Making Emergency Keys

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As part of our bi-weekly lockpicking group we regularly test the security of locks. At next weeks meet we will be making our own keys. Emergency keys are handy if you lose, or bend your existing key. They can be made from proper manufactured key blanks, but they can also be made from old plastic bottles, or coke cans

Blank key

There are various techniques for actually cutting the teeth into the key, for plastic and can keys; a scissors is all that is needed, for proper key blanks a needle file or dremel is best

The usual recommendation is to learn using unused locks as badly made keys can jam or damage locks. The aim of the night will be to learn key cutting using the scissors method, working up to cutting a double sided emergency key for a car. Extra bonus points for those who arrive with a pre-made key for my car made from the photo above! No need to book nor bring anything, just have a look at the 3 videos above and drop by on Tuesday May 7th at 7.30pm.

Maker Faire Newcastle 2013

TOG went to Newcastle last weekend for Maker Faire UK. We got to see lots of great projects and met many more Hackerspaces. UK Hackspace Foundation did a great job promoting Hackerpaces in UK and Ireland with this GIANT map.

UK Hackspace Foundation

All our projects got a great response from visitors, including the giant Arduino, flashing LEDs, sewable curcuit projects etc.

To our benefit we met loads of people who where willing to swap Ducks for schwag. First swap was with Knitic.com, for our logo done up with their automated knitting machine.

Update: Made a mistake this was very kindly made by Sally Bitmap Machine Knitting check out website, very nice people and really very good machine www.kentfield.co.uk Over the weekend they used a hand scanner to get children to scan in their designs and print. Our design was from bitmap.

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Open-Source Night – April

The next open-source night will take place on Wednesday, April 24th.

6:45 – Doors open
7:00 – Talk: IRC 101, by Cheryl Harding — Postponed! Stay tuned.
7:00 – Talk: The Jerry Project, by Justine Hannequin
7:25 – Lightning talks: Introduce the open-source project you’re working on in less than 5 minutes, and get interested people to join you!
7:45 – Break into groups and contribute.

This is a hands-on event, please bring a laptop. Looking forward to seeing you there!

TOG homebrew beer session Sunday 14th April

 

 

A 3rd beer homebrewing session is coming to TOG, this Sunday 14th April!

 

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Award-winning brewchamps will be giving attendees detailed instructions, tips ‘n’ tricks, and generally giving the benefit of their expertise.

Beginner, intermediate and experienced brewers attend the brewing session, leading to in-depth, interesting and informative discussions for all.

 

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We’ll start sometime between 10-11am and finish about 3-4pm; brewers tend to go round the corner to the Bull & Castle to socialise after.

Attendance is free and open to all (there may be a whip-around for donations to TOG tho).

 

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If you want to come, why not sign up and say hello to Capital Brewers on their forum here:

http://www.nationalhomebrewclub.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1364153694

 

Also follow them on twitter for the latest updates, brewdays, competitions, tasting sessions etc:

 

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Looking forward to seeing you there!