New and Just Cracked My La Gard 3330
Posted: Sun Apr 23, 2017 3:05 pm
Hey All,
I am new to the forum and have been browsing around and researching things. I have picked locks a bit in the past but was never amazing at it. I have always wanted to learn to crack safes though. My family has a Sentry 1250 direct entry fence safe which is about twenty years old. I decided to start on that and using a long stick taped to the dial and indicating on a ruler taped to a box, I was able to get into this one in about 45 minutes. I realize this lock is very easy to manipulate and so wanted something more difficult like a Group 2 lock. A local store tossed their ATM machine when it broke and after speaking to them about it, my father acquired the safe for me. It took me three tries to crack the La Gard 3330 lock inside the safe. The first two times, after about 5 or 6 hours or meaningless data, I asked for the combination and reviewed my graphs, looking for helpful info. My contact points were all over the place and nowhere near as clear as I expected them to be. I believe this is partially due to the shape of the La Gard wheels but also partially due to my inability to accurately find the right contact point. After a lot of experimentation, I came to the conclusion that this point is most easily found rotating the dial right past the contact point and listening and feeling for the fence drop against the wheel pack. After doing a lot of research on this site, particularly OldFast's shadowing trick of indicating ten numbers at a time to graph the general shape of the wheels, today, after about 4 hours and 6 graphs, I managed to open the safe! I am pretty excited and am hooked! My father also told me that if I could get into it he would split the cost of my next lock, so what should I get? Based on my readings, it sounds that the S&G locks are generally easier than the La Gard, so I wonder if I would be better off looking for something like a Mosler 302 to work on.
tarboxb
I am new to the forum and have been browsing around and researching things. I have picked locks a bit in the past but was never amazing at it. I have always wanted to learn to crack safes though. My family has a Sentry 1250 direct entry fence safe which is about twenty years old. I decided to start on that and using a long stick taped to the dial and indicating on a ruler taped to a box, I was able to get into this one in about 45 minutes. I realize this lock is very easy to manipulate and so wanted something more difficult like a Group 2 lock. A local store tossed their ATM machine when it broke and after speaking to them about it, my father acquired the safe for me. It took me three tries to crack the La Gard 3330 lock inside the safe. The first two times, after about 5 or 6 hours or meaningless data, I asked for the combination and reviewed my graphs, looking for helpful info. My contact points were all over the place and nowhere near as clear as I expected them to be. I believe this is partially due to the shape of the La Gard wheels but also partially due to my inability to accurately find the right contact point. After a lot of experimentation, I came to the conclusion that this point is most easily found rotating the dial right past the contact point and listening and feeling for the fence drop against the wheel pack. After doing a lot of research on this site, particularly OldFast's shadowing trick of indicating ten numbers at a time to graph the general shape of the wheels, today, after about 4 hours and 6 graphs, I managed to open the safe! I am pretty excited and am hooked! My father also told me that if I could get into it he would split the cost of my next lock, so what should I get? Based on my readings, it sounds that the S&G locks are generally easier than the La Gard, so I wonder if I would be better off looking for something like a Mosler 302 to work on.
tarboxb