”
The locksmith must have been going backwards, because at 11.45 he was “30-35 minutes away”.
Perhaps I should have told them to get lost and have tried the other 0800 number. But most people, I expect, use a locksmith once in a blue moon and for all I knew this kind of delay was normal.
After three and a half hours he finally arrived.
Only then was I told the full cost of the service.
£55 was just the call-out fee. Drilling the lock and replacing it, plus VAT, would bring the total bill to £293.
Yes, £293.
I don’t know why I didn’t ask him politely to leave. Sticking a brick through a window and then calling a glazier would surely have been cheaper. Perhaps I was suffering from borderline hypothermia (it really was a very cold morning).
Or maybe, like so many people who’ve locked themselves out of their own house, the desperation to get back inside over-rode my normal critical faculties.
The first thing I did when I got inside and the feeling returned to my frozen fingers was to flick through Yellow Pages. It was full of locksmiths whose phone numbers began with the local code.
Why didn’t 118118 give me any of them?
How To Use a Slim Jim
Posted by admin in Locksmith Guides on January 8, 2010
Learning how to use a slim jim can be a very valuable experience when you find yourself locked out of your car. Slim jims are great products for getting out of such jams, as they can be used to open car doors without the use of keys. To use a slim jim correctly, however, one must put in the necessary hours to study and practice the procedure for opening a car door with one of these devices.
The process of learning how to use a slim jim can be a tricky procedure. Slim jims look like strips of metal, one end of which is molded into an odd-looking shape. It is certainly not apparent at first glance how these devices open doors. One must figure out not only how these devices work, but how car door locks work in order to use a slim jim.
Learning how to use a slim jim starts with an understanding of car door locks. Most car door locks function by means of a control arm. The control arm activates when the car key is turned in the lock, but can also be bypassed in order to open the door without a key. The slim jim’s notched end is used to access this control arm via the car window.
Courtesy of: Lock Pick Shop
Lockout Tools
Posted by admin in Locksmith Supplies on January 6, 2010
se a Japanese tool for car lockouts primarily on Japanese cars with thumb locks, and on some Chryslers; learn how to from our expert locksmith in this free auto emergency locksmith-training video.
Being a Certified Locksmith
Posted by admin in Funny Locksmith Stories on January 4, 2010
Simple Entry
Locksmiths get people in when they are locked out. Hopefully the person hiring the locksmith belongs in the place they hired the locksmith to break into, but it is not always the case. My first choice was to see a picture ID identifying the person and matching the address of the property. However, for many legitimate reasons ID may not be available. For example, it may be locked inside the place. Or, they might have just moved to that location and not had their ID changed yet to match their address. In this case I would use their ID to verify their name, and then tell the person that once I had gotten them in they would produce a piece of mail, preferably a utility bill addressed to them at the address in question, or perhaps a lease. I let them know in advance that if they could not produce evidence that they belonged in the place I would call the police.
Even that didn’t work every time. I picked a lock for one young man who promptly produced mail with his name on it corroborated by his identification once inside. Then his girlfriend showed up and was angry because she had kicked him out the week before. She threatened to call the police and implied that I was to blame, too.
“I think you should call the police,” I said. “But as far as I’m concerned, you might as well arrest one of my screwdrivers.”
When she asked me what I meant, I said, “I’m just your boyfriend’s tool, here. He produced satisfactory identification and I let him in. If he does not belong here you should call the police. I will be happy to wait here for them to come.”
She said that that would not be necessary. I gave her a business card, the boyfriend paid me and I left. In a few days she called me back and had me change her locks.
Lockouts are not a very good business. They are not conveniently scheduled, but happen at completely random times. The person who is locked out will sometimes call several locksmiths and hire the first one who shows up, leaving the others to waste their time. Locksmiths do not like this. More than once I arrived at a lockout to find two different competitors’ trucks already there, and we agreed that we would all leave and leave the inconsiderate lockout victim stranded. While we were wasting our time on behalf of this lockout, we could have been doing our scheduled work instead and making real money.
There are a few disreputable locksmiths who specialize in lockouts. A person who is locked out after hours can expect to pay one of these sharks several hundred dollars to get them back in, and may end up with ruined hardware and a damaged door besides. Consumers need to be careful whom they hire. The police may have someone to recommend. Otherwise a neighborhood locksmith from a good neighborhood might be a wise choice. Unfortunately when you are locked out you are in many ways at the mercy of fate and the locksmith.
A locksmith might be disreputable if:
- Their company vehicle is a pink Cadillac
- They arrive dressed in formal attire
- Their primary tool for gaining entry is a large pair of pliers
So have a good look at the company truck, the locksmith, and the locksmith’s tools.
Perhaps you can go to a friend’s house and see if there are any locksmith reviews online for your town, or ask your landlord, your neighbors or your friends to see if they can recommend a reputable locksmith.
Lockout Situations
Lockouts range from mundane to disturbing. Usually I was sent by a landlord or management company to break into an abandoned property and change the locks. Ho hum. But the occasional scantily clad college girl was always a favorite.
“I’m not wearing any underwear. How about we split the cost?”
I found it difficult to argue with a woman who was not wearing any underwear. I would still require her to produce identification once inside her home. People would often be annoyed when I required this from such an obviously honest person, but as they found their ID it usually dawned on them that this was a good thing. For one thing, it proved that I was reputable. After you watch someone break into your home with little if any damage or trouble, it’s nice to know they are a reputable person.
On more than one occasion I was hired by neighbors or a landlord to gain entry to the residence of a person of advanced years who had not been seen for a period of time. Not knowing what one may find on the other side of a door makes it difficult to concentrate. The sight of a dead body stays with you a long time.
Range of Difficulty
Lockouts vary greatly in difficulty, though most are not difficult. That is why some disreputable locksmiths hire unskilled help to do them. Most of the time people are locked out by a key-in-lever or key-in-knob lock as shown at right. Often I would get through a lock like this using a technique called ’shimming’, which can take a matter of seconds. If the lock is properly installed, this method is not usually usable, but since most of these locks are installed by contractors who choose not to read the directions or use an installation template, many of these locks are not properly installed and can be quickly opened by this method. If the customer was present while I shimmed their lock open in five seconds, they invariably wanted a discount but I did not give it to them because, as I explained to them, they were not paying for my time, they me for the fact that I knew how to do this without hurting their lock and they didn’t.
Some of the indigents and college kids hired by less reputable locksmiths use an adjustable pliers to simply wrench this kind of lock off the door. Then they sell the victim a new doorknob lock (worth maybe $30 at Home Depot) for several hundred dollars. If you are locked out and your locksmith pulls out a big pair of pliers, beware.
If the lock was properly installed and I could not shim it, I tried to pick it. I was a fair but not expert lock picker. I averaged around seventy percent with standard locks. This was a quick and easy entry, usually accomplished in less than ten minutes, but people were happy to pay for it because it seemed so magically skillful, and of course it was fun for me. If I could not pick the lock due to lack of skill or because the lock was pick resistant, I would use a power tool to destroy the cylinder. I kept a variety of replacement cylinders in my truck in order to replace those I was forced to destroy.
Lockouts that occurred because of lock malfunction could be either the easiest or the most difficult. When people told me their key would not turn, I asked, “Well, did you lubricate it?” Then I would sometimes lose a job when the person chose to go down to the hardware store and buy some silicone spray or other lock lubricant, or after hours to a convenience store to buy some lightweight general purpose lubricant, but other times the person would not be able to do this – take the case of the college girl with no underwear – and I would have to come out and spritz the lock for them. I rarely discounted for these service calls because I had given them fair warning and an option to avoid the expense.
At the opposite end of the difficulty spectrum there are certain deadbolts and New York police locks that malfunction or wear out in a certain way that they cannot be opened by key from the outside. In these cases it is useless to pick or otherwise attack the cylinder because the customer actually has the key, but although it still turns fine, it will not operate the lock. Such lockouts may require more than an hour of hard work removing the cylinder with power and hand tools without harming the door, so that the lock itself can be destroyed. Afterwards, of course, the entire lock must be replaced.
Unique Situations
I had a number of repeat lockout customers. Some people just lock themselves out all the time. I did what I could for them. I started a service in which I stored their keys for them for a fee of ten dollars and charged them the regular key duplication price for making them a set of keys during regular business hours or a reduced overtime service rate for driving into the city to make them a set of keys after hours.
One customer near my shop locked himself out on his roof deck as Hurricane Gloria was approaching. He lived in one of the 19th century townhouses down in Charles River Circle. His neighbors were James Taylor and the president of the Boston Company. Since he eschewed my key storage service, I had to ask a neighbor to let me in through their house and out through their roof door. Once on the roof, I crossed to his roof and was able to pick the lock as the storm clouds raced overhead and the darkening edge of the storm drew closer.
Divorce lockouts were a challenge. The soon-to-be ex-wife would call and say she was locked out, so I would go get her in. Then, of course, she would have me change the locks. Then the husband would call with the same request, but I refused to work both sides like that. I referred him to a competitor.
One divorce lockout defeated me. It turned out the husband had nailed the doors shut from the inside and rappelled down the side of the building from a fourth story window. I told the poor woman to call a contractor, because it was likely all her doors would have to be replaced.
Late one night I got a call. I had a system in which the customer could leave a message on my machine and then press a number to page me. The guy’s voice on the voice mail said this:
“You gotta come. You gotta come quick. My girlfriend is handcuffed to the bed and her parents are comin’ home any second!”
And as the father of two daughters I said to the guy, telepathically as I hung up the phone:
“Pal, you are gonna get exactly what you deserve.”
Locksmith Opens a Car
Posted by admin in About Locksmiths on January 1, 2010
Watch this locksmith open a car
Locksmith Supplies
Posted by admin in Locksmith Supplies on December 29, 2009
There are a number of companies that you can get locksmith supplies from. You will be able to get a variety of supplies including:
Locksmith Supply Companies
- Assured Lock & Tool Supply
- Locks Picks
- CLK Supplies
- World Locksmith
- McDonald Dash
- LA Locksmith Supply
- Wilco Supply
- Taylor Security & Lock
- The Lock Pick Shop
Locksmiths Locally
