I need help identifying these Remote Combination Viewer Vaults. Please let me know if you recognize any of them - Thanks!
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I need help identifying these Remote Combination Viewer Vaults. Please let me know if you recognize any of them - Thanks!
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Frederick Holmes, a New York vault engineer, incorporated this design in vaults made by Remington Sherman, York and possibly others. Wylk may be able to help further on ID.
I've seen the first two images in the book Lure of the Lock (Holmes wrote that section), but I don't know where they were installed. The other two are interesting but are new to me.
I have worked on these doors for years . The right angle gear is the main problem with the combo lock. The pin in the gear loosens and move starts and it all down hill from there. The locks on these doors are on the wall behind the the viewing station. The door is locked with a rod system. The vault alarm is a vibration type. That hook up to a control that floods the vault room and area around the vault floor. thats the basic over view of that type of vault. TJ
Amazing mechanism shots you've posted there medeco, a complete first in terms of remote combo viewers I think, so a BIG thanks for posting those.
The outer unit with the bevel gears is pretty much exactly how I'd imagined it tbh, but the real shocker has been seeing the simplicity of the internal locking layout, theres a lot less in there than I'd imagined!
The middle image is particularly interesting, showing a staggered pattern of circles on the side of the door. Might these be assembly pins, used to attach parts of the door together after being fabricated separately?
I presume the two "cans" above the frame are alarm contacts.
Wylk, your attention to detail continues to surprise me. More than likely those were manganese steel pins installed around the perimeter of the door, although that does seem like excessive overkill on a door of that thickness. But during that period, overkill was the name of the game and to my knowledge there was never a successful door attack on doors of that thickness. The overkill would discourage even making the attempt.
medeco - THANK YOU for posting the interior of the remote combo viewer. These devices are of particular interest to me and I have wondered about their interior for years. The closest I could find was a patent on Cylindrical Vault Doors used at the NY Fed and PA Treasury. See attached file
I have not seen the vault door in the pictures you posted, where is this vault located? I created an inventory of remote combo viewer vaults, see attached file. Could you please review and let me know if I missed any.
Can you post pics of other remote combo viewers? Thanks!
Hey guys,
as a "remote combination viewer addict" I want to participate here :D So if the question is
1. How does a RCV work?
this is simple to answer: All you need is a way to remotely control the bolt work. This is done via two pins - one for opening and the other for closing the door. The RCV provides the necessary mechanics for this and the rest is details.
But if the question is rather
2. How is this done for the various doors?
then we need blueprints or other photos.
Unfortunately I understood the inner workings of RCVs only recently so my big model door does not show this. But if I build a new one, it will have a fully functional and original RCV :)
Best regards
Maik
PS: I calculated the weight of my current door: 506,8kg or 1013,6lbs. Yeah, me too :D
Attachment 16937
This is the same type of viewer but the door lug locks of the pressure system locks into the viewer case. There are two dials that can be seen. The big spoke wheel is used to open the locking collar or ring that is affixed to the frame. This door only swings . In the center of this round door is a door that hides a triple or quad time lock. Hope this helps.TJ
Nice, the matching emergency door to the main rectangular door you posted- what a monster, always love the exaggerated proportions on the emergency doors- the filing cabinet gives a good sense of scale. Also has the same alternated pins/plugs visible around the edge. Thanks for posting these TJ, you will have made the forum fans of these doors very happy!
Thanks for this latest picture! Emergency doors often are "different but similar" to their big-brother main door. I like the two arrows that line up to show the locking lugs are aligned for closure. There are pins in the door like those in the main door. Both halves of the alarm contact can be seen. No surprise there is a beefy door stop. A data plate of some sort is on the lower hinge that has been painted over, demonstrating that this was not the original paint (if it was even painted at all in the first place). Was the central area was originally glass, replaced with metal at a later time when the glass broke?
All that dust makes me wonder if the door has even been closed recently. The greasy appearance of the door frame makes me want to grab that can of WD-40 and do some cleaning.
What is the purpose of the manganese steel pins installed around the perimeter of the door?
The main door appears to have a single combo and the emergency door has a dual combo, is that right?
I believe the data plate on the lower hinge may be an access panel for servicing the hinge. Similar plates can been seen on the Cleveland Federal Reserve's Emergency Vault Door:
Attachment 16942
and One King West's Main Vault Door:
Attachment 16943
The main door has two locks if you look at the viewer you will see in the lower area of the case a second helix gear. That was the second dial hook up. It was removed for repair.
The pins are a anti- drill system that most vaults use for protection. The idea is hard to soft to hard . This type of construction or lamination of hard to soft metal will break drill bits off in the hole. ( A drill bit edge will wear or dull with the factors of cutting speed to cutting pressure to the materiel hardness. When you change the materiel hardness you change the fiction or drag on the edge of the drill bit. This change will break a drill bit off in seconds.)
Those little plate are doors to adj the hing system on the crane arm. The wrenches are made custom to fit each door. Hope this explains some of the questions. TJ
This may be an optical illusion but the vault door appears to be a lot thicker/deeper than the door frame/wall thickness...
Attachment 16949
Also, I do not see and bolt marks where they extended and rest against the interior frame. It almost looks like this is a transplanted door and grille from a former bank to someone's man cave. Not what I would expect from a typical bank installation from the early 1900's.
Attachment 16974
The red arrow points to where the locking bolts lock into the frame. The day gate is always been there as far as I know. The ramp is down in this picture so the door can't close. TJ
VaultDoors asked about additions to his "inventory" of combo-viewer vaults and I realized his list is missing the former Colorado National Bank in Denver (which closed in 2009). The building is at 918 17th (17th and Champa), built in 1915 with Remington-Sherman vaults. More floors were added in 1926 in a slightly different style, and more floors were added around 2013 for its conversion to a Marriott Renaissance hotel. So the architecture is an interesting mixture.
Back to the vaults, a few images:
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Some (all?) of the vaults appear to be accessible with some (all?) converted to other uses such as meeting rooms. I really should go see these some day, Denver isn't very far from home. Are there any specific features that need to be photographed?
I just realized the Colorado National Bank is not a "viewer style" installation, merely a "side mount". But the door should be identical or nearly so.
I have stumbled across many Remote Combination Vaults (without viewers) in my quest to discover all known Remote Combination Viewer Vaults. Remote Combinations (and bolt-throwing handles) are either flush-mounted on the door jamb or surface-mounted on the door jamb in a case with illuminated combination dial(s) and a pressure system lug. Check out the Remote Combination Vaults album.
All Remote Combination Viewers either have a pressure system lug like One King West:
Attachment 16979
or serve as the pressure system lug lock like the Cleveland Federal Reserve:
Attachment 16980
Wow guys, those are fantastic pictures! Keep posting more :)
Best regards from Germany
What was the pressure system use for on these vault doors?
Why are the early doors round and the later doors rectangular with the pressure system?
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How is this vault door locked or unlocked?
Enjoy TJ
I'll just cut and paste from another thread:
The pressure system, or pressure bars, is a mechanical system that presses the door very firmly into the door frame. This ensures the door can be locked tightly without any gaps that could allow explosives (such as nitroglycerine) to be poured in. It also helps seal the door against fire, smoke, and flooding. It can also mitigate problems from normal wear on the hinges that cause the door to sag, by pulling the door up against its taper and thus lift it upward. And when it comes time to open a tightly pressed-in door, the pressure bars can exert force to help break it free of the door frame.
Pressure systems can generate very great forces, many tons in most cases.
The system usually consists of one, two, three, or four bars across the door that rotate less than one turn. The bars are rotated by a large hand wheel and gears. Each bar has an offset pin that engages an anchor with a curved slot. In some cases the bar has a rotating slot and the pin is in the anchor.
The pressure needs to be evenly applied across the door.
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Your other question, how does that door lock and unlock, is another small story. For a time there were worries that burglars could punch lock spindles through the door and use the hole(s) to somehow unlock the door (which would include messing with the time lock). One approach to avoid this problem is the side-mount control as seen in this thread (with or without the viewer optics which simply gives greater security against visual eavesdropping) which places the locks well away from the time locks. The other approach, as in the door you show, is to use the time lock to cause the door to open itself using a bolt motor (big springs) which requires zero holes in the door or vault. In this case, at closing time, two big springs are compressed and latched, and the time lock is set for the next scheduled opening. When the door is closed one of the springs is tripped and the door locks itself. At opening time the other spring is tripped and the door unlocks itself. The springs and timers are usually doubled (or more) for redundancy in case a spring breaks but that's the basic idea. The bad part about an automatic door is that it will unlock itself even if nobody is there, such as a blizzard that makes travel nearly impossible for the bank manager but not criminals who seize the opportunity. Or riots. One refinement was a time lock that could have time added to it remotely using a telephone circuit. I've always felt that both approaches (side-mount controls, automatic boltwork) were solutions in search of a problem and serve as examples of marketing skills.
As for your question about round and rectangular doors, I believe round ones showed up roughly 1900 (maybe a little earlier) when manufacturing could easily handle such large pieces at the required precision. But why? What's the advantage? My impression is that it's partly marketing. A big round door is quite impressive. And you can make a case that machining a round door to an airtight fit with its frame is easier.
My impression is that they first showed up mostly in private safe deposit companies.
It was common for larger banks to have two separate vaults. One would use a round door for the safe deposit boxes (once banks got into that business) because they look cool, and a smaller rectangular-door vault for their own cash, securities, and ledger books. At times these were side-by-side and might even share a wall to reduce construction costs. In other cases one vault was built on top of the other (such as One King West in Toronto).
Round doors started fading in popularity around 1960 or so, at least that's my impression.
Getting back to the thread topic, Holmes adapted his side-mount controls to both styles.
When you have a REALLY thick and heavy door, it must have been difficult to machine it accurately enough. With a round door they could mount it on a turntable and make it very accurately round and tapered very accurately too. Maybe marketing , maybe it was easier to make.
Here is the Cleveland Fed door being machined, as well as its vestibule (frame). It looks like the same machine is being used which means the taper should be well matched. I once found a patent for a machine that would rotate a vault door back and forth in its vestibule to achieve a "lapped" finish between the two but the description here is of a hand fit and finish.
Attachment 16988
And this is even a remote combination viewer installation!
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wylk, don't know where you got that from as they were machining colossal workpieces that dwarf vault doors and to much tighter tolerances way back during the industrial revolution. The first of the round doors seemed to show up as you say, around 1900, but the capability to produce them was around long before that.
By the 1830's and 40s they were machining parts the size of buildings, for all manner of applications and industries from steam engines, mining, ships, pumps, mills etc and to incredibly fine tolerances in many cases.
Also as already mentioned, it goes without saying that by the nature of the process, manually turning round mating parts to a concentric fit is far easier and quicker than manually milling out rectangular ones- and by a massive margin.
Here are custom wrenches/tools for the Cleveland Federal Reserve Vault:
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What are the other tools beside the wrenches and sockets?
Attachment 16993Copy of page #9 from S&G catalog #21 1927.
Attachment 16996 Here page # 63 from a Remington Sherman Catalog no date
I think that's page 61, the corner appears to be ripped off:
Attachment 16997