Thread: Hollar Round Door Vaults

Dean, I think you are referring to an Australian product called Tann ' Smoker '

That safe is indeed intended to produce thick black smoke if a hole is drilled in it, but due to chemical reactions over time they are liable to explode if drilled. Different product and design completely.

I suspect that a phial of tear gas inside would have been quite ineffective unless forceably expelled through whatever hole had been drilled in the safe to set it off. I presume that some type of dead relocker shattered the phials. Maybe that is why there were two phials-one for the teargas and one for the pressure-inducer - simply having baking soda and water thrown together would have performed the second function so a chemical reaction would be a more accurate description than explosion although they are all different degrees of the same thing - cordite or gunpowder fizz when ignited unless constrained within a chamber whereapon they act explosively.

I agree Tom. Doubtful whether it would work but an excellent deterrent - especially to an unsophisticated safe breaker of the early twentieth century. A good sales device too.

No good for nowadays, wouldn't pass Health & Safety. Couldn't give the burglar a bad chest, it would breach his human rights.

SAFE PROTECTOR is what the device is known as that houses the tear gas vials. There can be as little as one, that is formed in a spiral, to as many as eight single vials housed in a PROTECTOR. The PROTECTOR is mounted on the outside of inside door panel. Some can have a small pin device that can break the vials, most do not. The main idea of the PROTECTOR is, if the dial is removed (knocked off) and then the spindle is punched in, it will break the vials sending out the tear gas through the spindle hole filling the room the safe is in, and possibly the whole building. Tear gas is air sensitive as soon as the liquid is mixed with air it produces the tear gas, it doesn't need to be mixed with anything else to produce the gas. The more vials of liquid the more volume of gas produced. There should be no way for a safe technician that is drilling open a safe to break the vials and set off the tear gas. You would have to drill completely through the safe lock and the back panel to hit the vials of gas. I have been doing safe work for over 35 years and I have not hear of any safe technician that has set tear gas off drilling a safe open. I imagine everyone of them, including myself, was very surprised to see the PROTECTOR on the inside of the door when the door was swing open.
No American safe manufacturer that I know of installed tear gas on there safes. The SAFE PROTECTOR was a after market device. The makers of the devices had representatives through out the United States go to every business and try and sell the store owner on installing one of the PROTECTOR on there safes. This mostly took place from the early 1950 up to as late as the 1970's. At least one company tried to sell the PROTECTORS to the locksmithing industry for them to sell them to there customers. There was several vault door manufacturers in the 1920's that had an external tear gas system that was mounted to the interior wall of vault wall. It was set off my a wire mechanism.
I didn't know why anyone (except today's drug dealers) would want to install any kind of explosives in a safe. The owner would lose everything they had in the safe if it was to explode. I have hear of booby trapped safes that when the door was opening by the wrong person it would set off some kind of an explosion.
I am including a picture of five SAFE PROTECTORS that I have acquired. Three still have the vials intact.

When I lived in Salem, VA there was a Wendy's restaurant that had a safe with a Badger Safe Protector in it. Some thieves set it off one night and the next day when the staff opened the restaurant they were met by the tear gas. The restaurant was closed for a few days while all the hard surfaces were washed down, and the carpet and ceiling tiles replaced because the gas in effect deposited itself on anything open to the air.

In that same time frame a friend who started working there who had collected around 12 of the vials heard about to potential for them to become explosive. He ended up calling the bomb disposal unit of the VA State Police. He said he was allowed to go with them to a police range where they were shot from a distance to destroy them and he told me and many others that they did in fact explode when shot and created a small crater where they had been mounted. He did state that the liquid in all of his vials had turned a dark brown.

From that accounting everyone presumed that there was some kind of accelerant also in the vials that was intended to propel the tear gas outside of the safe it was installed in. You are correct that a locksmith using professional techniques shouldn't activate one of those things but they were designed to be deployed when physical attack was used and that is usually the method of thieves, or as they were called 'Yegg men'.

Personally I would dispose of any such vials by calling the state bomb squad to take them away.
BBE.

Tear gas is not a specific gas/liquid and so differing effects may occur but reaction with the air would have been the most practical manner of deploying it and I doubt that the phials would have been pressurised. Two chemicals within the same unicavity phial would be less reliable I would have thought.

Tear gas cut short an interesting safe-deposit robbery in Denver in 1982. The thieves gained entry to the vault through a ventilator and proceeded to open boxes, but were cut short when a booby-trapped box sprayed tear gas. How common is this today (or even the past), to rig a few boxes at random with tear gas?

Jim

The is one US safe maker, Lewis Lillie, who patented a safe with explosive material in the walls And claims to have made around 30 of them in the 1870's. These safes would not carry the more commonly seen Troy N.Y. maker location as he had moved down to New Jersey by this time. I have never seen or heard of anyone with one these safes and they may well have been purposely destroyed. In Ohio booby trapping has been illegal since 1935 but that doesn't mean there arent tear gas setups still in use as I have had several customers who did not want them removed. And they are not always mounted the outer surface of the doors back cover where they are readily visible. In the safe trade the explosive tear gas debate has gone on for years among people who as a general rule no little to nothing of chemistry. It certainly wasn't my strong point. And the fact that there are no known instances of a safe tech setting one off says nothing as the units are fairly rare. There are lots of legal safe openings that I am aware of that would have, without doubt, set off a booby trap of this type. The technician was just lucky it wasn't booby trapped.

I must amend the last post as I was rushed out of the library as I was trying to answer. There have been quite a few different makers of after market tear gas bombs, relocking devices and a few other strange deterrents. Most show up in the 1920's and 30's. From my own personal experience, the most likely place the tear gas units show up is at older jewelry stores with safes dating back to at least that era. Over my career I have completed numerous openings that would have set off tear gas bombs, had they been installed, depending on the type and location of the tear gas unit. I must admit to have been the lucky one here. But not as lucky as compared to the two times I've opened unsuccessful nitro burglary attempts. So yes there is danger lurking out there for safe techs. I am reminded of the unfortunate guy who torched (legally) a safe filled with black powder. Just glad I wasn't that guy. So that leaves the preferred method of opening safes to be manipulation whenever possible. Doug CPS CMS