I definitely dig this one. (McGuyver was my favorite show as a kid, and it definitely reminds me of that show.) In order to perform on demand unlocking of doors without bump keys or lock picking, [Dean] keeps a roll of copper wire, augmented with a 1/4 inch bolt. It’s handy for yanking on doors or mounting a camera. Most doors are designed to keep users in, not out…
Update: Here’s a new link.
i also used this method 5 years ago, when i was a freshman in a florida university
My student-apartment complex is too old for the door handle type required for this to work. I wanted to figure out how to do a similar task with a big slippery conventional doorknob (my last-year’s door had a nasty habit of slamming shut via wind and jarring the lock to locked position).
Never found a way.
Instead (I’m lazy) I created a duct-tape “tail” (a few feet long) for the door handle, with the origin somewhere around the 2-o’clock position of the doorknob (on the inside of my door). That way, I could fish for the tail with any handy implement long and narrow enough to reach a few inches under the door, pull it out, yank (which got translated into turning the knob) and CLICK the door’s open.
timothy
Very similar to something I McGuyver’d in college. I had a buddy who always locked himself out of his room (for some reason we had the only dorm that didn’t use deadbolts, just locks on the door). Ended up bending a clothes hanger with a loop in the end to hook the door. It also ended up being good for moving people from their beds to the hallway (or quad if we felt really mean) after they were passed out coming home from the bars.
Cool post though, seems like a much more effective/easy to use design than what I came up with.
Sadly, the link has died due to excessive bandwidth – is it cached anyplace we can see it?
Richard
Google cache didn’t get it, neither did archive.org. Looks like a good hack, though.
I love stuff like this!’
Bummer about the link.
I have been called mcguyver close to a million times but have never once seen an episode of the show.
too busy escaping from stuff i guess. ;)
note to other hackers posting here : please dont use the so called free web sites because they have a bandwidth limit.
try using a site like photobucket or tinypic to host the images.
Sorry guys. It’s not a free site, I don’t know why it’s down so soon. I’m trying to mirror this post on a friend’s site. I’ll let you know when it’s back up.
Hey, I checked with my hosting provider. They say that I can only use 120 gigs of bandwidth per day. Since I hosted the videos on my site, I used over 500 just today… That was dumb. I’m putting the videos on YouTube and moving the post to a friend’s site. Hopefully everything will be better soon.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=f02oOs5A4Jc
http://www.youtube.com/v/CG3voCHWNQs
A friend of mine made one of these; now there are 3 that I know of floating around my dorm. The good thing is that they are easy to protect from, just hot-glue a piece of wood to the back of the door.
Here’s the new page: http://www.northpolesoftware.com/copper/copper.html
Sorry about the inconvenience, please come visit my site http://mustardhamsters.com tomorrow.
It’s too bad that you can’t spell the name of your favorite show when you were a kid correctly.
It’s MacGyver. And you call yourself a fan!
That kid looks like Eric Foreman from That 70′s Show!!
Oh, and I am SO TOTALLY doing that!!
Except it’d be kinda hard to do on KNOBS. >_
I’m assuming you meant multi?
SMART :-P
i can pick locks but this way works to :-P
Chillz Buddy!
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Used this method about 5 years ago in the Air Force for our barracks doors…..