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01Safe marketing is close to meaningless without the ratings behind it. The word fireproof is not a rating. The word burglary resistant is not a rating. Learn the small number of real labels and you can tell a customer in thirty seconds whether the safe they bought does what they think it does.
- RSC means five minutes against one attacker with hand tools. TL 15 means fifteen against a skilled one.
- The x6 suffix means all six sides were tested, not just the door.
- Class 350 protects paper. Digital media needs class 125.
Covers Burglary ratings, Fire ratings, Fire and burglary are different problems.
Read this topic →Safe locks fall into two families. Mechanical combination locks turn wheels behind the dial. Electronic locks read a keypad and drive a solenoid or motor. Both are genuinely secure when specified properly and both fail in ways you should be able to diagnose over the phone.
- Four left, three right, two left, then right to open. Skipping a revolution leaves a wheel unpicked.
- A dead battery never erases an electronic combination. It only stops the motor.
- Repeated wrong entries trigger a penalty lockout that gets longer if you keep trying.
Covers Mechanical combination locks, Electronic safe locks, Redundant keys and key override.
Read this topic →Safe opening is a specialty inside a specialty. It is slow, it is quiet work, and it rewards patience more than force. Most professional openings are done either by manipulation, by a scoped drill point, or by recovering the combination from records that everybody assumed were lost.
- Records, defaults and the override come before the drill, every time.
- Manipulation reads gate positions through dial resistance. Modern locks resist it deliberately.
- Hardplate and relockers punish a wrong drill point. Use the published diagram.
Covers Ask before you drill, Manipulation, Drilling and repair.
Read this topic →More locksmiths are injured moving safes than doing anything else in the trade. A gun safe is commonly seven hundred pounds and a small commercial TL rated safe can exceed two thousand. Weight that will not hurt you standing still will absolutely hurt you tipping over.
- Walk the whole route and measure before touching the safe.
- Transitions are where safes fall. Slow down, stay strapped, nobody downhill on stairs.
- Removing the door can take away a third of the weight and improve the balance.
Covers Plan the route before you touch it, Equipment and technique, Anchoring and knowing when to refuse.
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