Andrew Lentvorski wrote:
Ralph Shumaker wrote:
The thing is that they have hardened steel pins in the right places
(the wrong places for the locksmith). Because they are hardened
steel, you have to use very brittle carbide bits. Because they are
pins, you are trying to begin a hole on a rounded surface. If you
happen to be lucky, you will hit dead center and have a decent chance
of going through (eventually). But often, you won't hit dead center,
and the round surface of the hardened steel pin will send your bit on
a detour, a detour you don't want, a detour that will probably break
your bit, which puts a new hardened steel oddly shaped object in your
way, making it that much more difficult still.
I don't necessarily buy this. I probably would never drill a lock
with a carbide bit. Personally, I'm at the stage where I just don't
really use carbide bits very often, anymore. High speed steel works
for 90% of what I need; diamond bits work for the other 10%. Carbide
has such a narrow range of applicability anymore that you have to have
a very specialized application to make it worthwhile.
I don't mess with Medeco. I don't have carbide or diamond bits. So I
don't know if they use carbide or diamond bit. But I do know that it's
one of the two. My apologies if I referenced the wrong one. IIRC,
locksmiths commonly use carbide bits when drilling a hardened safe.
In addition, I'm not sure I would "drill" a lock anymore. Why not use
something like a plasma cutter? They aren't that expensive; about 5x
a good drill that would work for drilling a lock.
I've only been asked to open 2 Medeco locks in the 6 years or so that
I've been doing this work, so probably not a good return on investment
at this point. But wouldn't a plasma cutter go all the way through to
the other side of the door (where there is no one standing by with a
fire extinguisher)? And it's not just a matter of destroying the lock.
The lock must be defeated enough to be able to operate the bolt holding
the door shut. If you damage the bolt mechanism, you may have even more
work to do. But once you retract the bolt, then you're done with entry
(unless there's more than one). Then, there is replacement. So you
don't want to damage the door if you can help it. So the trick is to
defeat the lock (which has countermeasures to interfere) without
damaging the bolt mechanism or the door. Can this be done with a plasma
cutter?
Schlage Primus is one
that is close to pick proof as well as a few from Assa and others.
The guy who developed Schlage Primus is the same guy who invented
the Medeco design from what I've heard.
Myself, I figure the average methhead in my neighborhood is just
going to hop the fence to my backyard and pop a window. I really
should get some shatterguard to put on them.
Medeco is an Assa company, apparently.
Yeah, I think they got bought by Assa now that I think about it.
The Medeco locks are far from pickproof. However, they require a cut
above in skillset. J. Random Schmuckwad is unlikely to have the
experience with the lock to acquire the skills to pick the lock.
I don't know where you are getting "far from pickproof". Among
locksmiths, Medeco is virtually a synonym for pickproof. And I would
like to see someone demonstrate that they can pick a Medeco. I know of
one guy who was able to do it, but it was only because the lock was
*very* cross-keyed (a locksmith term for a technique that reduces the
security of a lock in order to make it work with a large number of keys,
basically by adding a lot of extra (real) sheer lines or leaving a pin
chamber completely empty or both).
In addition, they require much more sophisticated machinery to create
duplicates since they rely on angled keys to raise the pins as well as
just basic height.
Close. The angles are not to raise the pins but to turn them to the
correct angle. And it's not the keys that are angled but the cut
itself. HEAD \ | | / \ / (HEAD-to-tail as you look down on the
cuts from above) And the machine that produces duplicates is not
actually copying one key to another. It actually produces a new
original. No Medeco key is a copy. They are all originals cut directly
from code on a code cutting machine. If there is a duplicator capable
of copying a Medeco key, I am unaware of it.
All in all, though, it looks like a very nice lock.
Agreed. If I wanted to guard against someone with picking skills, I
would probably equip my doors with them.
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