Hatton Gardens

[Doug MacQueen]

I don't agree that the forcing screw or the large screw feed drill rig would be shunned by burglars because of size and weight. Both can be disassembled and carried by a couple men or even one man, no problem. Surely not applicable in every situation, but if the tool is shown to be effective and is available or can be made, it will be used. As far as attacking the door and not the body on the laminated chests, the construction is the same, although the doors are typically a little thicker. That picture I posted was US government testing of chests and vaults. Multiple holes were drilled through the doors and bodies of various makers chests. The cutout plugs can be seen in couple pictures and they do support that a hole saw was used. So, as Max as pointed out, what is the cutting edge of the hole saw? Unfortunately the study does not mention it. The hole saw sees two different grades of hardness as well as two different possible metals. No torches are seen or mentioned. I am thinking that a hardened hi carb steel saw is used on the soft steel plates and then possibly an abrasive grinding (diamond) paste used on the hard plate. But given the average of 2 hours per hole, I would think that grinding would be too slow.

[Doug MacQueen]

Forgot to add case hardened steel so that makes 4 types of hard plate that could have been used, although I think that type is more likely to have been seen in tooling.

[safeman]

I stand to be corrected but there were only 2 safe-makers I can recall at the period of which we're talking who had a completely
hardened drill-proof outer door skin. The first was Geo.Price who offered case-hardened doors and bodies, and Ratner's Grade 3


Quality, the outer door plate of which was entirely compo steel with stranded compo rivets attaching the angle lock case. Otherwise, safes by Chubb, Milner and Chatwood had mild steel outer door and body surfaces backed internally by hardened steel plates and so could be drilled and tapped.

Before HS Drills I would imagine it would have been down to the tool-maker in the works to fabricate the spade drill of the time and furnace harden them in bone meal. Here are some illustrations from that period. Nothing high-tech.

This last illustration published by by Hobbs & Co. shows a gas operated furnace attached to a section of safe door outer plates.

Being able to soften ply-steel DR plate came to my rescue many years ago when retro-fitting Ratnermatic type relockers to Milner List 5 Bank safes and stupidly closing the door before linking the device. Fortunately I had an oxy-acetylene torch in the van and having drilled as far as I could before hitting the sandwiched ply steel plate played the nozzle down the hole quickly followed by the drill which luckily sailed through to the relocker. No 'hot works' legislation to impede efficiency in those days.

Just a word in closing, when I have previously referred to tools of burglary, I have only meant the term to include items which can be carried with appropriate concealment about the person.

[Chubby]

That is particularly interesting. The siege of Sidney Street started with some would be jewel thieves knocking through a wall to reach a gas pipe so they could use the coal gas to help them open a safe. I presume that they wanted it in order to soften some plate. That was in 1911.

[Huw Eastwood]

Cheers for the interesting reads guys. The spade drills safeman posted are certainly the more common drill bits of that period and typically used for drilling holes up to say, three quarter inch diameter, inch perhaps at most. Hard work by hand under the easiest of conditions, but throw the hardest steels of the day into the equation and it gets much harder. Yes there are countless age-old tricks for hardening them like safeman pointed out, but it must have been painfully slow as I'd expect they achieved little more in terms of superior hardness than the material they were drilling. That was probably the easy bit though as we all find ways around problems, it's the big diameter holes with what appear to be the hole saw type annular cutters that seem the biggest mystery.

The more I look at Dougs 1890s picture the more I'm blown away by it. That size of hole through that thickness of hard and laminated material is incredible, and all done by arm power.

The flame softening technique could explain things to a certain extent, but as Doug says in those tests there's no equipment visible and no mention of it either.

My very distant and limited experience of oxyacetylene use in this application made me realise that a relatively large outer hole is needed in order for it to work effectively. The thicker the outer plate covering the hard steel underneath, the larger the outer hole needs to be in order to concentrate that flame effectively down onto the hard plate inside. The gas torch setup safeman posted is an amazing bit of kit for the time, and it's clear from the sketch its being used down a pretty large diameter hole, which isn't a problem in the majority of cases where the outer plate is mild. It's the large cored holes straight through the Bankers doors without softening that's got me scratching my head.

Guys I'm not doubting or questioning what you're saying here, and apologies if it came across like that, I'm in agreement with the individual points you're making, it's just that collectively they still leave the annular cutter mystery open. Safeman, yes the soft outer plate on the Chatwood answers the thread tapping mystery, that was down to me thinking the outer door skin was hardened like the GP and Ratner's.

Doug I agree that using a grinding paste on the large diameter holes would be slow. So slow I just can't see it working with arm power, not even in a week! One thing I noticed in the Chubb Collectanea book makes a few references to the standard hole saws available, but this was much later than what were talking here, and even in 1926 the Enox range of so-called 'Ring Saws', stopped at 3 inch diameter. These were what were used in the 1920s London safe attacks, which as we know turned out to be only lightweight fire resistant safes, being misused for the storage of valuables. Obviously Useless on the hardened steels of the burglary resistant and bankers safes were talking about here.

It's definitely an absorbing subject, and it's sure got me thinking. I wouldn't want to compete with that 1890s picture in a mock-up test, and that'd be with an open catalogue choice of coated/tipped cutters, AND the power of a one horsepower motor!

[Chubby]

It is a mystery! I suspect that then, as now, safe manufacturers weren't going to give away the whole of the story! One can scarcely blame them for that of course.

Of course in the absence of thermally triggered AEDs there was much more scope for annealing a door, or at least part of a door.

Those old Ratners used to be hardened on every face as well so there was no back way in!

[Huw Eastwood]

It is a mystery! I suspect that then, as now, safe manufacturers weren't going to give away the whole of the story! One can scarcely blame them for that of course.

Of course in the absence of thermally triggered AEDs there was much more scope for annealing a door, or at least part of a door.

Those old Ratners used to be hardened on every face as well so there was no back way in!

Yes I've got not-so-fond memories of one of those Ratner's I opened for a church in the 80s. It was a small size single skin body, and it just got harder and harder on drilling, all my usual tricks had little effect and to make things worse they claimed the person who'd requested it wasn't authorised and tried to back out of paying!

[Chubby]

I knew a guy who would not work for churches unless he got paid in advance as he had had so many cases of them not paying.

I thought church safes had to be "fire resisting" safes if they were being used to store records of marriages etc. I live and learn.

[Doug MacQueen]

Safeman, I had a feeling that's what you meant regarding transporting the tools, and possibly more common in the UK. But it would have been difficult to hide the Hilti core saw rig under a kilt. I did a little more digging in the info I have collected and found in a 1896 book on safe burglary that diamond was known to have been applied to drills to overcome the harder metals. But that doesn't answer the large hole saw in question. Also, here in the states, twist drills would have been the typical drill used as Morse patented it in 1861 and the Cleveland Twist Co was in business in the 1870's. Regarding the use of case hardening, I suspect that the carbonizing was not very deep, since it only needed to defeat the typical hardened high carbon drill of the time from making initial penetration. These drills were already brittle compared to modern HSS and although they could be made even harder, that just made them more likely to shatter. But the hardened outer skin could be removed by grinding through it, then drilled and tapped. Easier at the factory but also possible on site.

[Chubby]

Some of those old hardened plates were incredibly brittle. Drill until you get there and then apply a punch with a heavy hammer and you could break through them.

Of course the other 2 mantras were drill until you hit brass or, my preferred one, drill until you see daylight.