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