sms1976 wrote:Squelchtone wrote:I'm going to venture a guess and say this is a Macneale & Urban safe, based on the caster mount shape. If it was an Urban & Macneale, it would normally have an Alphabetic dial with the 26 letters of the alphabet instead of numbers. The only thing throwing me off is how the hinges are welded to the door. That makes it look like a Meilink safe.
That very well could be. The safe was from a machine tool company and they had all sorts of lathes, mills, and welding equipment. That would explain why no one else had ever seen that dial before. Thanks for the intel! Looking at all the images I can find of both of those safe brands, it looks the most like some Macneale & Urban safes. Any chance you have information on how many wheels/combination numbers those safes have?
Assuming the lock inside the door is the original one that you would expect to find, the lock has a 4 number/letter combination.
If the dial was all letters around it from A-Z, and the passcode to open the safe was L U C K this is how you would dial it.
Dial Right passing L three times, stop on L the 4th time around.
Dial Left passing U two times, stop on U the 3rd time around.
Dial Right passing C one time, stop on C the 2nd time around.
Dial Left and stop on the letter K the 1st time you get to it.
Dial Right until the dial stops
Turn the handle to retract the door bolts.
Pull the door open.
Since your dial is 22/23/24 numbers, you'll have to swap out the letters L U C K above with some test numbers such as 1 9 8 4 or 1 9 4 5 or 1 9 6 9
People like dates, and they like famous years, as well as easy to remember patterns. The combination could be something like 2 4 6 8 or 5 10 15 20
People also like to select numbers that are whole or that are visible on the dial. For instance, 18 is on the dial, but the number 17 is not stamped on the dial, so unless a number that is important or special to the person setting the combination, you are more likely to see 18 being chosen since it is stamped and visible on your dial, and 17 is not.
The Urban & Macneale locks are known to quite often have the last letter of the combination be set to the letter K, so if we looked at your dial, and it was set to 0 at high noon, then the letter K would be give or take at around 4 o'clock on the dial which I estimate on your dial is the number 10.
The person who worked on the lock may have also made it easy to open by setting 2 or 3 or all of the wheels to the same number so it would not be a terrible idea to dial Right 4 times around and stop on 10, then dial Left to 10, and then Right to see if the dial stops at 8 (which is where I think it would stop when the lock bolt is fully retracted)
It would not take you long to try this for all of the even numbers on your dial.
Right four times to 2, Left to 10, Right to stop
Right four times to 4, Left to 10, Right to stop
Right four times to 6, Left to 10, Right to stop
Right four times to 8, Left to 10, Right to stop
Right four times to 10, Left to 10, Right to stop
Right four times to 12, Left to 10, Right to stop
Right four times to 14, Left to 10, Right to stop
Right four times to 16, Left to 10, Right to stop
Right four times to 18, Left to 10, Right to stop
Right four times to 20, Left to 10, Right to stop
Right four times to 22, Left to 10, Right to stop
Right four times to 0, Left to 10, Right to stop
This of course could be a total waste of time, as we have no idea what lock is inside, if it was modified by the machine shop staff to open in an interesting way that is not standard to that brand of safe, or a host of other reasons.
If you do not wish to drill though, spinning the dial and hoping you stumble upon the combination is pretty much what you are left with.
Good luck!
Squelchtone
