Nuclear Engineer Reacts to LockpickingLawyer "The Master Lock Paradox - Model 410 LOTO Padlock"

Thanks so much for watching! If you want to check out my reaction to a “nuclear launch key” from Lockpicking Lawyer, please check out: https://youtu.be/YTWEHT__G_A?si=c1N7mc8ib0A0qRXe

Masterlock has a bit of a reputation amongst his followers. My favorite joke I've seen there is "A master key opens any lock, a Masterlock is opened by any key."

LOTO saves lives but it's only as good as the operation's safety culture and the operators tasked with using it.

The worst part of Master's lineup is that their flagship padlock, the Magnum 930 (the last one he showed), has a massive known security flaw. Master decided to put a rubber weather cover on the bottom of the lock. To hold it in place, they extended the core retention nut by a quarter of an inch. If you simply rip the rubber cover off, you can grab a hold of the retention nut with a pair of channel locking pliers and pry it out. The internals of the lock will all come out, and the lock will open. That flaw has been known for at least six or seven years.

The 6-pin LOTO lock is purposely not made to be indestructable, exactly for the reasons you mentioned. They're used to lockout people, but has to be malleable enough to be removed in an emergency situation.

The red plastic body is reinforced with "lose your career" fibers that prevent almost all improper cutting attempts.

"You are using a master lock model 176, you can open it using a master lock model 176"

LPL later mused that it may be so that a LOTO lock is easy to break with evidence of tampering, but hard to pick leaving no evidence of tampering. The other locks are easy to pick, but hard to break as evidence of tampering is no longer.

As someone who got into locksport thanks to BosnianBill and LockPickingLawyer, Master is known to be the best beginner practice lock brand. Along with all of the faults LPL noted in this video, Master allows for locks with all pins being the same cut. I acquired one of these myself. You can literally pick it with a bobby pin and nothing else. I had to toss that lock because it was so frustratingly easy to pick that it was preventing me from learning new techniques with any skill because it’d just pop open as soon as I put the pick in and touch the pins. These days I have to go out of my way to look for challenging locks. The ones found in local stores just don’t cut it anymore.

I do wonder if it's based on safety regulation. Make something easy to bolt cut by Admin, but difficult to bypass by rank-and-file.

Most locks are at risk of being cut or smashed off as thieves don't care about destroying it, they just want the goods. For LOTO it might make sense that the pick resistance is what is important as it's used to monitor access and anything destructive would be obvious tampering. For theft the physical strength matters while for LOTO the ability to detect tampering matters, opposite uses so opposite investment in materials and design?

I operate a large double span hydraulically powered concrete swing bridge. These locks aren't used too often, mostly for locking out circuits or generators. We usually remove keys and use yellow (caution, communicate before operating) or red (do not operate, remove key and take key with you) tags to denote work is being done on certain parts. It's really interesting to see what other industrial workplaces may use for LOTO situations.

"These are not security locks." Also: "These are fairly robust!"

When I was in Industrial Hygiene as a team leader we used these to Lock Out the machines for my operatives for cleaning, they were a pain in my proverbial, 30+ a night signing them in and out and checking their proper use. The keys used to jam up in the majority of these damn things and caused more problems than they fixed as in my operatives would "forget" to use them, which yes, lead to accidents.

Unless a worker forgot to take it off and you call him to make sure what ever equipment or circuit he was working on is in safe and in working order, there is not many circumstances where you should remove someone’s loto.

I'm glad you mentioned the reason the standard LoTo lock is non hardened, they are there so someone doesn't accidently harm someone while they are working, or accidently activate a faulty system. However, if they lose a key, or there is an emergency, they need to be able to be cut open quickly. I've never had it where it was a need to open one immediately but We did lose the keys to one, then per policy of the company I was at, we had to fill out a bunch of paperwork to describe why we cut the lock. Just for record keeping that hey, we lost the key, we removed the lock. Also, yeah, most locks are there to keep honest people honest. They act as a deterrent, The reality is that if someone is going to break into something, Think about the standard toolbox latch over eye lock setup, doesn't matter if you put the best lock in the world on it, Someone that wants to get in is going to look at that and go "I can cut the latch tongue with tin snips" and that's the end of it. The lock is there to keep out people that would get in through "oh look it's not locked" or "I'm sure he won't mind if I borrow X". of course that's a typical example of where you might see a heavy duty lock body, I've seen a lot of guys in the shops put beefy looking locks on the boxes, while we all know that the design of their toolbox will stop someone that actually wants to get in for about 10 seconds, Or they'll just take the whole box.

I got into lockpicking as a hobby after watching LPL. If you like puzzles and challenging yourself, it's great fun. And like LPL said, you can do it while watching TV. For a little while there, my wife wouldn't let me out of her sight whenever we went to the hardware store. If I disappeared, she knew I was making my way over to the padlock or door lock section. 😂 Increasingly fancier locks tend to also become increasingly expensive. 🤷

Funny thing is, you kind of giggled when he mentioned picking open locks while watching a movie, but I totally relate to that. I have issues focusing due to restless energy, and while my go-to isn't currently lockpicking (I got into trouble for that from a friend cause the clicking was distracting), I've moved to solving a very quiet rubik's cube while I movie watch with friends, to keep my mind free

I LOVE lockpickinglawyer. He was the reason I bought my first set of Lockpicks and it's an incredibly rewarding hobby.

Someone mentioned this elsewhere, but I think the reason why the core is so good is because you may have lots of very similar locks in a single place, and you have to make doubly sure that the wrong key won't open the wrong lock, and that might not be guaranteed with a low-security core due to accidental raking, "bumping" or just turning the key too hard.