Remington Rand File Safe Lower drawers won't open

[mikebarton01]

I have an old Remington Rand File Safe with the combination on the top drawer. I can get it open just fine. There are 3 drawers below which have a push down latch.
The latch works and I can then pull the drawer out a fraction of an inch then something stops it. It was working fine...this just suddenly started. Everything in the safe is in the bottom 3 drawers and none of them will open. Any idea what is going on?

[MartinHewitt]

Hi,
There is probably a mechanism on the side, which prevents opening more than one drawer at the same time. I do have a drawer cabinet where this mechanism got semi-loose and I need pull up at bar running inside from top to bottom to be able to open any of the lower drawers (all besides the top drawer). Maybe it is a similar problem here.

[Raymond]

That age of safe probably does not have a device that prevents opening more than one drawer at a time. The top drawer moves a bar, usually on the right side, that locks and unlocks all the other drawers. Get the top drawer out and you will most likely see the problem.

[mikebarton01]

Thanks for the replies.
I can get the top drawer open just fine. There is no mechanism that I can see which connects the top drawer to the lower drawers.
I think it may be that it's fixed so that only one of the bottom drawers can be open at a time and there is one of them that is preventing the others from opening.
Possibly the bottom one but I can't get it to budge.

[MartinHewitt]

Can you completely remove the top drawer to have a better view?

[Safecrackin Sammy]

Pull your top drawer and look on the right side of the cabinet. There is a bar running down that is the gang lock for the other drawers. Its stuck, bent etc...

[Raymond]

Yeah! What he said. I was looking through my picture files and don't have one of the locking bar. This might be the one that has a half inch screw into the bar, that when dropped blocks the other drawers. If it is there will be a ramp on the side of the control drawer.

[mikebarton01]

Raymond,

Thanks for your response. That was exactly my problem. The bar was stuck in the up position. Pushed it down and the drawers work. Loaded it with WD 40 and everything is fine. Thanks again!