Can you be a qualified Carpenter aswell as a Locksmith?

[CarlC]

The college i go to does a locksmith course for approximately £250, and i`m thinking of giving that ago aswell as Carpentry.
What do ya all think?

 

[tiler99]

Always good to have more than one iron in the fire so to speak. i wish i had another trade at times.

 

[mel]

hi carl
you will be hard pressed to find a college that actually runs a course that would be nationally recognised
last december i was on a site managers saftey course at CITB and a fella on the same course had been ask to write a complete NVQ certificate course

which he did, unpaid

the government never took up on it
the entire course sits at his house , on a shelf, collecting dust.

cant help you any further . as i cant remember his name

i would love to do a locksmith course . it is somewhat of a mystery why an nvq course has never been introduced

 

[CarlC]

kk thnx.

 

[jasonB]

At £250 I would imagine the coarse will only tell you the best place to drill out a lock and how to patch up a door which is what most emergency locksmiths want to do. :x

A proper locksmith will do all he can to open the lock without resorting to damaging the lock/door and it takes a long time to learn.

Jason

 

[CraftNav]

Hi Carl

(finally a post I am qualified to answer )

I had my own locksmith company for 17 years. At the end I was employing six staff had a 1500 square foot key cutting shop and had three vans on the road, and I trained all but one of the staff.

A locksmith is a cross breed of carpenter, engineer, welder, electrician and Magician :lol: AKA 'jack of all trades'

You don't need to go on a course to be a locksmith REPEAT You don't need to go on a course to be a locksmith

It depends on what areas of locksmithing you want to get into and where you think the money is.

Lock fitting - Basic carpentry skills and tools (basic money ) practice by screwing long length of 4 x 2 to the side of a bench (vertically) and fitting a variety of lock to it (repeat & repeat & repeat)

Lock opening - Buy yourself various locks (new or second hand), sit down at the kitchen table with paper & pen and strip the lock down and put it back together (repeatedly), work out what is happening, make notes and measurements, you have to be able to look threw a keyhole and 'visualize' the lock movements. Read everything on the internet about lock picking (there is loads) don't expect success overnight (it took me 6 months to perfect, practicing every night :shock: ) you will need a basic tool kit of specialist tools (no more than £200) and a bag full of homemade tools made from old hacksaw blades and bent wire For me this was where the money was and was the most fun 8)

Vehicle opening - go to a scrap yard (vehicle breakers) with a digital camera, ask the owner nicely (or pay him a tenner). take off the door panels of as many cars as you can and photograph the lock mechanism, work out what is happening, bend up bits of wire to 'bypass the mechanism', practice, practice (you get the picture) Good money but only caution is that the modern cars are getting VERY hard to open 'nicely' :?

Safe opening - The magic art & my favorite but I am not going to discuss this one on a forum :twisted:

Key cutting - 'big-ish' investment in machines and blanks but a very healthy profit margin 8)

I got into locksmithing at about 20 years old (with no kids and a good woman behind me) and loved it, I work non stop, I used to offer 7 days a week 24 hr call out, yes I had call outs on Christmas day (I even got a call out on my wedding day... and I went :twisted: ). I got to a stage were I had become financially stable and sold the company to the employees.

To be a good locksmith you have to be inquisitive obsessive and love a challenge (if they said it is un-pickable I want to pick it !)

If you want any more info PM me

john

 

[mel]

carl
it will probably be best to find out what you will learn before parting with your hard earnt cash
regards
mel

i may have some old 3/5 cylinder locks here , and a couple of euro locks
if you would like them to have a practice on . let me know

 

[Steve Maskery]

Johnny

What an interesting story! I particularly like the Magician analogy.
In ye olden days, and to some extent even now, the best magicians were the scientists and technologists of their time. Robert-Houdin, for example ("The Father of Modern Magic") was optician, engineer, locksmith, clockmaker. John Neveille Maskelyne invented the "penny in the slot" loo lock. And magicians such as Houdini used their lock knowledge to perform the most amazing escapes, a practice that is still going on today.

I know just enough about lock-picking to be able to damage any lock beyond repair, but I do find it fascinating.

Cheers
Steve

 

[woodbloke]

John - great stuff. Do you know anything about the 'Bramah' ( I think that's the correct name) lock made in the Victorian era and so fiendishly difficult to pick and open that it's never been done. It was made by some genius of a locksmith and all records have disappeared tho' of course the lock still exists. I only ask as I saw a fascinating snippet on the box about it a while back which intrigued me - Rob

 

[Scrit]

I thought that the Bramah lock had been picked, but only once or twice? The lock was certainly picked by Alfred Charles Hobbs (founder of Hobbs Safes) in 1851 - it still took him some 45 hours, spread over 16 days.

Scrit

 

[woodbloke]

Scrit - you may well be correct, 'cos I'm not sure at all, I just seen to remember them saying on the box that it hadn't been picked but thinking about it I do recollect them saying that someone had done it a long time ago
Edit - I think the programme was Adam Hart-Davies....'What the Victorians Did For Us', may be wrong tho' (memory like a goldfish ) - Rob

 

[tiler99]

The names Bramah and Chubb hardly needed further introduction for the readers of the News— Jeremiah Chubb of Portsmouth, England, and Joseph Bramah of London were the Empire's two most eminent lockmakers. Chubb had gained fame in 1818 for the "Detector" lock that he devised with his brother and partner, Charles, which incorporated an ingenious spring device that grabbed any tumbler lifted too high (as by a false key or lockpicker's implement) and held it in place, simultaneously rendering the lock inoperable and preserving evidence of tampering. Meanwhile, Bramah, a successful engineer who in 1778 had patented the first flush toilet— featuring the float and valve system still used today— had turned his attention to lockmaking and with his assistant Henry Maudslay (a great engineer in his own right, whose pioneering work with machine tools was invaluable to his mentor's work) devised an altogether different sort of device. It was circular, and featured a small tubular key whose end was incised with a series of longitudinal slots that, when inserted into the lock, depressed a configuration of slides to a set correct depth to release the bolt. The eighteen-slider lock Bramah patented in 1787 was calculated to have more than 470 million possible permutations and was widely considered unpickable. Indeed, in 1801, Bramah made a public challenge to advertise his handiwork's impregnability, placing in the window of his shop at 124 Piccadilly a barrel-shaped padlock version of his patent lock, made specially by Maudslay and bearing the legend: The Artist who can make an Instrument that will pick or Open this Lock, shall Receive 200 Guineas The Moment it is produced.

Bramah challenge lock from 1801. Courtesy Science and Society Picture Library.


As it happened, such an artist was now in their midst. Working to promote Newell's Parautoptic lock (so called because its design, which featured a kind of shutter around the keyhole, preventing inspection of the lock's interior by any would-be picker), Hobbs decided on a dramatic gesture, first boldly announcing one day to a group of scientific men gathered at the Crystal Palace that even the very finest British locks were eminently pickable— to prove his point, he produced one of Chubb's famous Detector locks and, in only a few minutes, picked it on the spot. As the story of Hobbs's conquest of the Chubb lock circulated, doubts were voiced by critics who were not present at the demonstration. Undeterred, the American issued a formal invitation to Messrs. Chubb, writing a letter on 21 July to inform the great lockmakers that he was to again pick one of their locks, this time in the presence of several important and impartial judges, including a former Secretary to the Board of Trade. A letter, issued the following day and signed by the eminences, made the results a matter of public record:

We the undersigned hereby certify that we attended, with the permission of Mr. Bell, of No. 34 Great George-street, Westminster, an invitation sent to us by A. C. Hobbs, of the City of New York, to witness an attempt to open a lock throwing three bolts and having six tumblers, affixed to the iron door of a strong-room or vault, built for the depository of valuable papers, and formerly occupied by the agents of the South-Eastern Railway; that we severally witnessed the operation, which Mr. Hobbs commenced at 35 minutes past 11 o'clock A.M., and opened the lock within 25 minutes. Mr. Hobbs having been requested to lock it again with his instruments, accomplished it in the short space of 7 minutes, without the slightest injury to the lock or door. We minutely examined the lock and door (having previously had the assurance of Mr. Bell that the keys had never been accessible to Mr. Hobbs, he having had permission to examine the keyhole only). We found a plate on the back of the door with the following inscription: "Chubb's New Patent (No. 261,461), St. Paul's Churchyard, London, Maker to Her Majesty."

Hobbs had used a series of specially-designed tools and small weights to undo what Chubb's advertisements called the "perfect security" of his lock in less than a half-hour, and the ease of his feat sent shockwaves through the British locksmithing community. No one from Chubb's firm had accepted Hobbs's invitation to attend the demonstration, but the British lockmaker eventually accepted Hobbs's success, announcing that his locks would in future be updated and improved to prevent the methods Hobbs employed. And even as Hobbs was picking Chubb's lock, he had already set his next and greatest test, the defeat of Bramah's famous challenge lock, in motion. A committee of learned men was organized to supervise the arrangements and the lock was removed from its half-century-long perch in the Piccadilly window and taken to an upstairs room at Bramah's shop (which was now operated by his sons as Bramah & Co., Joseph having died in 1814), where it was sealed within a kind of wooden box so that only the keyhole was accessible. The room was given over to Hobbs's exclusive use and the American was allowed thirty days to complete his task. Work began on 24 July and, after being suspended for several weeks during a procedural disagreement, resumed on 16 August. On 23 August, Hobbs called in the committee to announce he had broken the challenge lock, and in several demonstrations over the next few days, repeatedly picked and restored Maudslay and Bramah's device in the presence of witnesses. In all, it took him fifty-one hours, spread over sixteen days, to accomplish his goal.1

Bramah's patent lock, 1787. Courtesy Bramah Security Equipment.


After a great deal of disputation about the condition of the lock, the American's methods, and the precise terms of the challenge— much of it played out in the pages of daily newspapers like the Observer, which published both panicked letters from a banking community who had seen the vulnerabilities of their security publicly exposed and the rationalizations of the lockmakers trying to defend their now suspect products— a panel of arbitrators appointed to settle the affair finally ruled in favor of Hobbs. And so in early September, Bramah & Co. grudgingly paid the American £210 (the equivalent of 200 guineas). Yet the lock controversy had not yet quite played itself out. The week after Hobbs was paid, a certain Mr. Garbutt— a respected locksmith who had been responsible for the locks at the Crystal Palace cashier stations— announced that he would attempt to defeat the Newell Parautoptic lock, which like the Bramah had also been made available for public challenge at Crystal Palace.

The Newell lock was removed to a private home at No. 20 Knightsbridge, where it was secured within a wooden box like the one that had enclosed the Bramah lock the month before. At the end of the thirty days Garbutt had been allotted, he returned the lock, having failed to open it. (Trying to pick the Newell lock had by this point become something of a sport, as British engineers sought to restore some sense of national pride. Indeed in early 1852, following a presentation of a paper by Hobbs at the Royal Society of Arts, it was claimed by an audience member that the Parautoptic lock had in fact been picked by a London locksmith. The newspapers began circulating the rumor until Hobbs went public with the full story, eventually acknowledged by the locksmith who had supposedly defeated the Newell device, that he had in fact simply taken an impression of the key and copied it. This copy, wrote Hobbs in the Observer with not a little bit of sarcasm, was, not surprisingly, "found to lock and unlock the lock as readily as the original key.")

•••

By the spring of 1852, the lock controversy had finally begun to ebb. In due course, the Jury Reports of the Great Exhibition were issued. Functioning in effect as the final scorecards for the "honourable rivalry" that had played out in the various departments of the Exhibition, these reports were prepared by prominent judges; Berlioz, for example, wrote the assessment of the musical instrument competition. Much to everyone's surprise, the jury on locks declared itself "not prepared to offer an opinion ... on the comparative security afforded by the various locks" that had come before it. Of this opinion, a leading magazine of the day observed, "The jury seems to have consisted of the only persons in England who did not hear of the famous 'lock controversy' of last year; for one can hardly imagine that, if they had heard of a matter of so much consequence to the subject they were appointed to investigate, they would have altogether abstained from saying anything about it."

Yet by then all the rhetoric was of increasingly little consequence. The Bramah and Chubb companies continued to thrive in their businesses with newly improved technologies inspired by Hobbs's handiwork. Both firms are today still mainstays of the British security industry— Chubb is a multinational manufacturer of safes and surveillance devices, and Bramah, which still maintains a shop in central London, is primarily a maker of specialty locks for use in high-end furniture and residential design applications. Meanwhile, Hobbs took his prize money and instead of returning to New York and his bosses at Day & Newell, decided to stay in London, patenting his own lock, based on the design of the Parautoptic, and opening Hobbs & Co. at Cheapside in the heart of the City of London's banking district.

Hobbs remained in London for nearly a decade before returning to the US in 1860, where he worked as an engineer and designer for the Howe Sewing Machine Company and later at the Remington Arms Company. There is no record of Hobbs's involvement in lockmaking after his return. In any event, new talents had by then begun to emerge in the field, including Linus Yale, who as a young locksmith in upstate New York— far from the bright lights of the Great Exhibition— had picked the Day & Newell lock, it was said, using only a wooden stick. Hobbs's firm, which he sold but which retained his celebrated name, continued to operate for over ninety years at its original location in the City of London, and in 1954 was itself acquired— by the Chubb Group.

1 While the challenge lock itself had reportedly never been broken, Hobbs acknowledges in his accounts of the "lock controversy" that his was not in fact the first time someone had picked a Bramah lock. In 1817, an employee of the Bramah firm by the name of Russell apparently devised a means of picking his boss's locks and even took out advertisements touting his services to owners of Bramah locks who had lost their keys. See A. C. Hobbs, Construction of Locks and Safes [1868], ed. Charles Tomlinson (Bath, England: Kinghsmead Reprints, 1970).


http://www.bramah.co.uk/default.asp?lnc=bramah_locks

 

[CarlC]

I`ll have to w8 till wednesday to see what the course is like and weather i can get on it.Mind u i`ll have to w8 bout two months, cause only get £30 ema and ain`t got a job. :lol:

Thnx for all your help.

 

[Scrit]

Scrit - you may well be correct, 'cos I'm not sure at all, I just seen to remember them saying on the box that it hadn't been picked but thinking about it I do recollect them saying that someone had done it a long time ago
Edit - I think the programme was Adam Hart-Davies....'What the Victorians Did For Us', may be wrong tho' (memory like a goldfish ) - Rob

Well, I remembered reading about the lock being in a shop window at Bramah's premises for many years with something like £200 (edit: guineas, so £ 210) being offered to anyone who could pick it. The money was on offer from 1801 until 1851 before anyone succeeded, some 37 years after Bramah's death, so quite a lock. There are apparently some questions about the techniques used by the man who succeeded - hints of drilling and acids being used - although I've never seen these confirmed absolutely in print. My interest in Bramah stems principly from his involvement with early machinery , including a patented planing and trying-up machine for the Royal Arsenal in 1805, especially in association with Henry Maudsley (later a collaborator of Marc Brunel on the woodworking machinery at the Royal Naval Dockyards). Well, that and the invention of the beer engine which is also supposed to be down to Bramah! :lol:

It is also of note that Bramah was a joiner and cabinetmaker before he became a locksmith........

Scrit

 

[Shultzy]

What great posts. At one point I was there watching them pick the locks :lol:

 

[devonwoody]

When on holiday this year in Oz. we had to call on the services of a locksmith and over there they have to have a license.

If it isn't here in Europe yet, I dont expect it will be long time coming

 

[Scrit]

It is in some countries (Netherlands and Germany). Here if you work for a registered locksmith I believe they arte required to do reguklar CRB checks on you.

Scrit