Safes & Vaults versus Hollywood

[Cepasaccus]

Saw recently Army of Thieves. The safes and vault doors are very much fantasy, but it is a movie about them and their fantasy opening. The bosses (vault doors) have intricate mechanics like a clock, but all have dials like normal combination locks. (Might be a Mosler or Yale dials or a copy of these.) The end boss has 5 dials. To get them open the cracksman manipulates them with a lot of clicking and listening. A nice, funny movie with many familiar safe parts.

[Cepasaccus]

And a great review of safe cracking scenes done by Dave McOmie: https://youtu.be/g9TPxp09WKg

[safeman]

[QUOTE=Cepasaccus;32852]And a great review of safe cracking scenes done by Dave McOmie:

Here's another one you might like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbgeExmIAO0

He mentions the Hatton Garden robbery with which I am familiar having been asked by the London Metropolitan Police if I knew anything about the Strongroom wall construction. As I go back a long time I could tell them that the builder of the room was Nicholsons of Leeds who made most of the vaults for Chubb and later, Chatwood. I was also able to give them details of the Tangbar reinforcement and it's placement within the wall.

They, the Police, had failed to respond to the first alarm which allowed the attackers the whole Holiday weekend but the strength of the construction was up to standard so was absolved from any criticism.

[Cepasaccus]

Not exactly Hollywood, but ...

It seems the safe opens in this game by attaching a drill motor with press, waiting for it to finish and press a view times F to restart the motor. When the time was over the safe door was open.

That's how modern burglars operate.

[wylk]

Way back on September 23, 2018, there was a discussion of a Father Brown episode (season 3, episode 10, "The Judgement of Man") because one of the characters gets locked in a vault. I recently watched this episode, here are a few images.


Above, an image of the door (the glare is in the original, it's not my screen). There are no visible hinges or frame though the door is shown opening and closing. The dial appears to be a Manifoil, perhaps a Mark IV.


Above, the dial certainly looks like a Manifoil. But in the second image, notice that the dial has slipped out and dropped down a bit! A sure sign the door (or at least the dial) is a prop.


Above: one must grimace when opening a vault door because it's big and strong.

[Gary Stephenson]

the locksmiths shop I used to work for sold a safe dial to itv / Yorkshire tv studios that was just across the road and I remember seeing it on a mocked up safe, the new statesman with rick mayall if I remember correctly t

[wylk]

Another for-show prop door. The description on the back of the press photo reads "Former mayor Henry Cisneros, after accepting two money bags depicting an amount that the Broadway Bank donated for an endowment for Partners in Education, simbolically [sic] puts them in a vault."

Cisneros was mayor of San Anotonio, Texas, from 1981 to 1989.

[wylk]

Another fake Hollywood door, too bad I don't know the title. It does look like they slapped a real dial on it.

[Cepasaccus]

I am sure I have never seen this movie, but it's from 1957 and from UA and if they did not make that many movies that year, then perhaps it might be possible to find out the title.

[wylk]

The movie was The Big Caper (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Big_Caper) which is on YouTube (search for the title). The vault break-in starts at 1:15:00.