1877 Diebold Safe

[keyless 1]

Can anyone give me advice on opening the inner doors of a safe in my office?

I know, I know...there's the whole thing about never discussing safe cracking on these forums but it really is ok in this case!

This safe has had the outer doors drilled open god knows how many years before I got here and one would assume that if someone went that far they must have had a key for the inner doors. I have no illusions of finding it full of money...my goal is to use it as a fire safe for my hard drives. Sadly, I don't have the key for the inner doors and neither does the current building owner.

The owner has given me permission to do whatever I want to get it open though so that's what I've been working on occasionally for the past year or more. He even jokingly said I could have it if I could get it out without damaging his building. When you see the images you'll know why it was a joke. I would have thought the building was built around it if the building hadn't been built 14 years before the date on the safe. They must have used a crane and taken a window and part of a wall out!

So here's where I am at the moment -
I learned a little ( very little! ) about lock picking and bought the cheapest set of tools I could find thinking maybe I could manage this myself and it nearly turned into an obsession! I even managed to destroy the lock on my office door while practicing...

After about a year ( Don't laugh! I'm a photographer , not a locksmith! )of messing around for 30 minutes or so once in a while and being able to set, or at least I was fooled into thinking I was able set 3 of the 6 pins I realized that these weren't pins at all and were in fact, levers! That lead me to the real spirit breaker...this safe was built in 1877 and probably has something like a Chubb Dectector lock in it and if so I surely must have tripped it.

If that's the case is there anyway at all to get this safe open without the original key and without drilling the inner doors? If I do have to drill where can I learn how to do that?

I have some images of my safe that might help anyone willing to help me at:
http://s193.photobucket.com/albums/z92/keyless_1/

Many thanks in advance!
Michael

[freakparade3]

The only advice we can give on the open forums is to call a locksmith.

[Rodfather23]

plus I've heard from other people posting about safes from that era, that they can have some nasty traps in them. I remember someone said they can have a tear gas vile.

[nekret]

plus I've heard from other people posting about safes from that era, that they can have some nasty traps in them. I remember someone said they can have a tear gas vile.

According to the CDC this started in the 20s but I'm no safe technician so I can't say for sure.
http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5308a4.htm

[Eyes_Only]

The design looks a lot like the junk they sell at ROSS.

[keyless 1]

Rodfather23 - Thank you for the warning! I really had no idea that something like that was even possible.

Eyes_Only - What's "ROSS"? I'm 100% certain that the safe is the real deal so I'm not sure what you mean...

[nekret]

Ross is a bargain department store like walmart

[JackNco]

plus I've heard from other people posting about safes from that era, that they can have some nasty traps in them. I remember someone said they can have a tear gas vile.

Teargas, spikes. ive even herd of spring darts triggered by a false keyway.
Old safes and chests are not toys.

as for opening it. calla locksmith. if it is a lever lock it will require the specific tools. although as we are discussing safes i cant really go in to them. If i were you i would forget this one for a while.

As for practicing for 30minutes every once in a while. that will not get you far. when we say you need to practice a lot we mean it. a few hours EVERY day to begin with.

All the best

John

[eric343]

I seem to remember the Chubb Detector being a higher-end lock for more expensive (bank, wealthy estates, etc) safes. Correct me if I'm wrong. Also, Chubb was a British company and this is an American safe -- there wasn't half the import/export traffic back then as there is now, and even these days few American safes use non-American made locks.

This is something a half-decent safe technician will open in a few minutes -- or less. Outer doors even on older safes can be a little tough, but the inner doors are almost always just ~1/4" or less of sheet metal with a hair-better-than-dime-store lock and boltwork screwed on. They're designed to ward off crooked employees trying to stick their hands in the safe when the boss is off taking a leak; I doubt they could even hold off an enraged squirrel as long as it was armed with a crowbar. Calling in a safe tech won't cost your boss much; if you make the ole' insurance argument, he might be convinced that the potential savings well outweigh the cost. Then you get to sit back and see how a real professional does it!

More importantly, the fire insulation is quite dubious if the safe is that old. Remember it would have been designed to protect paper money and paper records, not delicate electronics. (Right around when computers came into play, safe companies brought out data safes that would keep your precious media at a lower temperature than a regular record safe would.) And since the beast dates back to 1877, consider this: fire insulation depends on the moisture in the concrete or whatever to guard the safe contents against fire; after so long, it's likely to be much less effective. I sure as h*ll wouldn't keep my business records in that thing, much less my porno-ahem, mission-critical data.

The bottom line: Read those environmental specs on the manufacturer's data sheet real careful like. Don't bet on the safe providing any protection for your kit unless it can survive well over the 450 degrees F that paper can handle.

[eric343]

The problem with teargas vials is not the teargas; that's just annoying and might give you some respiratory problems. The problem is that safe manufacturers figured out after awhile that teargas wasn't all that good at deterring burglars, so they stopped using it. This means that any teargas is likely VERY OLD. No big deal right? Unfortunately, some of the teargas formulas had a tendency to decompose into highly poisonous and extremely deadly CYANIDE gas. Annoying, in the sense that it's annoying to be dead.

Other traps -- inviting finger-holes that chop off your fingers, keyholes that shoot you, bits that stick you with a needle, etc -- are relics of the middle ages and the warded lock technology that was all they had. When your only lock design is fundamentally flawed (can be defeated pretty much no matter what you do), you start coming up with all sorts of ingenious tricks to make up for it. Unfortunately depending on your locksmith to be more ingenious than your burglar is less secure than depending on your burglar not to have a physical key to the lock (no offense to the locksmiths here), and the invention of the lever lock pushed all those creative little traps off the market real quick.

plus I've heard from other people posting about safes from that era, that they can have some nasty traps in them. I remember someone said they can have a tear gas vile.

Teargas, spikes. ive even herd of spring darts triggered by a false keyway.
Old safes and chests are not toys.

as for opening it. calla locksmith. if it is a lever lock it will require the specific tools. although as we are discussing safes i cant really go in to them. If i were you i would forget this one for a while.

As for practicing for 30minutes every once in a while. that will not get you far. when we say you need to practice a lot we mean it. a few hours EVERY day to begin with.

All the best

John

[JackNco]

ive herd of tear gos viles for sale in shops selling antique locks to date. im not saying all these tricks are still in use. but its something to bear in mind with old safes and chests. especially in an old safe that was used in industry. no reason a locksmith might not have placed a vile in a choice position to slow some one down without knowing they can become deadly (i didn't know they could be)

[bluestar]

my goal is to use it as a fire safe for my hard drives.

My advice would be to get a new, fire-proof safe. First of all, a normal safe protects your hard drives against fire about as much as their original packing. Metal is a good heat conductor and your harddrives will soon be toast.

Second, even if this was a fire-proof safe (which is doubtable due to its age), the drilled holes would render it nearly useles. Fire-proof safes use special concrete with water in it, so that the water vaporizes and thus taking the energy flowing inside the safe while keeping the inner cool (of course, this doesn't hold forever - these safes are rated for some time, most half an hour or an hour. By then, your fire brigade should be there. Tell them where the safe is, so they can cool that area with water). If a hole is drilled through the door, there's a thermal bridge and the time goes rapidly down to a few minutes or even seconds. Oh, and the safe should be kept cool, or the protecting effect is wasted by summer heat.

Third, if you get a fire-proof safe, get a safe rated for harddrives (or "magnetic media") - the normal fire-protection safes are for paper, which can hold much higer temeratures than your drives.

Fourth, decide if it's wort the money (fire-proof safes, especially for magnetic media, are even more expensive than normal safes) or if it would be easier to store off-site backups in a bank deposit box. Depends on the worth of your data, on the risks of getting it stolen (maybe then it's not a good idea to drive it across town regularly), how much money you want to spend, etc..

Just my thoughts, hope that helps you a bit
bluestar

[Shrub]

There seems to be a lot of safe discussion on this thread considering we do not allow it,

When a post starts with somthing like 'i know this is advanced but thought i would post up anyway and see if a mod agrees with it' or 'i know safes arent discussed but this one is totaly fine honestly' etc then i know the thread will need locking before even reading it,

IF YOU THINK IT SHOULDNT BE POSTED IN HERE THEN DONT DO IT, ASK A MOD FIRST,