World's Largest Round Vault Door

[Huw Eastwood]

WoW nice one Max! :)

I know that Mosler made a small working round vault door once also with a small vault room and a gate. It stands in the office of one of grand grand sons I believe in New York. Have seen the picture online once but can't find it now...

Your model does not work or?

Cheers Dicey
Yes, I've seen pics of that one a long time ago- they made the entire vault complete with internal decor- it even had a tiny chandelier light inside to show up the interior and the grill gate- it's very impressive.

This particular one I showed is just a 'quickie' static model for display on the desk or counter. I have made a few working doors and cannonballs, but they were 'major' projects that took an incredible amount of time spread out over several years.

I made the static ones as 'quickies' in comparison as most are just interested in looking at them and seeing all the right bits in the right places so to speak- plus it still takes along long time to make a static, although it's easier in that the tolerances don't need to be anywhere as tight as a working model.

Holes for bolts etc can just be drilled for a static model whereas they need to be reamed close to perfect on a working one. Smaller statics look fine with simplified detail like rivets etc but on working models the time is such that you really have to go the whole way with it and fit all the correct studs, nuts and bolts etc. Lanket slots, gears, spindles, hinges etc all have to be machined and reamed a perfect fit on a functional version, which is of course why it takes so much longer.

If I could live till I was 150 or 200......

[Adrian Weber]

Well back in the old days they made magnificent safes my friend and they probably never be made like that again
The tolerances were sheer staggering if you ask me not to forget the quality of an old Arnheim safe for example.

[VaultDoors]

The Cleveland Fed is briefly featured in the 2010 Modern Marvels episode "Doors" (on the History channel and/or History 2 in the US). At one point the narrator calls the episode "Entries and Exits" (I think that's right, it could have been "Entrances and Exits")) suggesting there was a name change at some point.

Here is the Modern Marvels - Doors episode. It's a large .m4v file so right-click the link and select 'Save target as...' and download it locally to view in iTunes.

The Cleveland Federal Reserve segment is shown at 35:57 - 38:50.

[VaultDoors]

A 1950 16mm movie about the Cleveland Fed is on YouTube in two parts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IqpCFTDo_M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPl8uf8Q-w8

After the introduction, the first part shows the vault door being opened. At the end of the second part, the door is shown being closed.

Note that the combination locks are mounted to the door frame rather than the door, which was a hallmark of Remington & Sherman. This is a York door, suggesting it was built after York acquired R&S.

I clipped the videos in the Cleveland Federal Reserve set.

[VaultDoors]

The Cleveland Federal Reserve vault door is described as having a dual combination but a recent pic shows only one dial (and a switch...) and what appears to be a cover plate next to it. Perhaps there were two dials originally and one was removed. This video shows the vault men spinning separate dials but the pic shows only one.

Video: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cantonv...57639180762246

[Doug MacQueen]

The dial turn knob got clipped off by the door as it was being shut during the filming of a video several years ago. I think it was the one newer video mentioned here but I can't get it to work on my computer. Maybe it can be seen in the video. Doug

[wylk]

Here is the Modern Marvels - Doors episode. It's a large .m4v file so right-click the link and select 'Save target as...' and download it locally to view in iTunes.

The Cleveland Federal Reserve segment is shown at 35:57 - 38:50.

I downloaded this but it won't play in Windows Media Player, Quicktime (which complains "an invalid sample description was found"), or VLC media player.

[VaultDoors]

I downloaded this but it won't play in Windows Media Player, Quicktime (which complains "an invalid sample description was found"), or VLC media player.

When testing the download I noticed the file extension automatically changed to .mp4, not sure why. I changed the file extension back to .m4v and was only able to view it in iTunes and QuickTime not VLC or WMP.

[Doug MacQueen]

Unfortunately I haven't a clue about which you speak. Can you speak en Anglais?

[wylk]

Unfortunately I haven't a clue about which you speak. Can you speak en Anglais?

I'll try!

The file containing the Modern Marvels "Doors" episode was made available in the form of a .m4v file, one of too many file formats for movies. For some reason, after it downloads, some computers (Windows computers?) rename it to a .mp4 file extension. I'm not certain this is bad, the two formats are either similar or identical; for more info check the Wikipedia entry on the .mp4 file type. I think it is at least impolite to rename a file, I really dislike when software tries to do me a favor by thinking it's smarter than everybody.

With either extension, the file will not play for me.

Just like there are too many file formats, there are too many movie players.

If I try using Windows Media Player (WMP), I get an error message that is its generic "something went wrong" message (Windows Media Player cannot play the file...). If I try to play it using Apple's Quicktime player, I get an "error 23132: an unknown error occured". Another popular player is "VLC media player" from VideoLAN.org (it was recommended to me by a friend to play formats that Windows Media Player won't play such as DVDs) but all it does is flash the first frame of the movie and go black. I've also tried a video conversion tool called WinFF which converts .avi files to .mov and many, many other combinations of formats but with "Doors" it immediately fails with "Invalid pixel format '-1'". I tried a web site that purports to diagnose and repair .mp4 files but it failed, too, with the error message "Error". I tried downloading the iTunes app and finally have an idea of what's wrong: "This computer is not authorized to play "Doors"" and it then asks me for an Apple ID and password.

So, I think the actual problem is that the file that VaultDoors kindly made available uses digital copyright management to ensure that only he can view it (to ensure that people pay for it, and to prevent them from distributing it for free). Unfortunately this causes bizarre and unintelligible failures of many other video-playing software packages.