Chatwood-Milner & Chubb coffers

[Huw Eastwood]

Seeing the early Chatwood Composite safes with the coffers on the other thread reminded me of a few brochures I have.

First is for Chatwood-Milner's Duplextra from 1968. Although intended for anchoring within an existing safe, these units were rather strangely offered as a stand alone unit encased in a giant block of reinforced concrete weighing 560kg!


Chubb's progression of the design with their TDR material


Anyone who remembers the old Castelle safes from the 1970s will I think agree they were a formidable little safe, punching way beyond their 230kilo size.

Apologies unable to upload any pictures, unsure if it's iPad or the site. Photos sized as I normally post up are expanding making the page broken and undecipherable.

[Huw Eastwood]

Try them separately-

[Chubby]

Something isn't working.

[Huw Eastwood]

Something isn't working.

yes I edited the original post to add the last paragraph so viewers would know I was unable to add the pictures. I've since taken lower res pics and will try and add them on here.



And the Castelle freestanding safe


Only ever saw a couple of these, apparently they were a big hit in the wealthy and affluent areas of London where floor loading in flats was limited, but safes with a high level of protection were needed. Superb little safes but not surprisingly they were very expensive back in the day.
2 inches of TDR all round with a 3 inch protective door slab in a 230 kilo overall package was amazing, albeit at a price.

Looks like these pictures have worked and should upload okay, fingers crossed...

[Huw Eastwood]

Well it's a bit of a mess with an unwanted attachment in the middle and unwanted thumbnails tagged on the end, but at least any viewers can Now see the coffers I was referring to!

think I'll play it safe with text only posts in future

[Brian Morland]

Max Vaultage, let me know how you would like it tidied up (email me: Team Leader) - same for anyone else struggling with pictures or simply email them to me when I can resize and add them to your post. A picture says a thousands words and makes post so much more interesting.

[Huw Eastwood]

Thanks Brian I can see you've already done it, don't know what happened there but you've sorted it now cheers.

[WinterG]

Hello,
I found this safe to sell at Lackasafe : http://www.lackasafe.com/products/us...-concrete-body
Do you know why it is so heavy compared to the base model ? Do you know if there are Chubb Coffer safe for sale somewhere ?
Best regards
Winter

[Huw Eastwood]

Hello Winter,
the reason its so heavy is that's the concrete encased version you're looking at there. The concrete was reinforced with heavy mesh over the top, sides and the back, and the whole unit wrapped in a 14 gauge outer steel skin.

The 14 BSWG outer skin, is actually 1.99mm so generally approximated as 2mm, not very thick but obviously adds a bit to something of that size. It allowed the concrete to be poured in and also offered protection from damage afterwards.

The concrete encased units were around 558- 560 kg which, x 2.2 gives a weight in Lbs of 1232 pounds, so close to Lackasafe's presumably estimated weight they mention. Didn't look closely but theirs might be a palleted weight anyway.

As to finding one...
Most standard coffer units were of course intended for fixing inside a larger free standing safe, and so don't get sold off very often.

The concrete encased versions are probably rarer, and similarly rarely seem to show up for sale. Markets and prices are very different around the world though. What Lackasafe might get for their stuff in the US is likely very different to what it would fetch here in the UK or Europe, even more so since our safe markets are dominated by the Euro gradings.

Keep looking everywhere, that's all you can do really. I wanted a Castelle for my home safe and despite 25 years in the trade and eyes peeled up and down the country we never found one!
The Castelle is perhaps the hardest of all, as owners always seem to consider them keepers and rarely let them go.

I will also keep a lookout and let you know if one pops up for sale in the uk. Hope this helps and good luck!

[Chubby]

At whom were such concrete encased coffers aimed? It seems a big unit for such a tiny amount of internal space.

Did they have any anti explosive protection?