A big Chubb-Mosler and Taylor.
This thing was shipped from about 500 kms away (300 miles) to me to open/repair/refurbish.
No one in the area where it was from would/could do it.
It was found in the back of a long abandoned warehouse. The new owner cleaned the place out to make room
for their new business and behind a pile of junk, they found it, on it's back.
It arrived to me upright and strapped down on a pallet.
The handle was broken off and both dials were hard to turn.
I tried lubing them and they loosened up a bit, but not enough to feel the contact points.
Sargent and Greenleaf 6500 series vault locks are hard enough to manipulate in the first place, 4 wheels and geared over...
...And being that hard to turn...I drilled it. I had already quoted the client $4000.00 to open/repair/refurbish, I wasn't
going to spend much time trying to manipulate it.
There was already a hole in the back, possibly for alarm wires but, upon peeking in there,
I realized that it had inner compartments and that I was looking at the back of the inner door.
This was not going to work so I drilled it from the top. Knowing was I was dealing with, I knew where to poke through.
I drilled though the first layer of steel with a standard bit. Although, it's pretty hard steel, enough force does it. I knew that passed the steel, there would be
some kind of concrete but what I was not expecting, was ceramic. In the concrete itself, some kind of ceramic was used as an aggregate.
I had heard of it but had never seen it myself. Yeah, it's hard. It chews your bits up pretty quickly but I got through. I had heard that the ceramic was a real bit*h to drill.
It wasn't, not to my standards anyhow. Yeah, it's hard, but I drilled hardplate before so, I didn't thing much of it.
Then I changed my drill bit back to standard bit I started with, and broke through the inner steel shell.
Then it was just a matter of inserting my scope with the little 45 degree angled mirror attachment to decipher both comb locks.
Easy. Only took 2 hours so far. I put a big pair of locking plyers on what was left of the handle spindle and turned it.
I pulled, and pulled harder and...Nothing, that door wouldn't open. I check for a gap beneath the door and there wasn't one.
Ok then, the door needs to be raised, so I went to turn the adjustment screw under the bottom hinge block and found
that the hinge pivot had been cut off. Both top and bottom hinge pins were cut off. I hadn't noticed that at first because however cut them did such a good job.
They cut off the pins with a zip disc and took such great care that they never nicked anything else. The gaps was barely wider than a zip disc is thick.
I have to raise my hat to the steady handed person that cut those off.
Now I needed to tell the customer that it would cost an additional $1000.00 to repair.
He agreed. So, I threw the bolts, so the door wouldn't fall out and kill someone, and removed the hinge blocks to remove the cut off hinge pivots, fabricated new ones on the lathe and re-installed them.
Now the door could be opened. There were 4 compartments inside but only 2 had locks on them and only the 2nd one was locked. I drilled that one too because the client
only wanted the top one to work. There was nothing inside that compartment.
I removed the back panel, took out the broken handle spindle and spun a new one on the lathe, found a used handle, tested it, and gutted the inside.
I removed all but the top compartment door and also removed the now unused hinges. It was to be completely refurbished so I pinned and welded to hole I made
and used Bondo to repair all scratches and dents, sanded, primed and painted. I used a beige colour inside, and black outside.
Before I painted the outside, I lightly sprayed it with Gravel Guard. It's an automotive product that makes a rubbery textured finish.
I like to use this finish because it leaves a texture that hides imperfections well and is also pleasing to the eyes and the touch.
I service everything and repacked it.
Here it is, completed and ready for pick up.
The pictures should be right side up if you click on them.
the customer was very pleased. It now resides in the FRONT of his shop.
M.
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Sun Dec 13, 2015 3:54 pm 
. I guess I just didn't pick up on the time/effort from the original post. Thanks again! Cool stuff.
