Clark Combination Lock

[dfcurtis]

Hi,

I have in my position a very old combination lock. The front of the lock says "Clark Combination Lock Co." It was built in Baltimore, MD sometime in the 1870's. It it brass and lists three patent dates; Feb. 4, 1873, June 15, 1875 and a reissued date of Feb. 29, 1876.

I don't know the combination to it, but it appears to be a very early form of the combination lock.

Any help on identifying it and its value would be appreciated. Thanks

[tsleddens]

It would be a lot easier if you posted a picture or something.

Tijs S.

[oldlock]

If there are a series of buttons in a ring with a collar that you turn then it's a good early lock, value could be quite high - depends on size, number of buttons and condition.

Paul.

[bushd]

Is it sesame style or wheel (disk to some) style? Sesame is the ones where you have three or four wheels with numbers and you make the number match. Wheel or disk style is the kind you would find on a high school locker.

If it is a sesame style lock then the combination can be found out easily with a sesame decoder. These things are nothing more then a shaped peice of metal that is very thin to fit inbetween the wheels to decode.

If it is a wheel or disk combination style lock then without heavy practice you're SOL. There is a few links for this. One good place to start is howstuffworks.com and search for their articles on Safe Combination Manipulation. Also, the video on Discovery (circulating around this forum somewhere) about John Sitar is some addition beginning information but the howstuffworks.com says the same. There are some other links around the internet through search engines. A big one for combination locks was totse.com. Regardless of others thoughts on the site they had an alright bit of information.