Tom Gordon Here are a pair of plates off a double doored safe. Apart from over specification, why would the safe have had 2 locks on each door? If one door is open there is no reason to have dual key control on an open safe? If it was a dummy then that would be unusual for a Chatwood double door.
Ian D. Lewis Maybe it was a one off Chatwood exhibition safe seems to have a mixture of single bitted and double bitted locks. Could also be that only certain members of staff were allowed access to the whole of the safe which would mean the people who had access to the left door would have 4 keys. Or maybe the top locks were keyed alike so they only needed 3 keys. I am assuming of course that the right hand door needs to be opened to allow the left on to be opened.
Tom Gordon Ian D. Lewis wroteMaybe it was a one off Chatwood exhibition safe seems to have a mixture of single bitted and double bitted locks. Could also be that only certain members of staff were allowed access to the whole of the safe which would mean the people who had access to the left door would have 4 keys. Or maybe the top locks were keyed alike so they only needed 3 keys. I am assuming of course that the right hand door needs to be opened to allow the left on to be opened. It was fairly common to have a single and a double bitted key on a door. If the top locks are keyed alike and the bottom locks are keyed alike there is still no point to the second lock on the second opening door, as yes they always had to open one door first. [unknown]
Ian D. Lewis My example says top locks keyed alike. That way if the right hand side of the safe was for the access of the general staff then only the people who were allowed access to the left hand side of the safe would have the 3rd key. But that idea sounds to complicated and it more likely that there was no locking in the left door and the doorplates were all cast that way to save time.
Tom Gordon Ian D. Lewis wroteMy example says top locks keyed alike. That way if the right hand side of the safe was for the access of the general staff then only the people who were allowed access to the left hand side of the safe would have the 3rd key. But that idea sounds to complicated and it more likely that there was no locking in the left door and the doorplates were all cast that way to save time. Now you have jogged my memory in that direction, it makes sense that there would have been one lock on the second opening door to lock 3 or 4 way boltwork on that door and the second keyhole would have been a dummy so that the safe looked pretty. [unknown]
Adrian Weber Makes sense if you ask me. Nevertheless I have not seen a plate like this before, nice find!
Tom Gordon dicey wrote I have not seen a plate like this before, nice find! If you have something nice for swaps I am sure that I can find an identical one :-) Tom [unknown]
