Many-Lock Vault Doors

wylk

Vault doors with two combination locks (or even one combination lock plus one key lock) seem to be rather common, but how about three or four locks? Here is an image from a circa-1907 postcard showing a York door with four locks, stated to be the cash vault at the US Treasury in Washington DC. I’d guess it was set up so that either of the two top locks, plus either of the two lower locks would open it. Redundancy in case of failure, plus the security of requiring two people to open?

I’m also aware of Diebold patents 5,603,234 (granted 1997) and 5,697,234 (granted 1997) which describe three-lock boltwork but I don’t happen to know of any examples.

Comments and/or examples?

Paul Prescott

Yes, dual control and yoked in pairs for redundancy.

I’ve told the story before but I’ve come to service more than 1 treasury quality door where the bank decided to stop servicing or changing the combo on one lock in either paid to ‘save money’ ! A near lockout - and a 5 min explanation of the purpose of the second lock soon stopped that ‘economy’ measure !!

wylk

Here is a contemporary Diebold three-lock door. A current eBay auction (111099504466) shows a Titan door for sale:

The patents mentioned earlier suggest there are two ways to configure the boltwork. In one case, any two of the three locks will unlock the door. In the second case, two specific locks can unlock the door or the third lock will unlock the door.

Yankee

I would like to point out that the Titan listed for sale only has the standard two locks. What looks like another “dial” is really the outside of the emergency ventilator. This series of door uses built in ventilators, and also has a telephone jack just for that “special” phone call. I have worked on a few vaults with three and even four fully functioning locks. Quite rare and interesting to service. I’ll look and see if I have any photos of them to post.

Ian D. Lewis

Chubb Treasury Quality Vault Doors could take up to 4 Locks usually combination but could be key if specified.

Ian D. Lewis

Sorry meant to add this pic.

Ian D. Lewis wrote
Chubb Treasury Quality Vault Doors could take up to 4 Locks usually combination but could be key if specified.

[unknown]

wylk

I especially like the styling of the Chubb door’s crane hinge, an attractive break from what was typical.

Any chance you could post a higher resolution version of that image?

Ian D. Lewis

This is a bit better. I will try and make a full pdf file of the brochure soon. Need to practice making pdfs

wylk

Here is an older (1947?) Chubb door showing 4 locks. The boltwork looks like it was borrowed from what York used on many of their doors.

Ian D. Lewis

I don’t suppose anyone has a copy of that brochure in the bottom left hand corner by any chance 🙁happy):

Ian D. Lewis

Here is a safe that may be of interest even though there are lots of 3 lock Safes out there. This is a Chubb Bankers Quality safe and has 1 x Combination Lock at the top and 2 x Keylocks. The key locks are protected by dummy combination dials.These dials have T section bars on the backs of them that engage with the key guides when they are closed and turn them through 90 degrees this then allows the combination lock to be locked operating a shutter mechanism that prevents the dials covering the key guides from being opened. Even if you break the dummy dials off the key guides still can’t be turned as the shutter mechanism locks the guides. The Safe then has to be opened by the combination lock first.