Safes & Vaults versus Hollywood

[Arcade Al]

A couple of frame grabs:

"Sherlock Holmes and the mystery of how he found himself in an episode of Storage Wars..."

[Huw Eastwood]

Seeing what looks like an early pattern up/over garage door slide vertically upwards into a false wall like that is incredible. The addition of the operating hand wheel from the carriage of a 1930s British lathe was just too much.

I don't think the human mind was intended to take such levels of stimuli or excitement.

[wylk]

The 1971 film was released as "$" (dollars) in the US, and "The Heist" in the UK. I didn't see it but I agree that vintage Goldie helps. Here are a couple of publicity images I found:



I don't think the vault door looks too bad. They didn't go overboard building the prop. The end of the pressure bar should be offset; the lock mounted high on the door is unlikely; in this image it doesn't look like there is any sort of wheel or handle to operate the boltwork; I would expect more bolts holding the hinge plate to the door, and larger ones. Overall I'd give the door a "B+".

I noticed that Gert Frobe co-starred; most will remember him from another sort of heist film, "Goldfinger".

[Chubby]

About 9 minutes in:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00cghns

[Chubby]

about 2 minutes into this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6Zo_BaxTsk

[wylk]

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.

The pressure needs to be evenly applied across the door. Hence in the recent computer-generated stock image, the two bars on the left side of the door would not occur on a real-world door.

[Cepasaccus]

Thanks wylk. That makes sense, especially in times where nitroglycerin was en vogue.

[Chubby]

..... 9 minutes into this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ik_xGzjP3qI

[Chubby]

This includes Lillian Gish and her sister. Quite why there is a hole through the adjacent wall is far from clear to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVSFlSxNvLg

[Tom Gordon]

Well, every good English gentleman's house has ramparts and castellations. Obviously every good American gentleman's house has holes for shooting the backroom staff!

This includes Lillian Gish and her sister. Quite why there is a hole through the adjacent wall is far from clear to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVSFlSxNvLg