I found an old S&G safety deposit box in the shop, so I decided to do a disassembly. Here's what it looked like from the front. Note the dual keyways.
and here's from the back
These are not the keys, but the keys would have looked something like this. Notice the numbers stamped on the Key. While I'm not sure, this could be the bitting of the key. There were no wards in the key way at all, and the key is completely flat as well.
Upon removal of the face plate held in by philips screws, One is greeted by this.
Here the spindles that the keys slots into are taken out.
From an angle, you can see that the alligator looking things are actually stacks of thin alligator things. (Sorry for non-technical language)
Notice that the locking latch as two protrusions that must fit into the mouth of the alligators, and that both stacks of alligators must be aligned simultaneously to allow the latch to fit into either row of mouths.
When the latch is pulled out from the body of the lock, the spring tension applied by each individual alligator tail makes it fall down. Note that it covers the holes where the spindles for the keys would go.
Upon removal of the alligators from the housing, one can see that there is a groove in the protrusion closer to latch end, which seems designed to catch the serrations on the alligator faces as an added measure of manipulation resistance.
There are six alligators per stack, and for some reason I only photographed 5 here.
You can see that what seems to be the cut is stamped on each alligator
When everything is put together, the key would slide into the spindle as shown, and when turned would lift the alligators to the correct height, allowing the latch to be retracted into the mouths. Like I said before, it is quite clear that both keys would need to be inserted and be in a turned position at the same time for this to happen.
here is everything put together with one of the (wrong) keys inserted!
Thank you for reading! I know nothing about the age or history of this lock, but my hands got that itch so I decided to peal it apart and stick it back together again.
