A friend recently purchased an expensive large garden shed (£2K insulated, double glazed, internal skin etc.) and then purchased n fairly expensive padlock to protect the contents.
I did say that a thief would just probably just kick in one of the panels, smash the glass or use a wrecking bar on the door, albeit a bit more difficult to kick in than a single skin feather board design.
Today I found a Youtube video on how easy it is to open many padlocks
No lock has ever been intended to stop break-ins - only to make them take more time and/or noise, making it easier to go and break into somewhere else.
Most thieves will simply look for somewhere open, somewhere with a shackle (or hinges) that can simply be unscrewed or ripped off with little noise. The better thieves will know how to open locks quickly, but you are not going to stop them anyway.
Yes. I wonder whether locks claiming to meet BS standards and the like are any better?
SteveW
We had sheds broken into a couple of years ago. They just destroyed the door on one of them. Luckily insurance paid up. The shed people just made us a new door.
We use GSM alarms in the sheds.
On 14/10/2019 12:42, Steve Walker wrote: ...
The BS tests do not include resistance to picking.
Looks like a gaping hole in the standards then!
You would have thought that security against picking, bumping, breaking or cutting would be the main requirements of any such standard.
SteveW
Watch the lock picking lawyer or bosnian bill videos and you'll see that those are rare beasts ...
Which they would not be if the standards actually required decent security. With no cheap but useless end of the market, manufacturers would have to up their game, but competition would prevent them charging the sort of prices that high-end locks currently demand.
SteveW
A strong magnet seems to defeat the locking bar solenoid.
My son has a Yale electronic digital safe, admittedly the cheaper end. I managed to get in to it in under a minute (undamaged) there are also 2 other methods to crack his safe (without damage) which I havent yet tried.
The easy non destructive way is with a magnet.
Are not most of the domestic safes aimed more at a 30 minute fire protection for documents etc. rather than for anti-theft?
On one of the crap USA programs about buying abandoned storage lockers the favoured way of breaking into the smaller safes of 2ft x 2ft x 3ft seems to be dropping them to concrete from around waist height and onto one corner of the safe.
Fark
They test for resistance to corrosion and to brute force attacks - twisting, cutting, drilling, sawing and impact. Picking seems to be the only omission. Possibly because it wouldn't be easy to devise a quantifiable test for resistance to picking.
In the linked video it appears that none of the padlocks were actually picked. In most part the padlocks were opened in seconds with the key mechanism being bypassed to exploit the poor designs. It was implied that it would have been be easy for the manufacturer(s) to fix these defects in the original design(s). I would hope that any formal certification would ensure that any failing commonly known in the industry would be addressed.
Yes what they do around here is nick a spade from an unlocked shed, climb the fences and use the spade to open almost any door.
However I remember when I was young how easy it was to open those four digit padlocks with the rings in the side. You simply pulled the ring and you could feel the place where the pin disengaged on every wheel. I don't think the designers thought it through. Bike locks had similar flaws so combination locks are attractive having no key, but you need to get good ones! Brian
Rather intrigued where the original poster got an insulated shed for 2K, I'm seeing double that if built. Brian
Brian, in the linked Youtube video they opened one of the 4 wheel combination locks in a couple of seconds by simply sliding a piece of thin metal with a point between two of the wheels. The tool could be made from a cut down drinks can.
Also on the video was the demonstration of a substantial lock advertised as "Amazon's choice for secure padlock" which was also opened in less than a second without a key.
Thanks for the link. Up until now I?ve been using brute force techniques to banish love-locks from a local bridge. Ordered myself some lock picking tools now. ;-)
Tim
Possibly between £2K and £3K and that didn't include the base/hard-standing which was DIY and was a plastic honeycomb filled with large shingle/ballast.
The company was Davies Timber (Wales) and they can build to customers requirements. They may however only deliver/erect within their local area. My friends lives very close to the (Mid) Wales and England border.
My 12' x 10' shed cost just over £800, plus another £600 for the base, and about £250 for an insulated floor, a load of polystyrene sheet and board to cover the insulation.
A lot cheaper than £175 per month for storage!
It's now my railway room - which was planned from the start.
SteveW
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