Decoding drill points in National Locksmith Publications
Key words: Safe McOmie Coded Decode drillpoint safecracking
The topic of this post is decoding safe drill points from TNL books that coded them. A buddy of mine bought one of these books used from some lockjock that needed money and asked me for some help because nothing made any sense drill point (DP) wise, and he didn't really know what the hell he was doing enough to figure it out. Yeah little joke at your expense pal, you know who you are but WTF I know you got a sense of humor. Anyway, it seems that in early versions of the TNL safe opening books such as the Guide to Safe Opening Volume II for example, they got the bright idea to 'code' DP's so that the poor idiots who managed to get a hold of the book wouldn't be able to use it. I don't know who's f****ng stroke of genius this was but Dave McOmie admitted in a later text that coded DP's were no longer used because their use caused safe techs to complain that they were drilling air holes based on using the 'coded' information without first decoding it. Talk about secret squirrel decoder ring crap. Even the squirrels decoder rings weren't good enough. OK enough boring background. So if you paid good money (and even used they ain't cheap) for one of these books with the 'coded' DP's how do you decode them? Simple. Subtract 1" from every measurement in every DP given. No I'm not kidding. It's that simple and even then some actual real professional safe techs apparently couldn't handle it. Example: If the DP is given as 97 X 1 7/8" it is really 97 X 7/8", which means with the dial zeroed you drill inline with 97 7/8" from spindle center. This BTW is the drill point to scope the wheels under the fence on most current manafacture safe locks mounted right hand (RH), which means bolt to the left as viewed from the outside of the door, including the S&G 6730, Ilco 673, LaGard 3330 and a boatload of others. Figuring out how the lock is mounted is up to you. Figuring out if there is a glass plate between you and the freakin lock is up to you. I'm not here to open the goddamn thing for you. The same rule applies for all DP whether sight/scope hole or relocker. If a relocker drill point (RLDP) is given, example would be RLDP given as:
3 3/4" RC (Right of spindle center) X 2 1/4" up is really 2 3/4 RC X 1 1/4 up.Why they tried this crap I got no idea. All it did, even according to Dave McOmie himself, who should freakin know, was to cause safe techs who bought the material to drill in the wrong place, while anybody who really wants to decode it, even somebody with no other books for comparison, can do a little measuring based on known dimensions of things in the photos. Like for example an S&G 6730, and quickly figure out not only the real DP but after doing it a few times on a few different examples also the 1st grader formula to decode all the drill points in the book. An S&G 6730 is going to always be the same size no matter what the hell it's installed in, so once you measure the one in the picture you know the scale of the photo and can figure out distance between any other points in the same photo. Simple as that. More secret squirrel crap that is nothing but a waste of time and the simple instructions to get around it, now archived forever (Or until Google goes out of business at least) thanks to yours truely. Enjoy.