One cool Victor safe!

[00247]

Just ran across this Victor on Ebay, Sure is a nice one and with a cannonball door setup on the inside it has to be a unique model. Doug, it's in your neck of the woods, maybe a road trip is in order. I love it!

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Antique-Stan...IAAOSwImRYJ14d

[Huw Eastwood]

Wow that is a nice one. It's undoubtedly an impressive and beautiful safe and manufacturers did make bespoke units for sure, but not convinced the inner door makes it a unique one-off though.

Wasn't the concept of a burglary resistant money safe or 'chest' housed within large fire safe routinely offered for top-of-the range protection until vaults became more widespread in the late 1890's?

[00247]

Yes, Max, an inner vault in of itself was a common feature on higher end safes at that time. What makes this one unique is that Victor adapted the screw in door from their cannonball bank safe into the interior. I find it quite impressive to open the doors of this safe to find a nickle plated and engine turned door that requires you to crank open. These doors are quite impressive. Here is the one off my Victor cannonball.





Unfortunately, the seller does not have the combination for the inner door. I would love to see if it is the same as the cannonball door or if it is a variation that might be thinner. I also wonder if it has the Bankers Dustproof time lock on the inside. The lack of the combination is not an issue, it is very easy to defeat the day lock on this door unless the time lock is set... then it is a waste of time.

[Doug MacQueen]

I am not at home today so I can't post the grinding machinery. As far as I know the first use of cast manganese steel here in the US was by Hibbard Rodman Ely at the turn of the century. During the 1890's there were numerous round door square body chests, including Mosler and Victors, and these were laminated construction, not cast manganese steel. There was great difficulty using cutting tools on the new steel so grinding was used. Inspection of the bolt holes on the HRE show where a machinable metal was melted into the bolt hole areas, and then machined for the rectangular bolts.

[Doug MacQueen]

Yes that safe is probably not unique but it is a rare animal. I don't know if the picture of one I have seen is on the internet, but it was a larger fire safe with 4 cannonballs built inside. Pretty sure it was either a Victor or Mosler.

[Huw Eastwood]

Not sure how well this faint black and white image will reproduce here but it's an equivalent double door offering from Mosler equipped with their screw-door chests inside.

000247, It seems logical that the big manufacturers would use derivatives of their stand-alone screw-door safes for these inner money chests, I don't see how that aspect alone would qualify them to be unique - likewise there's inevitably going to be both similarities and possible design differences between features of these secondary inner units and their stand-alone cannonball equivalents. They are undoubtedly impressive doors though and I love the way they cut those heavy ACME threads especially on the tapers.

[00247]

Thanks for that image, Max. That is quite the Mosler. I wish there was some information for it. Having two Mosler screw door safes, a single door and a double door, I have been gleaning as much info as I can on them. There seems to be variations on two basic designs. A larger frame starting about 1890 and a smaller frame later. By the positioning of the crank pinion gear above center on these doors, they appear to be the smaller version like this one that is from 1915 according to the Mosler serial number list.



I am currently finishing up a restoration of this safe and it has a very different way of being constructed which makes the image you posted very interesting to me. I wonder which of the two construction versions was used for it. I will have a thread on this in the somewhat near future.

The larger frame has the crank pinion gear at center like this one from 1891.




Back to the Victor... yes, I should have said rare vs unique.

[Doug MacQueen]

Victor grinding machine

[Doug MacQueen]

Note this machine is for the later coarse thread version where the door threads are not bolted onto the door.

[00247]

Thank you for that, Doug. With that patent number I did a search and sure enough it is here:

http://www.google.com.na/patents/US998508

Also has the full written description for those who may want to know more. The drawings are very clear online but don't have the authentic vintage look of yours.