Safes & Vaults versus Hollywood

[mercurial]

I defer to any safe techs here, but having the dials separate from the spindles is not a common, or even a 'done' thing. And it'd suck to carry around a dial puller to get them off again...

Miniature emergency dials do exist, for use by safe techs when the dial has been removed (by vandalism, or removed by the tech to get to a drill point, etc).

[Doug MacQueen]

There have been several different removable dials seen in safemaking going all the way back to when the combination lock evolved from the lever lock during the mid 1800's. There were numerous examples of wheel locks with removable key dials. In modern times the US made Star and Major round doors had removable dials. There are also many examples of removable dials seen on bank quality locks but these unlike the Star and Major were not intended to be removed by the user. If the cannon movie is the one I remember it was based on a true story. Regarding the water filled method twice in my career I have opened safes that had been filled but unsucessfully opened with explosives. Both of these attempts occured prior to the DeNiro movie ,can't remember the name, where that method was sucessfully used.

[Dean Nickel]

Star safes have a removeable safe dial. So on some it is standard.... then the user can lose it. LOL.

[guy zani Jr.]

The Movie "Thief" starring James Cann and Jim Belushi had the greatest safe burn job in the movies. Great interior bolt work photography also. Guy

[wylk]

The Twilight Zone aired an episode "Time Enough At Last" starring Burgess Meredith as a bookworm bank teller who survives an H-bomb while reading inside a bank vault. See for example:

Time Enough at Last - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

and

YouTube - "Time Enough at Last" (Part Two)

Looking at the vault, it looks genuine but the door seems to be "neutered". The lugs on the pressure bars are missing, the glass covering the boltwork is gone, and probably some of the mechanism has been removed. My best guess is they found a closed bank for filming and the door had been rendered unlockable for safety reasons.

This in turn reminded me of the SciFi novel "A Canticle for Leibowitz" where it was pointed out a fallout shelter trapped its occupants because the door was designed to open outwards but was blocked by rubble after a nearby blast.

[Chubby]

For an accurate portrayal of safe cracking see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlT9AJ4GdQs

[wylk]

That does look a lot like One King West. Here's the Jumper image along with another image, note the details of the day gate like the shape of the latch handle.

[Huw Eastwood]

This might be of interest to some of you guys into all the Hollywood stuff- scroll down to the 12th picture

http://www.lincolnelectric.com/en-us...-industry.aspx

Looks like they went to a fair bit of trouble to produce realistic looking Diebold doors in aluminium

[wylk]

This might be of interest to some of you guys into all the Hollywood stuff- scroll down to the 12th picture

http://www.lincolnelectric.com/en-us...-industry.aspx

Looks like they went to a fair bit of trouble to produce realistic looking Diebold doors in aluminium

Here is the image in question:



These were built for the 1995 movie Heat.

[arielschoenberg]

I enjoyed the movie The Italian Job where they break into the safe, old school way how they just listen to the dial and try to break it open it that way. Can you actually break into like that now of days? Because that seems crazy how she did it. It was just really exciting and good movie.