HARDWARE&SECURITY • 61
Initial Impressions –
From Russia with Love
Having now visited four Russian
cities and passed through numerous
towns and villages, I was surprised to
only see one wall daubed with graffiti
and hardly any litter anywhere. The
western media tells us about the
amount of pollution Russia pumps
into the atmosphere, but during the
whole visit (which included tours in
industrialised areas) I only saw two
chimneys emitting smoke.
I was struck by how friendly and
welcoming the Russian people were
and the fact that in the larger cities, so
many people speak English so well.
In most of the restaurants, the menus
are in both Russian and English
which makes ordering easy. At first,
the use of the Cyrillic alphabet was
a little confusing, but if you take a
moment to think about it you’ll see
it’s quite logical. For instance, if you
see a sign on a shop that says ‘Kaɸe’
and the people inside are eating and
drinking, it’s pretty obvious that it’s a
café. Another handy word for visitors
to know is the word for ‘Toilet’ which
is ‘Tyaлeт’ – it may look difficult to
pronounce, but the translation into
English is simply ‘toilet’. It’s actually
quite surprising how many words
overlap between the two languages.
A Legend among
Locksmiths
I was in St. Petersburg to meet
Vladimir Kutylovsky, the Russian
agent for Silca, the world’s biggest
manufacturer of key blanks and
key cutting machines. Now not
only is Vladimir an extraordinary
and innovative guy, he’s designed
a machine that can cut any type
of key and profile any blank. The
main purpose of our visit was to
view his impressive lock collection.
Vladimir has been collecting locks
and keys for many years and it was
surprising to see how many Bramah
locks he had.
The Bramah lock is a lock design
created by Joseph Bramah in
1784 and is the first known high
security lock design. Vladimir even
had a Bramah lock (rather than a
Cotterill) fitted to a large safe pan.
‘not only is Vladimir
an extraordinary and
innovative guy, he’s
designed a machine that
can cut any type of key
and profile any blank’
Vladimir also has a large
collection of safe components,
including handles, plaques and
nameplates and his ability to copy
these means that he has been
able to restore many vintage safes
to their original condition. The
meeting with Vladimir was an
awesome way to round off our visit
to Russia.
locksmithjournal.co.uk | SEP/OCT 2015
Sponsored by TradeLocks
Russia Rocks!
If you ever get the opportunity
to visit Russia, I would strongly
recommend that you go. I can
guarantee that you’ll receive a
warm welcome and many pleasant
surprises while you’re there. Yes,
there are some Soviet-era concrete
blocks of apartments but nowadays
they stand alongside modern
developments and even some
traditional British style housing
estates.
If you are interested in visiting
Russia or have any questions you
would like answered, then please
feel free to email us for advice at
explore.russia.with.apecs@apecs.
co.uk . We would love to hear
from you and would be only too
happy to give you any help and
advice that we can.