Cracking your old Sentry Safe (without destroying it)

okay you found your support in cracking this specific safe this is the sentry john d brush sentry safe and it's an old model when i got a request to um crack this model it was a request by a friend he was not sure what exact type it was so i did some research on the internet to find out what type of vault it could be what kind of safe it would be and how to crack it so the only thing i found was someone who did a destructive uh version of opening this safe and that was not what i was looking for although through this video i found some information on what the mechanism is in this safe so i will help you out if you want to correct the safe without breaking it please follow this video to see what i did and maybe this can help you too so let's get to work this type of safe has a more or less standard combination lock like this you can turn it both ways and there's a latch and the ledge cannot turn completely to open the door which is normal with the newer types of these combination locks there is no connection between the latch and the dial at least you cannot feel it with this one you can so that's a big advantage in opening this type of lock so how that works is a bit like follows this is a rough scratch sketch of the safe with the door opened and on the inside are three wheels and the wheels are a little bit closer to each other in the real world but to explain this there is a third wheel a second wheel and a first wheel and the third wheel in this case in this safe the third wheel is connected to the dial on the outside so there's a um not just a loose connection like it's somehow you can turn it but it's a real fixed connection so the shaft going through all those wheels and then it's fixed to the third wheel so that means turning this dial is turning this third wheel uh one on one the second and the first wheel they are connected through uh little pins which take along the wheel depending on the the position of the previous wheel so if i turn the third wheel the second wheel will only turn if it hits this pin and then it will turn along same for the first one so that's very important to know because getting this fixed connection between those two helps us to figure out how to dial this and you can see a little bit when i turn it let's fix the camera so i have both hands available and i can turn this freely now but when i pull put down the latch as far as i can this this wheel somehow gets fixed and you can also see and hear some movement uh between well it seems like it's in a gate or something and if i release a little bit and i go to the there's another one so there is a relationship between pulling down or pushing down this latch this handle and the friction on this wheel so that's very interesting because like in small combination locks you can also somehow some sometimes figure out the combination by this this type of approach so let's see how we approach from here and what i did was to to go through all those positions where i feel there is well it seems like look at this there is a gate or it might be a false gate zooming in on that what you see is it turns a certain range of numbers and then there's a short click what i did to make this more accurate was to add a piece of post-it to make this point a little bit more clear doesn't have to be perfect because it's all relative so and then it was easier for me to to find the numbers um and then what i did was to figure out all those positions so for example here i have it's 26 and 22. you see almost 26 a little bit more than 22. so what i did was okay let's say this ranges from 22 to 26. the average is 24 and now i try to find the next one i find the next one i found another one that's 14 to the right 14 to 17 write it down again 14 to 17 etc etc so that's the way i went through the whole range finding out where those numbers are and finding this list of numbers and there was one where it was very special i have to tension it again with one hand this time and this felt really different it was a louder click and a wider range and it runs from five as you can see five to let's see what it is it's almost 11 not completely yeah that's 16 together it's about eight a little bit on that side because this was not almost eleven so maybe seven and a half i'm not 100 sure yeah and i did it like this and finding that there were 12 numbers so 12 gates or false gates uh with this one feeling like well it felt different at least it was a it was more like a real gate then my assumption was that um having these 12 numbers it could be that i would be feeling false gates on the third wheel with the true gate on the third wheel because there is a connection between the dial and the final wheel the third wheel or the other assumption i had was maybe those false gates are partly gates on the second and the third first wheel i was not sure about that but at least it seemed like maybe these are gates and the only thing i have to do if i assume that's on that if i assume this gate of the third gate would be 7.5 then and keep that steady in my trying to dial the number then i only have to vary 1 and 2. and what if that was an assumption what if 1 and 2 also use these numbers so this would be the third gate the gate of the third wheel and then i have other numbers which might be gates on wheel one and two so that's what i tried i i made a list in excel you can also do it on paper with all possible combinations of those actually those 12 numbers with two wheels keeping the last wheel just the same values seven and a half because that was my assumption that would be a true gate on the third wheel so that was my attempt so what did i have i had a possible number for the last wheel for the last to dial number and i had 144 possible combinations for the wheels one and two which in real life are a bit less because i also discovered you cannot have a wheel one and two the same number and you cannot have two and three wheel two and three the same number because that's mechanically not another possibility with this mechanism so a little bit less than 144 still a lot but at least it's much less than we have 100 numbers possible on this dial so that's hundreds of times hundred times on it is one million combinations this is 144 looks much more feasible well to to try these different combinations you first have to know how this safe is being dialed because there are some differences between those combination locks of those safes so let's check that out and this one i figured that out from another video someone made from another type of safe this one in instead of dialing left like in the normal more modern versions of these saves you have to dial right first that would be the first number you get some advice on i have to dial it four times round but what i do is you hear this clicks click is picking up a next wheel so i'm turning third and it's picking up wheel two and this is wheel one so if i turn the other side which is the first dial the first number you have to dial clockwise right if i've picked up all the wheels like this then i'm okay and i'm dialing the number so i keep turning right and add out the number for example i had this number found 24 yeah then i want to dial back let's take another number on my list it was about 15 and a half and what you see then i was starting here with the first number now i go left so counterclockwise and i get this click now it's picking up the next wheel and now you have to dial the number they also say in those videos okay when you dial the second number you have to pass it once or twice depending on the lock what i do is just listen to the mechanics like this was the number i dialed 24 and i go to 15 and a half but just it has to pick up the wheel first so now it's picking up the wheel and i go to 15 and a half be careful not to pass this number because then you're lost it's only it only works with the third wheel that you can be a little bit more floppy and the third was seven and a half you can go there immediately so it's like this and even with the third wheel you can pass without any problem let's test that it's not working and seems to be still in just gate of seven and a half third wheel gate and nothing else no results but this was the demo on how to dial this so let's take the next step and go through all the combinations so when dialing these combinations at a certain point in time i found the combination which led to a little bit different behavior so let's show that 24 and then i had 41.5 again seven seven half and it it had this additional click this click and i was like okay this sounds different let's let's take a note that um dialing 24 41.5 and 7.5 had a different sound and then later doing my uh all the combinations i created in excel i had this click with this combination and then i had the same thing with another combination and the other combination was another number i don't remember the number but also with 41.5 and seven half for the second and the third wheel uh this yeah second and the third wheel so that meant it seemed like 31.5 might be special and a good solution because it gave this additional click so with that assumption of the second wheel and the third wheel still keeping that the same i tried to vary this number and that's only with the range of 12 it's only 12 possibilities minus 1 because it cannot be the same as the second wheel so that's what i tried very only will 1 and keeping wheel 2 and 3 at my assumed numbers so turning everything until all wheels are set in one direction then let's go to 82 let's go back for wheel two counterclockwise it's hitting it's taking the wheel and we go to 41.5 that seems to be a good number and then we go back to 7.5 and now it opens there we are it's one open safe it's uh i'm sorry it's empty because the owner who asked me to do this already took out his stuff he was very happy that he could reach it again what i can do now together with you is to see what the mechanism looks like from the inside now let's take a screwdriver and open this it's only one screw it's a little bit difficult with my left hand okay there we go screw there we are with the mechanism you can see the latch completely inserts into the slots that's a nice mechanism and it's connected to the to the real safety i'm not sure what you call this thing okay and what i can show you now apart from the slots seem to be aligned if i turn and this is turning the the dial and it's completely connected fixed to the third wheel and the click you here is this pin picking up the next wheel you can see that i'm not sure now it's turning the second wheel and if i turn on this i'm turning clockwise like in the first go then it's picking up the first wheel so when i dial it was 82 our lucky combination let's see oh no i passed and now you can see why passing is a bad idea hopefully the light is good enough let's zoom in a little bit um if i dial this and i try to dial 82 and i pass it a little bit and i go back then well wheel one is not going back so it doesn't work okay so let's dial the number again to see how it works from the inside and it seems to be 82 then we go to 41.5 and we go back to seven you can see the third wheel you can still control without any problem and there we have the safe open and now some additional information the mystery on uh what we were feeling in the beginning so let's scramble this and see what we were feeling in the beginning well for sure this was the thing i felt when i thought i had found the gate which was about seven and a half it felt a bit different you can really feel the gate there and now for the other ones the wheel 3 is bigger so it has a larger diameter if you can see that and that's i think on purpose that you cannot feel wheel two and one while doing this feeling stuff but the strange thing about the third wheel is that they built in false gates like this that's what we were feeling and i think the design flaw from the safe makers is that these false gates which are meant to trick us um actually seem to be on logical uh places like every 30 degrees circle and it seems that the slots of the second and the first wheel are also on the same angle at the same angle so with these false gates you can find out the 12 numbers which are most likely to be used on these wheels you can find out the number of the third wheel and then you actually have what was also my hope and assumption only 144 combinations i'm not sure if this is really true i didn't check it completely but at least it worked out for me and it's really funny that they put in false gates i think to to fool us but it's actually a helpful uh thing with this safe so hopefully that was useful for you if you have a safe like this good luck with that it only took me in the end well i had to figure out all those things and do some research and design a strategy that took some time that took a few hours but once i uh designed the strategy it only took me 58 attempts to get to the right number so that's very fast it was really i was really surprised i didn't have to dial the 144 at all and even if you have to dial the full 144 it's still doable so good luck have fun and let me know in the comments what your experiences are if you have any questions about my approach have a great day

Channel: Frank Rood

Views: 30,316

Rating: 4.5454545 out of 5

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Id: XKBkBoomb20

Length: 22min 29sec (1349 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 14 2021