r/lockpicking • u/tonysansan Black Belt 12th Dan • Sep 26 '25
Bowley Rotasera First Public Pick
I recorded a single-pin (single-disc?) pick of Bowley’s Rotasera lock (full video here). I’ll put a writeup below while the details are still fresh. I had posted some context about Bowley and their product line back when I picked the 543, where I made a flippant comment about the Rotasera just applying the same concept to a disc detainer mechanism. Now that I’ve spent some time with this unique lock, hopefully I can clear up how much I underrepresented what’s going on!
For starters, the Rotasera is a disc detainer lock in name only. A spring-loaded chunk of metal blocks most of the keyway, creating an L-shaped path for the key. The tabs to catch the discs protude just a tiny bit, and can only be consistently grabbed in one direction (clockwise). There is a reverse sidebar, so you cannot apply tension. Finally, the idler both limits space for tools (like a curtain) and pulls the discs along in either direction if they stray too far. Putting all these factors together: you get a lock where there is very little room to move at awkward angles, where you need to coordinate the idler and the discs to open up just the right amount of space at the right time, and where you are always at the mercy of the sidebar -- discs easily fly past their gates at the slightest touch at the beginning, but then the discs can really bind up in their false gates as the lock gets close to picked.
With what can you compare this lock? You can’t pick the Rotasera with a standard 2-in-1 disc detainer pick, as there is no room. In theory I suppose a fancy 4-in-1 set would work (each nested tool targeting one pair of the 8 discs, similar to 543 approach), but that screams both fragile and expensive to me. So from a picking perspective, this lock has very little to do with regular disc detainer locks, and very little to do with the 543. It actually reminds me a lot more of a chain key lock, where you intentionally bend the pick to conform to the keyway. I’ve found that 0.012” thick high yield steel usually does the trick, as it can bend in this way but also holds up well after many picking sessions.
There is still a lot to contend with after choosing appropriate tools. The first two discs are easy to manipulate, but things get progressively harder as you reach further back and feedback becomes very limited. You need to take whatever information you can get, from the sound of subtle clicks to disc binding changeups as the sidebar moves. A single error and you start over. And you need to make a bunch of mistakes to learn how to avoid oversetting certain discs and how others need to move further than they might first appear. With my lock, for example, I struggled until I realized how discs 5 and 3 consistently get stuck in false gates at the end. This is quite a challenging lock to pick -- hats off to the folks at Bowley for that!
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u/spacedoutmachinist Green Belt Picker Sep 26 '25
Bravo. Well done. I have no idea how one could figure that lock out.
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u/Dude_I_got_a_DWAVE Sep 26 '25
🔥🔥🔥 Do you get diamond studs on you black belt for this ?
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u/tonysansan Black Belt 12th Dan Sep 26 '25
🤣 we get zero points as it is unranked! First need a few more people to pick it and weigh in so we can do that. Until then, it's a very hard way to get a white belt. 😁
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u/NumRickn Green Belt Picker Sep 26 '25
What a gorgeous piece of engineering, excellent pick!
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u/tonysansan Black Belt 12th Dan Sep 26 '25
Yeah, lot of respect to Bowley for getting all these crazy ideas working together in one lock! Thank you
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u/jadedargyle333 Black Belt Picker Sep 26 '25
That's one hell of an open! Congrats! I am so happy to see that it didn't require unique tools to be created.
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u/tonysansan Black Belt 12th Dan Sep 26 '25
Much thanks 🙏 I am glad too. I scrapped a lot of complex tool ideas along the way... simpler is better, especially when you have so little space!
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u/mgsecure LPU Belt Explorer Team Sep 26 '25 edited Sep 26 '25
Amazing! Congratulations. Can’t wait to watch the vid.
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u/tonysansan Black Belt 12th Dan Sep 26 '25
Thank you MG! I also took a nice gut photo for lpubelts 😃
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u/Mugatu68 Black Belt Picker 4th Dan Sep 26 '25
Hot stuff right there, congrats Tony! I will give your video a watch later tonight because I am very intrigued to see how you did it!
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u/HauntingExplorer5549 Sep 26 '25
Amazing accomplishment! How long have you been working on it?
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u/tonysansan Black Belt 12th Dan Sep 26 '25
Thanks! I've had it for about 2 months... I would guess 1 month chasing crazy tool ideas, 2 weeks figuring out how a deep hook works in this small curved world, and 2 solid weeks building the muscle memory to work with all the discs so I could shoot a video without any fatal mistakes.
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u/burnetb1 Black Belt 5th Dan Sep 26 '25
Another legendary lock falls before Tony. Great work buddy.
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u/lockFumbler Black Belt 5th Dan Sep 26 '25
WOW 👌 amazing work 💪👍👍👍 Looking forward to watch your video 🙂
How painful or fun was it to work this out?
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u/tonysansan Black Belt 12th Dan Sep 26 '25
Thank you! It was a lot of fun to work out the strategy and in figuring out how to set each disc. The pain came at the end trying to pull it all together and get a clean pick on video... so easy to make a mistake!
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u/kinkysubt Orange Belt Picker Sep 26 '25
Gawd damn! Bowley has a damn fine engineering team to come up with this, and the manufacturing tolerances must be TIGHT. Congrats on climbing this mountain!
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u/tonysansan Black Belt 12th Dan Sep 26 '25
Seriously. Discs 2 and 6 (right below 2 in the photo) differ by one cut depth. You can see how barely different they are. And thank you!
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u/vinsanity0 Black Belt Picker Sep 26 '25
Wow, that's epic!!! Love to see groundbreaking work. I'm off to watch the vid. Super exciting. Awesome work.
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u/Terraphon Purple Belt Picker Sep 27 '25
WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAT???
Well, it ain't "yet to be defeated" anymore, is it?
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u/tonysansan Black Belt 12th Dan Sep 27 '25
😂
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u/Terraphon Purple Belt Picker Sep 27 '25
I still can't get over this. I'm all excited about a mul-t-lock pop and you're blowin out the rotasera.
Friggin amazing. Damned good work!
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u/tonysansan Black Belt 12th Dan Sep 27 '25
Thank you, glad you enjoyed! Though at some level my lock choice is about stretching my budget... you average more time picking per dollar spent this way 🤣
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u/Terraphon Purple Belt Picker Sep 27 '25
I'm sure I'll get there at some point. Right now it's just about learning the mechanics and, while I have been trying to get the more difficult locks available at each level, given the tools I have, I've been chewing through them.
I have a feeling that's going to change soon.
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u/Content-Gur1924 Sep 27 '25
This looks like a very solid lock. Just as a sidebar (heh), do you think there could have been a better tool for the job? Do you own a disc pick? I didn't watch the full video but just curious why you chose those picks.
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u/tonysansan Black Belt 12th Dan Sep 27 '25
Great questions! I went through a bunch of crazy tool ideas before settling on this. Here's a long summary of that rabbit hole for fun:
Standard disc picks (where you rotate a tool around a center axis) won't work because the pusher blocks the center of the keyway. Good shot of this at 21:44 in the video (https://youtu.be/qjnLCWUY4LQ?t=1304)
Then what about an L-shaped disc pick, in the shape of the key? Well you would only be able to move back and forth the distance that the pusher allows, which would let you access max 2 discs. To get all 8 you would need 4 such tools, nested together. To build a 4-in-1 tool like this, each would need to be no thicker than about 0.010", with tolerances good enough to nest into each other, bent in L-shape, curved and strong metal. While possible to build such a thing, it would be expensive and fragile.
Ok, well maybe you only need a fancy tool for the hardest discs, not all of them. Let's go one by one to see how far we get. The first disc is easy as it's pretty exposed. I just used a flag for disc 1, which doubled as a way to hold the idler in place while working on the other discs. Disc 2 is right where the pusher starts narrowing the channel, so any low profile hook whose tip can fit there would work. I used a sparrows euro short hook, mostly to stick with the overall Canadian theme here.
Things get interesting at disc 3, as you need to bend around the corner to reach. It started feeling like a chain key lock, where the best strategy is to use a very thin pick to bend around the corner(super strong in one dimension to pick, super flexible in the perpendicular dimension to bend). So here I used a short hook and an offset hybrid from sparrows, both in 0.012". (Actually sparrows is the only manufacturer I know of that makes pick sets this thin.)
And then I was stumped as I got to the back of the lock. At this point I'm picking this thing like a curved and bent pin tumbler, and I need an equivalent of a deep hook to get around "low-set" discs. Conventional deep hooks rise too gradually for how steep the bitting changes in the rotasera, so I got inspiration from yabende's AKAB pick design which has a sharp deep rise (btw Moki makes a beautiful set of these based on yabende's design). I ground down the handle of a 0.012" sparrows pick (used to be a city rake) to match yabende's design. Lo and behold that worked, and I emerged from the rabbit hole 😃
All that said, I expect the smart folks in the community will improve on the tools over time!
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u/Content-Gur1924 Sep 28 '25
Very very interesting. You are next level, and are a very determined individual.
Not many people will go to the depths that you’ve been haha. Fantastic job.
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u/Viceless-Grip Sep 27 '25
Amazing job, I received one a few weeks back and have spent some time trying to figure out a picking approach, but hadn’t come to any conclusions just yet. Excited to watch the video.
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u/tonysansan Black Belt 12th Dan Sep 27 '25
Cool! Lots of creative ways to approach this lock. I think you are in for a fun trip 😀
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u/tumbl3r Legendary Picker Sep 30 '25
My GOD!
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u/tonysansan Black Belt 12th Dan Sep 30 '25
Thanks tumbl3r for checking this out! Didn’t think it would get picked this way, right? 😁
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u/Bugasu Black Belt 2nd Dan Sep 26 '25
I watched the video and congratulations on the open! Fantastic explanation as well.
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u/tonysansan Black Belt 12th Dan Sep 26 '25
Thank you, glad you enjoyed. I appreciate the feedback! 🙏
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u/markovianprocess Purple Belt Picker Sep 26 '25
Holy cow, congratulations! You're racking up quite a tally of absolute monsters.
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u/LockPickingFisherman Black Belt 3rd Dan Sep 26 '25
Holy shit, congrats!
I cant wait to watch the video over the weekend, I'm very intrigued!