Attachment 16586
Printable View
They were certainly quite substantial.
I have only ever seen that size. Did they ever, actually, make the range of sizes quoted? I suppose one of the reasons they never sold was that the big users- the banks- were pretty well tied in to Tann and Chubb.
Looks like the Model 3525 that which, if it is, stands 1200mm / 47inch high and weighs in at 3606kg / 7950lbs. How on earth it tipped the scales at those figures baffles me, did they fill it with Platinum for the weigh in or leave the figures to VW ?.
The almost mythical Model 6325 was (if it actually ever 'was') 1911mm / 75inch high and broke the weigh bridge at 6925kgs /15260lbs. Little information is available on the Gems but hopefully one day a 6325 will turn up needing a new home :-)
It makes base anchoring a joke at those figures!
There was a guy I knew in the trade who would always recommend base fixing or some other method of anchoring- and he had some amazing ideas. He worked from the premise that if he could get a safe in, somebody else could always get it out.
I would agree with that. When I was young and stupid I used to pull out really big, heavy safes single handed with bits of wood, rollers and bars. Sometimes they were bolted down and sometimes the bolts only slowed things down (and sometimes they did not).
To secure the safe properly it would need to be connected to anchor points that were tied into the rebar in the slab. I saw a Chubb Bankers Treasury installed that way that was attacked with a skip truck. The skip truck was found with it's front wheels 8 feet off the floor and the safe did not even have the dust shaken off it.
That was exactly what he used to do if he could. Once the safe is tied to the rebar in the slab any effort upwards was communicated to the safe as a downward force. A bit like standing inside a big bucket and trying to lift the bucket by the handle!
A very effective way is to weld some big RSJ or similar on the bottom of the safe and cast the floor around it.
I saw a big Chubb, once, that had been attacked. I am not sure which model it was but it had the coffee and cream paintscheme and the isolator bolt work. Anyway I suspect there wasn't much to choose amoungst the bells used in the entire series. This one had been centre base anchored with Chubb's patent base anchor. The bad guys had brought along a piece of equipment used on the railways for heavy lifting. They had applied so much force that the base of the tdr safe was actually convex, but the anchor hadn't slipped. Frankly if someone had told me I doubt if I would have believed it. The floor quality and the fitting of the anchor must have been absolutely perfect.
The worst job I ever saw was where a customer had paid for base anchoring. Inside the safe I could see the big bolt, with a big nut and washer. In fact that was all there was. The installer had just dropped a piece of threaded bar, complete with nut, into the fixing hole. It was not attached to anything!
Chubby, I had thought that the GEM subject had passed on, but no.
In marketing, a new product is recognised as filling a gap in the market, designed, and produced and if found desirable, purchased. This safe filled none of these criteria in this country.
A reason that the British Banks were not interested in such as the Gem was that as most of them were self-insuring to a degree and preferred to split the risk. Having four standard British Cash Safes, with as many as 8 different key holders, was a much better risk than having the vulnerability of only 2 keyholders when it comes to the real major threats such as collusion or duress. This same principal applied to Strongrooms.
Secondly it was not that the Banks were tied to the likes of Chubb and Tann from a sourcing point of view, but they depended totally on the ability of both companies to provide a national 24 hour service in the event of lockouts and replacements.
Lastly, when it comes to UL testing, it can be seen as quite unrealistic for application in Europe which is why it is excluded from the AiS listings.
"stand and defend" Here's an example of such from Australia's Tann Agent in 1965.
Attachment 16770 Attachment 16771 Attachment 16772 Attachment 16773
Tann Bankers - you name it - they tried it. penetration, delamination.
Photographs by Johns & Waygood, Melbourne.
Certainly belongs in Ultimate. The Proof of the Pudding.
Thanks Brian for moving these over here and safeman for more Tann annihilation!
thanks to safeone for finding and adding the Wormald 8000 info- deserves to be Here:
Attachment 16783
These are the very sort of safes that I'd hoped our overseas friends would reveal- those made to serve a market for extreme protection over and above their normal ranges. And, with some superb examples so far it just goes to show that there are many out there which would never have seen the shores of the UK or even mainland Europe.
Redoubt, brilliantly made point regarding the high levels of protection needed in the extremely remote locations of Australia and New Zealand.
While we have no such comparable extremes on a tiny island nation like Britain, it must be a major concern in those countries that do.
I've always believed this could've been a major influence behind such extreme British developments like the SLS Gem. The lure and sales potential of these small but potentially lucrative overseas markets being an attraction and possible 'safety net' well beyond what our home shores could offer.