Old Heavy Antique Safe

ekie95

Hi,
I have this very heavy old antique safe. I bought this from a buddy for $100. The tumbler lock was messed up. You can see this from the pictures. I called a locksmith. He was able to fix the tumbler lock and put in back together. The locksmith was only able to give me a two digit combination for this safe. I believe this should be a 4 digit combination safe. The locksmith said he was having problems with it because it was drifting so bad.. What does that mean? The tumbler is bad? Can this be fixed?, and can I change the combination to a 4 digit number? Thanks for any help. Adam

T Davison

Adam, What you have is a thin wall fire safe with a Yale OD 4wheel lock. This safe was made from 1905 to 1945. Now I would have to have the wheel pack in hand to tell what the problem was with the wheel pack.
You can PM and Ill discuss more with you. TJ

Doug MacQueen

Dealing with a malfunctioning Yale wheel pack probably rates up there at the top in difficulty for the safe technician in setting or resetting combinations. The most common problem (and it is very common) with these wheels is wear , causing the wheels to misalign at the fence. This wear occurs at the contact points of the drive pins and movable fly’s of the wheels. It is virtually impossible to determine the degree of wear by a simple inspection of the wheel pack alone. There are a few ways of dealing with this wear and I have done them all at one time or another. Drilling a sight hole at drop in really helps but is not considered professional by many. There is a good reason for this that I won’t go into here. Another unacceptable thing I and other techs have done, is filing the wheel gate openings wider. To those that continue to commit this offense, from experience do not file the gates at an angle. Always make the gate sides straight in. Actually this practice is acceptable if the customer has shakey hands and is unable to hit the number reliably. So now we are down to the nitty gritty of the trial and error of repeatedly removing, resetting, and reinstalling the wheel pack until all the wheel come into proper alignment. Slight realignment of the dial ring may also be required. All of this is assuming the wheels are in the correct order and the isolation washers are in place. I know many members have these Yale wheelpacks so this may help. Doug

ekie95

Hi
Just want to know if I could replace this combination lock with new one or different lock all together? Key or electronic lock? I would just like to use the safe with a good working lock. Any ideas? Thanks

djed

Where is the inside door?

I wonder if someone used this as a spare parts safe?

If you update your profile with your city location, maybe one of the members of this board can swing by and help out.

If you paid a locksmith, did he put the wheel pack back together?

i don’t think a new lock type will work for this safe.