How do you like the job? Do you make a decent living doing it?
I got a mailer today from Foley-Belsaw (correspondence course) and despite my initial disdain for the method of advertisement in general I must say I am intrigued. I gather from poking around on the Lock Picking 101 forums that the Foley-Belsaw program is adequate to help you prepare for and obtain an entry-level position, but I’d like to hear what someone who’s worked in the field has to say about the job itself.
So pour your hearts out, Doper locksmiths, into my eager brain, that it may feast on the bright arterial blood of your knowledge.
He hasn’t posted in 6 months, but Osip is a locksmith. I never joined ALOA or became accredited as a CML, but I worked for an international banking equipment manufacturer and learned much about vaults, safes, safe deposit locks, and security systems.
It is a good field if you like mental challenges, as it is constantly evolving. Some of the technology is the same as it was 100 years ago, and much of it is still around. Auto opening methods change with new models and more theft resistant designs. If you are interested in the electronic side of security, some mechanical locks incorporate biometrics, and there are various access control systems from single door to corporate complex size.
Hey, if nothing else, I can say that I was paid to break into a bank vault.
Something like that would pique my interest too, I think that would be a cool job to do. Frustrating at times, but it’s like getting paid to solve puzzles.
Plus if you were ever in a horror movie and someone tried a door and it was locked and screamed “It’s locked!! What are we going to do?!?!” You’d be all non-chalant with your lock picks like “Don’t worry baby, I’m a locksmith.”
So there you go, being a locksmith can get you some action. Good times.
When I worked for the US Dept. of State, part of our job was installing locking devices on doors and safes. These ranged from a pretty simple Yale deadbolt to more complicated items with electronic gee-whiz stuff. The other part was defeating said locks to gain entry, which was much more fun. It was interesting to learn and to execute, but as a living I would think it might become somewhat tedious and repetitive. Maybe if you combined locksmithing with intrusion detection. . .
my favorite locksmith story (and I believe it is true) is “bouncing” a vault door. A locksmith friend of mine sells and maintains stand-alone safes. Think gun safes as that is most of his business. He was called to a home where a large safe just wouldn’t open. The husband had tried the night before and couldn’t get the door open. He told his wife to cal the locksmith that day and went to work. So the locksmith shows up, listens to the story, gets out a large rubber mallet, gives the door a solid wack and the door pops open. He says it is a surprisingly common event. The combination had been successful, but the metal pins hadn’t aligned properly. Once bounce and the door pops open. He lubricated the door and was on his way. Didn’t tell me how much he made, but the expression on the wife’s face was priceless!
Well I’m encouraged by the lack of “don’t bother” responses. Do you forsee a substantial move away from traditional picking toward electronic and wireless systems beyond what’s already taken place? Do lock shops still handle “lost transponder” cases, for instance, or do they just tell you to take it to the dealer? I reckon what I’m asking is do you expect this to remain a viable career into the near future or is it going the way of television repair?
I love locksmithing. I have been a locksmith for 20 years. I am very mechanical in nature, so locksmithing is right up my alley. A Foley-Belsaw course is much like any other correspondence course, you get what you put into it. Practice and more practice is going to make you better. Having a curious nature and love of puzzles is a big plus.
I prefer now to work mainly on commercial and residential locksmithing and do less safe and automotive work. While, at first glance, it might seem to be a boring job, it is anything but! I meet different people everyday, while some are jerks many are nice people. With the variety of locks I deal with different things each day. Today I anchored a safe to a concrete floor at a local resturant (dirty messy crappy job, but the people made an unpleasant job bearable) Rekeyed a house for the new director of the Forensic Science Lab here in town. (I met him when I was called out the the Lab to do work two weeks ago.) I repaired a door latch on a glass aluminum door, and unlocked a car.
I stay busy, and make a reasonable amount of money, enough to pay bills, safe a few bucks and fun a few hobbies.
My favorite jobs involve very old locks. There is something amazing about the craftsmanship of a safe lock from the 1900’s I find great solace in.
Starting out you will have many bumps in the road, in time you will learn, is it better to replace a lock or repair it, what quirks each type of lock has and the best way to repair them. Just remember someone made the lock and installed the lock, with the right parts and patience nothing is impossible to fix (granted, many times it is quicker and easier to just replace locks.)
Any other question about the industry feel free to ask, I by no means know everything, but have been around enough to fake a good enough answer smile
Ha! I did this about 3 weeks ago on a GSA container. On modern safes (key change mechanical such as LaGard and Sargent Greenleaf) sometimes the wheels are dialed and are off just a slight bit, vibrating the lock, most times by smacking it with a deadblow hammer or rubber mallet, shakes the lever into place. On a Mosler hand change (still found on quiet a few Safes) The wheels are mounted on the back cover plate. If the screws get loose the cover starts to pull away from the lock body and will set off the relock trigger (a security feature to prevent someone punching the dial) Hitting the safe and turning the wheel at the same time will vibrate the trigger in long enough to allow the bolt to engage and work.
A history note: Older safes originally had solid brass wheels with a U shaped notch called a gate where when alligned correctly allowed the fence to drop and then pull the bolt back. It was discovered that placing a vibrating device (such as a modern day electric toothbrush) on the dial would vibrate the wheels. The heavy part of the wheel of course will rotate to the bottom. If the fence was at the top of the safe, Lo and Behold! safe is open. Some safes who had their fences mounted on the side would be tipped over on their side then vibrated open.
To correct this, they did many things, The fence was moved off center, there were additional holes were drilled thru the brass wheels to rebalance the wheel.)
S&G in the early 50’s tried a serrated brass wheel, which actually made things worse, and is a rare find these days.
Now that I have babbled a bit, if your still with me I shall share a personal story which your post reminded me of.
I worked for a company that required someone to be on call after hours. One night around 1 or 2am, The police called me out to a potential murder scene to open a gun safe. Not the kind of call I care to run, I hate spending an hour or two opening a safe, when I could be asleep. Once on sight, the simple gun safe is actually a jeweler safe from Europe standing 6 feet tall and one very bad mother fucker. This is the kind of bastard that requires drilling thru the side of the door using a very long 90 degree scope to view the wheels to… anyways the worse bitch in the world to deal with, expecially when there is a dead guy in the next room and it is 2 am.
I get to eh safe and notice the dial is not moving. Someone had locked the dial with a key. I picked it open (dial locks are usually very easy to pick) then turned the wheel and clunk the safe is open. The idiot had day locked the dial, which is dialing the safe open and just before turning the dial to retract the bolt, you turn a key and lock the dial. This is a system once used in many grocery stores to gain quick access to a safe for making change.
A beast of a safe, yet locked with a fricking 4 wafer lock.
That is like having a heavy steel door with multiple locks to keep your home safe, then putting a plastic dog door in.
It was determined that the man had shot himself, at the time they suspected robbery gone bad, since he was known to have a very expensive gun collection.
It ended up being just a suicide.
The locksmith industry is doing what it always does, changing learning and adapting to modern Tech as it comes out. The Company I work for has invested the time and equipment to be able to duplicate and program transponder keys and remotes.
Most smaller locksmith shops are specializing towards different tech instead of trying to be a do all WunderLockmiff. My shop specializes in Automotive, Another company in town has found a niche in electronic locking systems such as access control, CCTV and alarm systems, and another does most of his work out on the Military base.
I do not see the mechanical lock going the way of the Dodo anytime soon, the call to work on them will lessen, but there are more than enough connected trends to learn and pick up to stay current and relevant in todays buisness market.
In the residential market, there will always be the bottom feeders-the folks who want a $5 Kwikset Tylo, the folks who want something better without breaking the bank (good market for Schlage A series), and finally the design conscious homeowner who picks out a nice Baldwin full mortise lockset.
Access control systems are becoming more popular for many reasons. In an ordinary business setting, access doubles as a timecard, and in a facility with multiple access levels, authorizing Sam to get into new areas commensurate with his promotion is done from a PC terminal. Conversely, when you determine that Sam has been robbing you blind, the facility doesn’t need a hard rekey to keep him out and don’t recover his access credential.
I like being able to build a modular access, burglary, and/or UL commercial fire system from the same mainframe and offer the customer darn near any feature they can think of.
Remember, even in the multi-million dollar facility, the janitor still keeps a padlock on a cabinet so people don’t steal toilet paper, so the basics will never go out of vogue.
