Herring-Hall-Marvin Safe with HHM dial
The other day my boss dropped off an old HHM safe that he couldn't get into using the known combination. its about 13"x12" and ten inches deep.
The dial has the HHM brand/logo on it. Not Yale, nor S&G.
It has no opening lever.
The combination is written in chalk (in two places) as "L44, 1, 64, 5". From that, I am assuming that this is a left right left, with a turn to the right all the way to 5 to extract the bolt.
Regrettably, the bolt does not ever seem to catch or "lock up" like it should when the combination is entered. - there is zero feedback suggesting that it has been entered. (in other words, not re-locked)
I can feel 3 wheels inside the lock.
the first two wheels pick up easily (#'s 3 and 2) but when I pick up the last one the dial is quite hard to turn. harder in some areas than others.
it has a very wide contact area. 92-10. - I think it is NOT a friction type, because it does seem to have a contact point on both left and right.
the fly width is different between wheels. the first wheel to pick up seems to have a fly width of 7 increments. the other two feel like 4. - is this unusual? does it suggest a stuck fly?
I have tried the combination every which way, and tried tapping on the case with a mallet to try to get the fence to drop into the gates, but no luck.
I have attached some images of the safe in my google album.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/dgA8rCiHUqYefxvB9
I tried my best at graphing the contact area in hopes of finding candidates, but the contact area doesn't seem to want to reveal anything. certainly nothing special around the areas where the numbers should be appearing. also, because the wheel is really stiff, I am unable to "feel" the contact points. Instead I have to listen for them, which is tedious as hell with a stethoscope. - so I picked up a couple of stick on piezo microphones and patched them into an amp. - regardless, the safe remains dutifully unopened...
Doubting my abilities, I decided to pick up an S&G 6741 lock and mounted it to a board so I could practice manipulation, and I was able to decode its combination in a day and a half off. Confidence restored, I returned to the HHM with graph paper in hand, only to be denied again and again...
so, I suppose my first question is, what can anyone tell me about this safe? what vintage it is, why it has an HHM dial and not an S&G or Yale, and possibly what I could do to get it to unlock....
also, I am not above drilling this out. Boss wants it open. We can install a new lock on it if we have to, but I would prefer to enter it without destroying that HHM dial...
Has anyone seen this dial before? does anyone have images of what this looks like on the inside of the lock body, or the door?