9 Lever Milners Trible Stump Safe Lock

Markus

Here´s another lock of my collection. It´s a 9 lever Milners Trible Stump with the lock No “O.979”, which shows that 1903 was the year of manufacture. The two original keys are stamped with “Milners Liverpool & London” on one side and on the other side “Middle” and “O.979”. This is because this lock would have come from a big Bank Vault that had 3 locks on it, this has been the middle one.
Enjoy the pictures.

Huntlocks

Great photographs Markus - thanks for posting them.

How did you come by the lock? Did you see the safe?

Years ago I bought (and sold) a Milners Bankers safe probably same era. Extremely heavy. I didn’t see inside the door, my neighbour saw it come of the lorry and bought it from me for storing tools. I still have the plaque.

Paul Prescott

Nice lock and really good pictures.

Probably off a large safe rather than a strongroom though, there is a detachable bit key version that was used on the really heavy safes & doors. I used to have one, I’ll see if I still have pictures of the key ..

Markus

Hi Huntlocks,
a friend of a friend sold the lock to me. So i have never seen the safe or vault it came from. I nearly post every info on the lock i have. I knew there was also a 7 lever version of this lock, cause i saw it once on ebay.

Markus

Ian D. Lewis

Looking at the key markings this was the middle lock of three.
I came across a few of these in the 70’s and the locks were often all different.
Often the top lock would be a Kromer double bitted or pork pie lock as they were often called.
The top lock would also operate a shutter that would cover the other to keyholes.

Ian

Paul Prescott

Ian D. Lewis wrote
Looking at the key markings this was the middle lock of three.
I came across a few of these in the 70’s and the locks were often all different.
Often the top lock would be a Kromer double bitted or pork pie lock as they were often called.
The top lock would also operate a shutter that would cover the other to keyholes.

Ian

I think, your thinking of Chatwood - not Milner ….

Huntlocks

Markus

Meine Liebhaberei ist Fotographie. Ihre Fotographien sind aussergewöhnlich. Wie erhalten Sie solche gute Abbildungen ohne grellen Glanz? Welche Kamera benutzen Sie? Benutzen Sie Blitz mit einem Reflektor? Richard

My hobby is photography. Your photographs are really exceptional. How do you get such good pictures without glare? What camera do you use? Do you use flash with a reflector?

Richard

Markus

Hi Richard,
don´t you know? Good pictures are result from deleting the bad ones. :lol: First, i took about 150 photos!
I´ve used a Canon Ixus 40. I don´t used a flashlight. The lamp i´ve used was a self-build halogen lamp with 6× 20w reflector-lamps and set the white-balance on tungsten. Most of the pictures i shoot with a large focal-length. I want to post a topic of how i have made the photos with more detailed information these days.

regards
Markus

Huntlocks

Thank you for the information Markus.

I can now understand how you got those beautiful pictures. I will have to build myself a ‘rig’.

I was hoping you would give me a tip that would be easy but I am not surprised, the photos are really evenly lit - very nice, well done.

Yes, post some guidelines I am sure others will be interested.

Richard.

diadalad

I too am really impressed with these great photos of a lovely lock. I take my hat off to you, Markus. I have a couple of the ordinary single stump version, but I’d love to get my hands on one of these. I imagine the purpose of the three stumps was to:
1) make it more difficult to drill the stump out
2) reduce the effect of end pressure on the bolt, am I right?

I have some questions about the levers: why do levers 1 and 5 operate only on the back two stumps? and why do only levers 4, 7 and 9 have all three gates cut at the normal width? I can see that lever 3 has extra wide gates, perhaps this was to accommodate 2 keys in a master-key system (?), but why do neither of the back stumps operate on lever 2, and only one of them on levers 6 and 8? Was this just for ease of manufacture? Anybody got any answers?

Diadalad

Tom Gordon

Although I do have a Chatwood safeplate which has three escutcheons on it (from the city Of London) I only know of two other examples of that (from the same building). Two locks were common, with or without escutcheon locks either on the safeplate or from a seperate lock let into the hinge edge of the door and operated from a key just under the top hinge.
Cheers
Tom

NKT

I’d suggest that the three stumps would greatly reduce the chances of the bolt being punched. It would probably increase the dificulty in picking, too, since you would get differing feedback.

That’s probably also a reason behind some levers having only one interaction, while the others have two or three. It might also prevent some decoder attacks.

Very nice locks.

Paul Prescott

Also the lock would have to be drilled three times ..

David Appleby

I have seen these fitted on Vault doors even with these shorter keys

Paul Prescott

exspook wrote
I have seen these fitted on Vault doors even with these shorter keys

That would have been a ‘book quality’ door. The real heavy doors used long detachable keys - by necessity :!:

[unknown]

David Appleby

The example I was thinking of had three locks each with a seperate 7-11 escutcheon and the door was only 25mm (one of those Old Inches) thick, with a grille gate on the inside
The back pan was a two manner to remove with massive threaded bolts

I have not seen these with detachable bits, do you have an image please?
Many thanks
Exspook

Paul Prescott

Not a great picture as I took this quite a few years ago ..

David Appleby

Thank you
I have seen these keys on CHUBB Channel locks (pipe key)and the key bit has a dovetail taper that holds it in place on the stem

Think I have one around will try and get some images

Thank you for the fast reply

Paul Prescott

I’ve seen those too. I suspect they post date these Milners and Chubb copied the design (nothing unusual there).

Dean Nickel

Back ground info on this lock please. What range of dates was this 3 stump lock manufactured? If I am right what I have so far is there was a 7 lever and a 9 lever. Was the 7 only used on certain containers and the 9 on others? Is there a listing of serial numbers? Is there a history of the company or the designer Benjamin Boyce of this lock?