I was given a Hall's safe, hoping to open and possibly restore it

trailspice

Hi,
I’m helping a woman move and she said I could take anything I wanted out of a shed on her property. I poked my head inside, moved a couple boxes, and was surprised and delighted to find an old safe in the corner. I double checked that it was included in her offer and she said I could have it as long as I gave her a cut of the loot.

It’s about 24×24×36 inches (including 6″ of castle on the bottom) the door can be jiggled and the locking mechanism seams to turn freely and I can feel it picking up wheels as it’s rotated. The dial says “Hall’s Safe&Lock Co, Cincinnati, O” around the knob and the handle has “63538” cast or stamped into it, no other marks are visible on the safe. I’ve been googling and it looks as though the presence of an apostophe indicates it dates to before the HHM merger in 1892.

Now, I’d very much like to get it open and would ideally like it to be usable afterwards so I can clean it up, restore it as best I can and keep my many, many valuables (by which I mean whatever valuables happen to be in it, ’cause I’m in that wonderful stage of life known as gradschoolish) I’m hoping to employ Dr Feynman’s method of guessing at a combo, but I don’t know the first thing about opening old safes so literally anything would help, such as the dialing sequence.

Any how, here’s a link to some pictures:
http://imgur.com/a/vApW1

Doug MacQueen

Feynman’s method won’t help you much as it was employed only with the door open. Doug

trailspice

The principal that most people set idiot combinations like dates seams like a solid enough place to start, and it reduces the possibilities from 1,000,000 to 37,200, and if there’s 1 digit of slop both ways it’d be down to 1,452.
Mostly I’m just looking for something to keep me busy until I can get a locksmith’s opinion/ price.

Doug MacQueen

It is screw change lock and doesn’t lend itself at all to setting combs to specific dates or any specific numbers for that matter. Time would be better spent getting through grad school. Doug

chemicalbob

When you don’t have a combo, those old safes don’t do much but look nice. This shows right their that old safes are still good for burglary protection. When one of those is locked up with no combo. no ones getting in there, without invasive methods.

trailspice

Couple hours with an angle grinder and a good drill got me into it (if I did it again it’d take 40 minutes and I might not need the grinder) I cut next to the bolt and drilled out the rivets attaching the dead bolt armature to the handle and reach in and popped the deadbolts back (the album I linked in the first post should be updated with pictures) if/ when I get bored I’ll bolt the armature back together and weld up the front of the safe.

As for the spoils… I got a plastic button and a dog license receipt from 1943.

chemicalbob

trailspice wrote
Couple hours with an angle grinder and a good drill got me into it (if I did it again it’d take 40 minutes and I might not need the grinder) I cut next to the bolt and drilled out the rivets attaching the dead bolt armature to the handle and reach in and popped the deadbolts back (the album I linked in the first post should be updated with pictures) if/ when I get bored I’ll bolt the armature back together and weld up the front of the safe.

As for the spoils… I got a plastic button and a dog license receipt from 1943.

Ha Ha, I read 99% of found locked safes are empty.

[unknown]