Help with opening a 3 dial combination safe

[guitarzpt]

Its a very old safe, probably from 1850.
It has 3 dials with letters from A to Z.
The dials are like 2 on top and another one below the other 2 like in vertices of a triangle
The dials turn smoothly making no noise at all. If I press the handle trying to open the safe the dials get hard to turn and sometimes impossible at all, but in diferent letters sometimes. And in diferent letters then the ones of the ones we think the code is cause of the paper we found.
It also has one key (which I have in my possession)
and a handle to open the safe when the correction is dialed.
The owner was a relative he passed away unexpectedly without giving us the combination. We think we found in his desk full with documents a paper containing the code for the leters. But no matter how we try we cannot open the safe.
Anyone can help me solving this puzzle ?

Thanks in advance

[TOWCH]

Post a picture. If all you need are dialing instructions we can probably help you. Anything else is advanced forums material.

[pip]

It has 3 dials with letters from A to Z

26 x 26 x 26 = 17,576 possible combinations

all you need is time

[SS454]

It has 3 dials with letters from A to Z

26 x 26 x 26 = 17,576 possible combinations

all you need is time

Actually, wouldn't it depend on how many combinations are on each dial?

[Shrub]

A-Z is 26 letters

[SS454]

A-Z is 26 letters

Well yeah, but that doesn't mean each dial couldn't have a 3 digit (or more) combo.
eg; ABC(first dial), ABC(second dial), ABC(third dial).

Which would increase the number of possibilities in a huge way.

[mh]

Well yeah, but that doesn't mean each dial couldn't have a 3 digit (or more) combo.
eg; ABC(first dial), ABC(second dial), ABC(third dial).

Could be, but it's very unlikely that someone put 3 separate combo locks on 1 safe.
That lock type is *most* likely one where you select *one* letter on each dial, use the key & the handle and it will open.
Cheers,
mh

[Gundanium]

Play around with the safe, see what you come up with, clicks, bumps, yadda yadda.

After you get a feel, you might understand other peoples explianations better.

[SS454]

It would be easy to find out by simply feeling for stops on each dial. If there are stops, then it's probably going to be a three digit combo. (because two is silly, and four would seem like overkill on a three dial safe. Also considering that there are only 26 numbers on each dial, four would be overkill.)

Man, I would love to see even a pic of that safe. Just the fact that it seems to be that old would make it pretty cool to mess around with.

What type of key is it?

I wonder if ther reason for the three separate dials are because they hadn't yet figured out how to put multiple discs on one dial? I woudl've thought that that technology had been around longer than that.

That's why I assumed each dial would have more than on digit per.
I could be wrong though.

[HeadHunterCEO]

I think thats yale

post a pic

[orb]

Well... actually I don´t have much experience with safes, but I would recommend this;
http://money.howstuffworks.com/safecracking.htm
which is quite informative...at least partially.
But maybe useless since it needs much skill being able to utilise that...

mfg orb ._.

PS. a picture, or at least the brand/model/type name would be fine =)

[The_Catz]

if you get it open, or not for that matter, ill buy it from ya.... just dont break it.

[guitarzpt]

Hello

We opened the safe. The combination we were trying was wrong. I wonder what those papers with leter combinations were. probably some other safe. need to see if he had one hidden.
Anyway he was a very religious guy so the letter combinations were ....
guess it ... AVE LOL
The safe is really pretty 1850. I guess it must be worth a lot in an antique store.

Anyway thanks for the tips guys

[Shrub]

Maybe the letters you found written down were an old combo or the present one plus or minus a few letters.