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Explosives in Safe-Breaking.
In response to your comments Al.
Back to the subject; what happens if, instead of trying to blow holes in a safe from the inside (explosives in a key-hole or bored/burnt cavity), a shaped cutting charge as used by military and demolition is applied directly to the face?
Obviously I can't go into much detail here save to say that it comes down to the safe in question and the weaknesses of the particular construction. With the Fichet as previosly illustrated I was asked specifically by the Insurance Surveyors witnesses to adopt the edge blowing technique after having satisfied them that removing the locks would accomplish nothing. From that stage secondary charges of unlimited quantities could have been placed within the lockcase and the door opened. This technique was frequently used in the 50's and 60's without necesserily destroying the contents* as the fire chamber would normally impact towards the back of the interior.
Likewise the edge blowing could have been further exploited by mechanical means exposing the front shooting bolts and leaving the top and bottom ones to be forced by wedge, lever, or jack.
Test houses seem to favour drilling shot holes beween specific barriers to exploit the shear plane.
Shaped charges for piercing or slotting would again just be one step in the total procedure. The detonation could not be muffled being an external charge.
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The Double Door Hobbs actually contained watches some of which were later identified when submitted for repair. Obviously Shock-Proof movements.
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Some more Chubb brochures from the 'proper' days
Here's a few Chubb brochures I mentioned a while back
All that interesting talk about explosives testing took me back to the HSE tests at Buxton in the early 2000's. I was lucky to attend for just 2 of the days, but the very safe I was hoping to see tested ended up being delayed and I think was done several days later. Was a very interesting couple of days though, and a real eye opener to see what annihilation stuff like C4 can do.
Bankers
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Bankers Treasury
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Trident
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Heres a few more forgotten Giants
A few more that were top of the range in their day
Rosengrens V3
V3 was once top of the class and very distinctive with its un-cluttered contemporary styling.
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Rosengrens Jupiter
Who could forget that star handle and those ABN changeable locks...Not a favourite of many but I have to admit a soft spot for them. Like the V3 these were distinctive and immensely built safes, with actual defensive wall thicknesses around the 5.5 inches mark. They also have the mother of glass plates which can cover over a third of the entire door.
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Kaso Treasury
Not so many of these around, used to see perhaps more of the Kaso Gem Model here in Britain, but the style was similar overall.
Another distinctive design and always liked the lockable 'anti-boroscope' escutcheons which were themselves like miniature circular chrome vault doors! Not something mentioned in brochures these days but many boasted such features when fibre-optics first boomed and boroscopes became more common.
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The other halves of the pages.
Were too wide for my scanner.
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That's all folks!
Loch Ness Monster (AKA SLS Gem Safe)
I was having a bit of a chuckle at the gem safe leaflet. It is quite funny. A couple of I noticed were that as regards a time lock they refer to a 2 action lock. That seems odd in such a heavy safe- not enough margin for safety. Also what they say about the actual safe locks. -The point is that they say nothing at all. Only that the safe has 2 locks as standard.
The second point is on the body construction and resistance to attack. They claim it is 12 times as resistant to attack by a lance as any banker being made at the time. So are they claiming that it resists a given lance for 12 times as long as a Chubb Bankers Treasury or a Tann BT? Frankly I don't believe a word of that- but then most of the leaflet seems to be pure fantasy.