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  1. #31
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    Quote Originally Posted by wylk View Post
    As for your question about round and rectangular doors, I believe round ones showed up roughly 1900 (maybe a little earlier) when manufacturing could easily handle such large pieces at the required precision. But why? What's the advantage? My impression is that it's partly marketing. A big round door is quite impressive. And you can make a case that machining a round door to an airtight fit with its frame is easier.

    My impression is that they first showed up mostly in private safe deposit companies.

    It was common for larger banks to have two separate vaults. One would use a round door for the safe deposit boxes (once banks got into that business) because they look cool, and a smaller rectangular-door vault for their own cash, securities, and ledger books. At times these were side-by-side and might even share a wall to reduce construction costs. In other cases one vault was built on top of the other (such as One King West in Toronto).

    Round doors started fading in popularity around 1960 or so, at least that's my impression.

    Getting back to the thread topic, Holmes adapted his side-mount controls to both styles.
    When you have a REALLY thick and heavy door, it must have been difficult to machine it accurately enough. With a round door they could mount it on a turntable and make it very accurately round and tapered very accurately too. Maybe marketing , maybe it was easier to make.

  2. #32
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    Quote Originally Posted by Tom Gordon View Post
    When you have a REALLY thick and heavy door, it must have been difficult to machine it accurately enough. With a round door they could mount it on a turntable and make it very accurately round and tapered very accurately too. Maybe marketing , maybe it was easier to make.
    Here is the Cleveland Fed door being machined, as well as its vestibule (frame). It looks like the same machine is being used which means the taper should be well matched. I once found a patent for a machine that would rotate a vault door back and forth in its vestibule to achieve a "lapped" finish between the two but the description here is of a hand fit and finish.

    Click image for larger version. 

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    And this is even a remote combination viewer installation!

    Click image for larger version. 

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  3. #33
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    Default Diebold?

    Quote Originally Posted by wylk View Post
    I'll just cut and paste from another thread:

    The pressure system, or pressure bars, is a mechanical system that presses the door very firmly into the door frame. This ensures the door can be locked tightly without any gaps that could allow explosives (such as nitroglycerine) to be poured in. It also helps seal the door against fire, smoke, and flooding. It can also mitigate problems from normal wear on the hinges that cause the door to sag, by pulling the door up against its taper and thus lift it upward. And when it comes time to open a tightly pressed-in door, the pressure bars can exert force to help break it free of the door frame.

    Pressure systems can generate very great forces, many tons in most cases.

    The system usually consists of one, two, three, or four bars across the door that rotate less than one turn. The bars are rotated by a large hand wheel and gears. Each bar has an offset pin that engages an anchor with a curved slot. In some cases the bar has a rotating slot and the pin is in the anchor.

    The pressure needs to be evenly applied across the door.

    ------------------

    Your other question, how does that door lock and unlock, is another small story. For a time there were worries that burglars could punch lock spindles through the door and use the hole(s) to somehow unlock the door (which would include messing with the time lock). One approach to avoid this problem is the side-mount control as seen in this thread (with or without the viewer optics which simply gives greater security against visual eavesdropping) which places the locks well away from the time locks. The other approach, as in the door you show, is to use the time lock to cause the door to open itself using a bolt motor (big springs) which requires zero holes in the door or vault. In this case, at closing time, two big springs are compressed and latched, and the time lock is set for the next scheduled opening. When the door is closed one of the springs is tripped and the door locks itself. At opening time the other spring is tripped and the door unlocks itself. The springs and timers are usually doubled (or more) for redundancy in case a spring breaks but that's the basic idea. The bad part about an automatic door is that it will unlock itself even if nobody is there, such as a blizzard that makes travel nearly impossible for the bank manager but not criminals who seize the opportunity. Or riots. One refinement was a time lock that could have time added to it remotely using a telephone circuit. I've always felt that both approaches (side-mount controls, automatic boltwork) were solutions in search of a problem and serve as examples of marketing skills.

    I think Tim was being facetious when he ask his questions about the automatic vault door.

    DH

  4. #34
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    Default RS Wall Control

    Quote Originally Posted by wylk View Post
    VaultDoors asked about additions to his "inventory" of combo-viewer vaults and I realized his list is missing the former Colorado National Bank in Denver (which closed in 2009). The building is at 918 17th (17th and Champa), built in 1915 with Remington-Sherman vaults. More floors were added in 1926 in a slightly different style, and more floors were added around 2013 for its conversion to a Marriott Renaissance hotel. So the architecture is an interesting mixture.

    Back to the vaults, a few images:

    Attachment 16975 Attachment 16976 Attachment 16977
    Some (all?) of the vaults appear to be accessible with some (all?) converted to other uses such as meeting rooms. I really should go see these some day, Denver isn't very far from home. Are there any specific features that need to be photographed?
    I have one these under contract, but it is a circular door.

    DH

  5. #35
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    Quote Originally Posted by David Hovey View Post
    I have one these under contract, but it is a circular door.

    DH
    David, can you tell us more about this door and/or post images? Obviously not, if the client might have concerns.

  6. #36
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    Aug 2013
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    Quote Originally Posted by wylk View Post
    As for your question about round and rectangular doors, I believe round ones showed up roughly 1900 (maybe a little earlier) when manufacturing could easily handle such large pieces at the required precision. But why? What's the advantage? My impression is that it's partly marketing
    wylk, don't know where you got that from as they were machining colossal workpieces that dwarf vault doors and to much tighter tolerances way back during the industrial revolution. The first of the round doors seemed to show up as you say, around 1900, but the capability to produce them was around long before that.

    By the 1830's and 40s they were machining parts the size of buildings, for all manner of applications and industries from steam engines, mining, ships, pumps, mills etc and to incredibly fine tolerances in many cases.

    Also as already mentioned, it goes without saying that by the nature of the process, manually turning round mating parts to a concentric fit is far easier and quicker than manually milling out rectangular ones- and by a massive margin.
    Last edited by Huw Eastwood; 12-02-17 at 02:44 PM.

  7. #37
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    Nov 2013
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    Gilbert, AZ 85298
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    Quote Originally Posted by wylk View Post
    VaultDoors asked about additions to his "inventory" of combo-viewer vaults and I realized his list is missing the former Colorado National Bank in Denver (which closed in 2009). The building is at 918 17th (17th and Champa), built in 1915 with Remington-Sherman vaults. More floors were added in 1926 in a slightly different style, and more floors were added around 2013 for its conversion to a Marriott Renaissance hotel. So the architecture is an interesting mixture.

    Back to the vaults, a few images:

    Attachment 16975 Attachment 16976 Attachment 16977
    Some (all?) of the vaults appear to be accessible with some (all?) converted to other uses such as meeting rooms. I really should go see these some day, Denver isn't very far from home. Are there any specific features that need to be photographed?
    I am interested in seeing more interiors of Remote Combination Viewers with enough detail to have one built (full scale) or just purchase one which would be a lot easier.

  8. #38
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    Quote Originally Posted by T Davison View Post
    The main door has two locks if you look at the viewer you will see in the lower area of the case a second helix gear. That was the second dial hook up. It was removed for repair.

    The pins are a anti- drill system that most vaults use for protection. The idea is hard to soft to hard . This type of construction or lamination of hard to soft metal will break drill bits off in the hole. ( A drill bit edge will wear or dull with the factors of cutting speed to cutting pressure to the materiel hardness. When you change the materiel hardness you change the fiction or drag on the edge of the drill bit. This change will break a drill bit off in seconds.)

    Those little plate are doors to adj the hing system on the crane arm. The wrenches are made custom to fit each door. Hope this explains some of the questions. TJ
    Here are custom wrenches/tools for the Cleveland Federal Reserve Vault:

    Click image for larger version. 

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    What are the other tools beside the wrenches and sockets?

  9. #39
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    Feb 2016
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    new york / NYC area
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    Click image for larger version. 

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ID:	16993Copy of page #9 from S&G catalog #21 1927.

    Click image for larger version. 

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ID:	16996 Here page # 63 from a Remington Sherman Catalog no date

  10. #40
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    Nov 2013
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    Quote Originally Posted by T Davison View Post
    Click image for larger version. 

Name:	page9.jpg 
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ID:	16993Copy of page #9 from S&G catalog #21 1927.

    Click image for larger version. 

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ID:	16996 Here page # 63 from a Remington Sherman Catalog no date
    I think that's page 61, the corner appears to be ripped off:

    Click image for larger version. 

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