How to Crack Lowrie Safe-Determine Last Digit of Unopened Lowrie Safe

What I discovered is that you can “feel” the inside plate, that is permanently connected to the dial, as it scrapes along the channels and figure out what its combination is.  Here’s how to do it.

Turn the dial in one direction while pulling out on the dial.  You’ll feel when the pin from the back plate touches and begins to turn the other plates but you also will feel when the back plate slips down into the channel opening at different times.  I figured out that there are three different situations that you can “feel.”

Situation 1: Plate Perfectly Lined Up to Unlock

Situation 1: The plate perfectly lined up, for me 75-77

For situation 1, when the last plate is lined up perfectly, I could feel the dial slip into this notch as I was pulling out on the dial while turning and when I would turn the dial back and forth (while pulling out) it would range from 75 to 77 while in this notch.

Situation 2: Plate Offset One Notch to the Left

Situation 2: Offset to the left, for me 93-95

For Situation two, where only the bottom left opening has the small notch from the tab in it, the dial would read from 93 to 95 as I turned it back and forth while pulling out.

Situation 3: Plate Offset One Notch to the Right

Situation 3: Offset to the right, for me 57-58.5

For situation 3, where only one small tab was seated in the bottom right opening, the dial would read from 57-58 (maybe more like from 57 to 58 and a half).

Plotting the Numbers to Solve For the Third Digit

I plotted these numbers I was coming up with on a dial starting with 100 at the top and counting up from 1 when you go clockwise and this is how it turned out:

Plotting the numbers

If you decide to use 57-59 for the range (versus 57-58.5) it turned out that there were exactly 18 digits between the center numbers of two of the closer sets of numbers and 64 digits between the other two on the dial.  AND, it turns out, the number in the middle, 76, is in fact the last digit of the combination of this safe.  Now you have lowered the number of possible combinations of this safe by a factor of 100.  There now are only 100×100=10,000 possible combinations.  If you didn’t know any numbers you would have 100x100x100 (a million) possible combinations.  So, if you happen to know one of the other numbers you are now down to only 100 possible combinations (and you can easily try all those by hand) and if you go by 1.5 numbers it would be even less (like 67 possibilities).

Videos of the Lowrie Safe Operation

Here’s a close-up video of me unlocking the safe so you can see how it works:

Here’s a wider view of the unlocking process:

Hopefully this inside information helps someone!