Doug MacQueen Here are some pictures of an Ely Norris recently restored by Matt Lamborn. With the possible exception of the Corliss cannonball, the operation of the Yale Y-361 automatic boltwork is the most difficult to understand. Every time I work on one I have to go through the how and whys. These pictures show the underlying boltwork with the timelock removed. Each bolt bracket has two coiled extension springs hidden underneath them. Always trying to extend the bolts outward, they are held retracted by one of two things, the detent arm which is activated when the door is shut or the retraction springs which are contained in the timelock case and not shown here. Note that when the bolts are fully extended (locked), the bolt linkage arms are in an overshot condition and a spring detent coming down from above ensures they stay that way.
Doug MacQueen Showing the driven, centrally located, slotted gear, its operation and its relationship to the retraction spring box driving gear which is in the timelock case.
Timothy Nice safe as too bad they don’t made these cannonball anymore. Any way to have picture of inside of the combination lock..??..Timothy
Huw Eastwood that’s a beauty Doug- the boltwork certainly does look a box of tricks- beautifully made components as well 🙂-:
Adrian Weber Hey Doug, the boltwork on this one is really complicated and I had to browse through the pictures several times even though they are very well documented by you. This boltwork reminds me a bit of the work by Kromer that I have seen so far. I have a picture of a very complicated boltwork of Kromer for German Federal Banks here. I have not even begun to understand how it works… Thanks for sharing the pictures of this old beauty with us! 🙁nerd): Adrian
Doug MacQueen Yes I will post a lock picture after the timelock. So these are confusing but a real pleasure to work with. Here is the retraction spring box. Unlike the extension springs, you must wind this up every time you lock the safe. Like the extension springs they are doubled up for redundancy (safety). The one picture shows a particularly nasty spring box that is in dire need of cleaning and oiling. Generally they would not look like that. Note there are timing marks on the box for a pre-load on assembly. The winding shaft of the blued disc connects right into the spring box.
Doug MacQueen Here is the snubber disc in all it’s glory. This provides the latching action into the half moon cutout on the larger blue winding disc or plate. It is spring loaded and if the little spring is broken, the auto will not lock. The small tabs at the bottom of each timelock movement fit into the relieved ares on the snubber. After time is put on all three movements (counter clockwise), the mainspring (retraction) winding key is also rotated counter clockwise) until the cutout arrives at top dead center. The snubber will automatically rotate into the cutout, holding the winding disc in position. When anyone of the movements runs down to zero, its tab will rotate the snubber back and release the winding disc mainsprings. It is interesting to note that the circular arrangements of the timeclock were intentional to defend against jarring the timelock into releasing, as in the use of heavy hammers or explosives. Doug
Adrian Weber Interesting design feature on the timelock, would have never thought about something like that! You can be very lucky to be able working on such a marvelous piece of art my friend 🙁nerd): Adrian
