Detroit Safe Co Vault - Dial question

[DOROR]

Hello all. My name is Dorothy, and I work for a commercial real estate developer, owner, and property management company. Several years ago we bought a building that has a vault in the cellar area. We have a list of three different combination for different vaults that were (or still are?) in the building. But none of the combinations seem to work. There also seems to be a combination scratched into the door. With that said, it could definitely be user error because lack of knowledge of how this type of dial works. There are two notches on the dial - one is a star symbol (at the 12 o'clock position), and one is a straight notch (at the 1 o'clock position). It also has a blank area between the position 100 and 20. I have included a picture that shows this pretty clearly. Although I have opened a number of safes in over the years, I've never seen one with two demarcations and I'm wondering if there is a "different" way to use such a lock. It is a beautiful vault and we think it was put in place as they built the building in 1902. There is a tour by our local historical preservation committee this weekend and we'd love to open the vault for that tour. We cannot find much information on the Detroit Safe Co. other than smaller safes, and even then, haven't found anything about how the dials are meant to be used. Do any of you pros have some experiential knowledge about this type of dial? Thank you for your time and willingness to help.

[Squelchtone]

If you look at the coin soldered to the center of your dial post, you may see some writing on it. Based on the star shaped dial index, your lock looks like a Sargent & Greenleaf from Rochester NY. In the old days, one company would make the safe body, another would make the safe lock and dial, and sometimes a 3rd would simply be the vendor who sold safes in a geographical area and painted their name on the finished product. That gap on your dial from 100 to 20 is the forbidden zone, it's something they had to do mechanically so that the safe lock wouldn't jam up while setting and dialing certain combinations. Older locks like yours often came with 3 or 4 wheels, and the dialing order could be Right Left Right or Left Right Left depending on model. Even if one has the combination written down, the correct steps in dialing the combination Right or Left and what number to stop on the last time around all had to be taken in effect.

Sometimes the combination wheels have been removed from older locks like yours, when you spin the dial 2 or 3 or 4 times to the Left or Right does it feel really easy to turn or does it seem to get harder and harder to turn every time you make a full revolution? Can you hear any metalic pings or dings inside as your turn? (not clicking though, that's just movie nonsense) This test will tell us if your safe lock has all the wheels inside or if they have been removed.

Thanks for sharing your safe door and lock,
Squelchtone

[DOROR]

Thank you for all the information Squelchtone! The dial is indeed a Sargent & Greenleaf. It is so corroded that I hadn't seen any writing there before.


The dial did get tighter when approaching a full rotation from the last point where the dial changed directions, and continued to get tighter. I noticed that it would be smooth in the opposite direction until it got back within 9 or so digits of of a full rotation. I did here some pings and whatnot, but never reliably at any one place.

You'll recall, we had a combination that 4 different people had tried, but had also found a set of numbers written in pencil on the face of the safe. There were three numbers written fairly clearly with a directional notation. The top one looked as if it had been scratched out and there was another very faint number written over that. The second number in the sequence ended in 6, but there was a 7 written over or under that. So, I had several sets of numbers. I also thought if I were going to write the combination on the facade, I might do it bottom to top or inverse the numbers somehow so I wrote out a bunch of different ways the numbers could be rearranged with the direction of the dial as a variable. Now that I learned that the star was in fact the location that I should be using to align the dial, I proceeded to very carefully started working through each possible combination trying it twice before discarding. About the fourth combination I tried worked!

The vault was around 12' X 12' so quite large. The room is full of antique dolls, antique doll furniture and antique children's play furniture. Newest items in there were probably the two cabbage patch dolls (one was in its original box and said 1985). Some of the items appear to be 1800s (black leather baby pram). Here are some pictures of the inside of the door, the inside of the lock, inner doors that were removed at some point, as well as a shelf.

Thanks for all your help.

[DOROR]

By the way, it was the original combination we tried - not anything written on the facade of the door. We just may not have been careful enough when dialing the combination previously...

[femurat]

Great! I like happy endings. Thanks for letting us know you got it open, and for those nice pictures.

Cheers

[GWiens2001]

We appreciate the update, and love hearing that you found the help you needed.

Be sure to stick around!

Gordon