https://www.locksmithledger.com/keys-tools/article/10229247/unlocking-a-gary-tl-15-round-door-safe
A man once closed and locked a safe, knowing that the combination was written down ... somewhere. Ten years later, the safe remained locked and the combination had not been found. Since the owner of this safe wanted to start using it for his business, the company requested my services as a safecracker.
When I arrived at that business, I was led to the safe shown in Figure 1. It was a red Gary safe with a jeweled steel face and a chrome-plated, spy-proof Sargent & Greenleaf dial. The serial number on the door was 46792. I knew very little about this model of safe. In fact, everything I knew is what I just told you. I simply had not yet had the privilege of working on any hinged round doors made by Gary. It is wonderful, when approaching a job like this, to have good documentation of all relevant details about the safe. This article, however, is intended to demonstrate that a good plan of attack can often be devised even without such information.
(Score: 5, Funny) by KritonK on Wednesday July 03 2024, @06:22AM (4 children)
Our company's office used to be at a place, where the previous tenant had a safe. Since he had retired and didn't need it anymore, he didn't bother removing it before vacating the premises, so we were left with a safe, which we kept as a curiosity. The safe was left open, until some idiot saw the safe, said "ooh, a safe", closed the door and spun the dial. Since we didn't know the combination, the safe remained locked since then, until we found someone who would take it away for scrap.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by anubi on Wednesday July 03 2024, @07:58AM (2 children)
Oooh...what a bummer!
I have some of those S&G mechanical locks. On mine, if the file cabinet they were protecting is open, it was trivial to pop the back cover to see the slots on the rotating disks, and see what combination you had to enter to get the three slots to line up so the bail would fall into all three slots which then retracted the bolt.
Very simple mechanism that worked well.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2024, @11:03AM (1 child)
On a bigger stage, does anyone else remember Richard Feynman's story of picking the locks (for fun) on filing cabinets full of nuclear secrets, at Los Alamos?
I think the story is in "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" -- I highly recommend this book to anyone. When it came out in paperback I bought several copies and gave them to friends.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 04 2024, @01:42AM
I remember that book well, and I too bought copies and gave them out to friends at the time.
We're getting close to 100 years after those safecracking stories and the main lesson is still the same and unheeded: CHANGE THE DEFAULT COMBO (or password)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2024, @12:46PM
At one job, the chief technician asked me to help them move a locked safe they couldn't find the combination for from an office to one of our storerooms.
I got down to the office the safe was located to find five people already struggling to move the bugger, it eventually took eight of us.
A month or so later, I get a call from the chief technician to come to the storeroom they'd moved it to as they'd gotten the combination (from a retired staff member) and opened it.
Lead lined, approx 1'9" of the stuff, with further (empty) lead containers stacked inside the tiny (compared to the safe size) internal space, turns out it was an old 'hot' sources safe from 30 or so years previous that they'd inherited from a departmental merger and had forgotten about.
As we'd no radioactive material in the building, a present was made of it to a local scrap dealer - no questions or paperwork.
Several months later, in a hunt for some laser equipment last seen mouldering away in one of our dead stores, I come across several boxes of various radioactive sources in an unlocked steel cupboard...along with several gallons of mercury (but that, as they say, is another story...).
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday July 03 2024, @11:30AM (4 children)
Maybe it's my paranoid browser settings, but here are the image links:
Figure 1 [locksmithledger.com]
Figure 2 [locksmithledger.com]
Figure 3 [locksmithledger.com]
Figure 4 [locksmithledger.com]
Figure 5 [locksmithledger.com]
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Wednesday July 03 2024, @11:43AM (1 child)
In the article I could only see the first pic. My browser (and extensions) might be the problem. I didn't have time to figure it out, so thank you.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Whoever on Wednesday July 03 2024, @04:19PM
Look for the button labeled "View Image Gallery".
(Score: 2) by pkrasimirov on Wednesday July 03 2024, @06:25PM
Click on the picture, it shows it bigger, then arrows appear to left and right, can also navigate with the keyboard.
(Score: 3, Funny) by epitaxial on Wednesday July 03 2024, @07:26PM
Guy used an antique camera to take pictures of this antique safe.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Wednesday July 03 2024, @04:56PM (1 child)
My father-in-law got a safe with the old farmhouse they'd bought. He got the combination eventually, pretty sure through trial/error or some other means. The inside was tiny, but it was embedded in a huge chunk of concrete. It sure wasn't going anywhere easily! I think he finally got someone to haul it off.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 3, Funny) by janrinok on Wednesday July 03 2024, @05:30PM
There wasn't a snail in the concrete was there? If there was - do you know what he has done?
[nostyle RIP 06 May 2025]