Lets ID this cannonball safe.

[David Hovey]

National Bankers Chest.


The most distinguishing fact is the bolt pattern on the front bearing plate. National used this pattern on most all their Cannon Balls, Screw door and Lug door Bankers Chests.


The pull handles, body hinges, and pedestal all are representative of National.


DH

[00247]

Thank you for the reply, David. Is that the full name of the company? I did a quick google search and did not come up with much. Do you have any info on the company or their products? Perhaps Doug will look in his magic hat and come up with something.

It certainly is different than the usual cannonballs/bank safes that turn up. It will fit in well with some of the other oddballs I have.

[00247]

I did find this reference:

In 1920, Steelcraft Corporation of America took over the assets of the National Safe Company. The company made fire and burgular proof safes, vault doors, safe deposit boxes, money chests and other security related items.

The page also had this picture of a cannonball. There are similarities.

[00247]

After an exhaustive search I finally found another National safe that is the same. From an Ebay auction back in 2012 only one image has been recovered so far, a side image, it is an exact match. I have been in contact with the lock shop that sold it and they are looking for the original pictures. While I couldn’t come up with much on National Safe there are some examples of the tradition square safes, but very little on their cannonball or other bank safes.



I now have the safe home and took a closer look at its construction and lock. The castings of the body and base are of high quality. Much better than my Victor cannonball or Mosler screw doors. It seems to be a very well made safe.





The Yale lock and time lock are a little different setup and hope some of you can tell more about it. On my other rotating door bank safes the combination lock (day lock) controls the movement of the door on the front of the door. The time lock controls separate locking action to secure the door on the inside. On this National, the dial is recessed into the door and the spindle passes through to the lock case on the back side of the door. The spindle gear drives the wheel pack (4 wheels) which then drives another gear on the fence similar to a friction fence model but the fence is spring operated. The lock needed a severe cleaning as it looked like it was lubed with axle grease.. The lock bolt directly moves the 4 door bolts through linkage. This National is probably not as secure as others because of the spindle hole to the inside.
The time lock only disables the combination lock when the snubber bar moves and allows a pivoting lever to lock the fence action. Can anyone shed some light on this setup? Here it is with the time lock in both positions.






I was pleased to find that the original carpets were intact. I didn’t know what to expect inside as the lady who was selling it had it stuffed full when I looked at it. A close inspection of the inside turned up some goodies. Under the lower carpet were 3 paper clips, a petrified rubber band, 2 bent wire things, 2 quarters 1972 & 1979, a 1899 dime, and a 1906 Indian head penny. Wedged in a corner space of the upper shelf was a time lock winding key and a very rare original key for the Yale time lock door. Always fun to find something.

[Doug MacQueen]

Nice! I was down at Matt Lamborn's shop yesterday and we were discussing the possibility of redoing the acid etched parts found on some these cannonballs. I have only tried acid etching once and that was on an axe head, but I think redoing these plates is a feasible project. Now if I only had the space, time and energy to experiment.

[00247]

When I picked up the parts from the plater, two pieces had issues and they were not willing to plate them unless I would accept pits in the finished nickel plating. The two large door pivot finials (which are also nuts for adjusting the door height) had flaws in the cast material that would require repair before plating. The problem with cast is that these flaws are usually impurities within the cast and if you try to repair without getting all of the impurities out they will keep contaminating the repair and result in a pit in the plating. Sometimes if one tries to drill/grind out the flaw it can become worse underneath. For this reason they would not attempt repairs on these items. Sometimes plating extra layers of copper and then polishing the piece out can overcome the pits but it becomes a very labor intense procedure with no guarantee of the results. This shop does extensive automotive trim restoration so their standard procedure is to solder the needed repairs.

The two finials acid stripped and polished out exposing the casting flaws.







I brought the parts home unplated to search for a solution. After a number of inquiries with no definite answer, I contacted Paul's Chrome in Pennsylvania. They are regarded by some as one of the best in the country and after sending pictures of the parts they assured me they could handle the job. They were well aware of the issues that can come up trying to repair contaminated cast and use a different process to deal with them. Instead of repairing the flaw they copper plate the piece and then lead the resulting pit. After polishing out the repair it is copper plated again, polished, nickel plated and final polished.

The results speak for themselves, two perfect door pivot finials.



I have to commend Paul's, they squeezed the parts into production and returned them in record time.

In the mean time two pieces of sheet metal have been copper and nickel plated for testing procedures for the door covers mentioned in an earlier post. I hope to start on that tomorrow.

I also made a spacer washer for the bottom door pivot finial. This safe only has a spacer under the top finial as it carries the weight of the door. I wanted to add one to the bottom finial so that when the finial is tightened to align the inner carriage into the tracks in the door cover it won't damage the paint on the door cradle or risk chipping the filler. The spacer was turned from a scrap piece of 2.5" shaft, made in the same shape as the top but thinner as the bottom pivot bolt is shorter then the top one.

Although I have a lot to learn, my machining skills are improving.









They will be plated with the door cover once the cover's graphics are finalized. I am still waiting on graphics so that I can start the gold leaf process. The National safe project drags on...

[Huw Eastwood]

Great stuff as always, your obsession for perfection is still making me dizzy.

With the flaws in the finials I would have given them a proper bath in battery (mild sulphuric)acid, and once thoroughly rinsed clean and dry, fluxed and caulked them with a heavy high melt soft solder like LM15 or Comsol, I've yet to have a failure of LM15 to 'take' to any filling repair, although this is of course only replicating what they have done using Lead. You could remove any really nasty bits first with the die grinder but they didn't look too bad from the pics.

I've also used low melt Tin/Bismuth alloys to good effect on casting flaws in brass, but I learned long ago from getting stuff nickel and gold plated to go entirely by what the Plater's say, as they always know what's what.

They have done a superb job on them, far better than when it left the factory. Do you keep a running tab of what all these safes cost you or is it irrelevant and purely for the love of doing it?

BTW, from the pics it looks like you bored the washer out to size with the round boring bar, and then used it to side turn to outside diameter and face it off, naughty boy :-O

[David Hovey]

Thank you for the reply, David. Is that the full name of the company? I did a quick google search and did not come up with much. Do you have any info on the company or their products? Perhaps Doug will look in his magic hat and come up with something.

It certainly is different than the usual cannonballs/bank safes that turn up. It will fit in well with some of the other oddballs I have.

Is that the full name of the company?