This is a discussion on 20 year old browning safe Gold Series---question and concern within the General Firearm Discussion forums, part of the Related Topics category; Hey everyone.I'm looking for. As a certified safe cracker I can state that most of the locks on the older safes are better quality locks. If the safe maker or your dealer sets a new master code, he will advise you of the change. You should set the lock to your own, unique master code immediately.

Safes: To Crack or not to Crack, that is the Question! Though we don't really have a lot of safes lying around the house, we did once receive a safe from an estate sale. We promptly locked the combination inside (dumb, yes, but lets assume the fault lies with one of our children!). Two possible scenarios came to mind to access the contents of the safe: one was the scene from the The Apple Dumpling Gang (a movie we recently felt compelled to expose our kids to from our own childhood).

I don't remember the details of the scene, but it ended with a large explosion, money flying everywhere, and no one injured - only a bit of soot on everyone's face. Teaching Middle Years Pendergast Ebook Download. Though there was no disclaimer, the scene screamed at me “DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!” My next thought was of The Italian Job and Charlize Theron. She had quite a touch in opening the most difficult safe under stressful situations successfully and without causing any damage to the safe. Not knowing Charlize personally, I decided to call my local locksmith to get his take on the situation. It turned out that he had seen this problem before and had quite a “sensitive” ear for this type of thing. So, when needing to access a safe, there is one simple question to ask: Do I need to keep the safe intact?

Though it was not a realistic option for me, brute force is one of the methods for opening a safe. The other main safecracking methods involve either lock manipulation or manipulating a weak point on the safe (or as seen in popular media: drilling). For all intent purposes, lets assume that we are trying to break into a safe illegally. Then we get the added pressure of being caught and have to consider how much time and noise the job will take.

The best method to use is lock manipulation. How sweet would be the satisfaction to leave no sign of having ever been there! The safe owner comes in on Monday morning, opens his safe, and all the gold bars are missing. There are no indications of a break-in. Though you could leave a calling card inside the safe, something that says, “Safe cracked courtesy of the Ghost” (or whatever cool name you come up with).

Surprisingly enough, the first way a safecracker will usually attempt to open a safe is to guess the combination. Manufactured often come with a manufacturer-set combination, which many people fail to reset. Most of these try-out combinations are industry standard and are accessible to locksmiths and safecrackers. With time being an issue, you might as well try the easiest thing first. If the try-out combination does not work, then a quick search of the room may reveal the combination. Often people leave their combination written down somewhere close by, sometimes even on the safe itself!

Or, the owner uses easy to remember numbers, such as a birth date. If no number is to be found or guessed correctly, then the safecracker must move on to more difficult options. To have to sit there with patience and your ear pressed up against the safe is probably the most pure form of safecracking among the professionals. It takes a great deal of skill and practice. For us non-safecracking people, it is the romantic and mysterious way to crack a safe. But it is also scientific. Miller in 1940, described the following three-step process to discover the combination to a safe: 1.

Determine contact points 2. Khg Team Sony Vegas 12 Crack. Discover the number of wheels 3.

Graph your results I am not going into detail now on how this works, but lets just say that once the numbers are graphed, you just have to try the different possibilities to discover what order they go in to open the safe. There are also autodialing machines to open safes. Auto-dialers try all the different numerical possibilities until the combination is discovered. This can be very time consuming, and are best used if the combination only has 3 digits. Another method is to compromise a weak point on a safe by drilling. Drilling can be used to give the safecracker visual access to the locking mechanism. If they can see the mechanism, they can open the safe.

Most manufactured safes have an ideal drill point and these are published by the manufacturer, though it is closely guarded information by manufacturers and locksmiths. More secure safes have relockers that are triggered by drilling. It is a piece of glass mounted between the safe door and the lock. When the drill hits the glass, spring-loaded bolts are released that block the retraction of the main locking bolt. Sometimes this can be avoided if it is possible to drill in from the side or back of the safe. Instead of trying to visually access the combination, two holes are drilled, one for a borescope to see what you are doing, the other for an extra-long screwdriver to remove the back plate and gain accesses to the lock. The screwdriver can then be used position the wheels of the lock so that the safe door can be opened.

Obviously, manufacturers try to combat safe manipulation methods. Besides relockers, different materials are used (such as cobalt) that are almost impossible to drill through. Special drill bits are needed and a lot of time.

Now, if noise is not an issue (you have been able to physically remove the safe to a remote location), then sometimes more physical methods can be used. This can include plasma cutters to cut through the safe, or explosives such as jam shots using nitroglycerin or C-4 to blow the door off the safe. If you are a homeowner like me, I would suggest messing around with your ear pressed against the safe, just for the fun of it, and then calling a locksmith.

Then you can watch the magic at work and wonder if you could ever do it! What does your Free Shipping Include? For items weighing over 150 lbs we include a free curbside delivery, this will get the truck to your home or business, they will unload the safe with a lift gate to the ground level. The carrier will call in advance to schedule delivery.

Depending on the weight of the safe you may want to arrange for additional help to bring the safe inside. Please contact us before the item ships if you live on a rural route, area not serviced by freight carriers, or on an Island. If you have a narrow, steep, or inaccessible driveway for an 18 wheel truck and trailer, you will need to upgrade to our Bronze, Gold or Platinum level service (generally delivered on a 26' truck). If inaccessible by a 26' truck or larger, please call us for further options. For items under 150 lbs the order will be shipped with FedEx or UPS and occasionally USPS.

Went to the safe (American Security) yesterday for something and it wouldn't open. The keypad beeped appropriately, but the 'click' that it normally emits when the combination is successfully entered was missing. The keypad did not go into lockdown as it would do if the combo being entered was invalid.

I put in new batteries (that I had in my battery stash that is restocked during battery sales) but 'no joy'. Same symptoms. Anticipating a major problem and expense, I called Amsec CS and explained the symptoms to Julie. Batteries, she said.

I explained that I had just installed new batteries with no change. She said to get really 'NEW' batteries and call her back if that didn't work. Off to Walgreens for batteries. Installed the second set of new batteries and the first attempt failed.

Stomped around looking for the phone and phone number and tried the lock one more time out of desperation. And again--successful. I called Jule again mostly to ask her why the first attempt with the second set of batteries failed, but subsequent attempts were successful. She said that the 'system' had to 'charge up' (capacitors?) for a short period of time before being used. She had previously advised NOT to buy super strength 9 volt batteries--just good quality name-brand alkaline. Apparently the digital locking system pulls a lot of power to function properly.

The message to me: If there's a problem, try really fresh batteries before doing anything rash. The original failed batteries had been in the lock less than a year. The first set of new batteries were well within their shelf life on the package. All of the bad batteries test OK on the crude battery checker that I have.

AmSec Customer Service provided prompt, competent, and curtious help and prevented what would have been an expensive service call to a local safe-smith. I know there's the long-standing argument of the mechanical vs digital safe locks.

I have no idea what the relative reliability of the two systems are, but at least with the digital, unless Walgreens runs out of batteries there's something that can be tried. With a mechanical lock, there's really nothing for an owner to try on their own. I had a similar unlock issue with my Browning safe with a rotary mechanical combination lock. It got to the point where I would have to enter the right combination, extremely accurately, a half dozen times before it would unlock. The final straw was when it took probably a dozen times before it would unlock. At that point I used it closed but unlocked for several months before I got around to calling a locksmith.

$75 and an hour of work later and the safe was a good as new. The internals were dry and dirty. I believe that the 'charging up thing' is not really that but a matter of the lock resetting itself, booting up if you will. Because of the way that these things work, they are always on, always looking for a command to unlock. When they power down by virtue of a low battery, they enter an unknown state whereby the circuitry does not quite know how it was powered down and takes time to reset itself upon receiving the right amount of operating voltage. This is speculation as I am not familiar with your specific lock but generally this is how the microprocessor works.

Glad you got it open! I had a similar unlock issue with my Browning safe with a rotary mechanical combination lock. It got to the point where I would have to enter the right combination, extremely accurately, a half dozen times before it would unlock. The final straw was when it took probably a dozen times before it would unlock. At that point I used it closed but unlocked for several months before I got around to calling a locksmith. $75 and an hour of work later and the safe was a good as new.

The internals were dry and dirty. I believe that the 'charging up thing' is not really that but a matter of the lock resetting itself, booting up if you will. Because of the way that these things work, they are always on, always looking for a command to unlock. When they power down by virtue of a low battery, they enter an unknown state whereby the circuitry does not quite know how it was powered down and takes time to reset itself upon receiving the right amount of operating voltage. This is speculation as I am not familiar with your specific lock but generally this is how the microprocessor works. Glad you got it open!

Your explanation sounds more reasonable than mine. This thread made me want to ask this question. Does anyone know where to buy a replacment electronic pad???? I own a Winchester gun safe and have checked everwhere for an extra. Just incase the one on there now fails. Even Walmart had no idea!

I think I'd ask a local locksmith who worked on safes whether they were an inventory item for anyone and proceed accordingly. I also have no idea whether the keypads on the various brands are 'common' although they could well be. I kinda asked my local locksmith that question in a different way, and he indicated that if the electronic lock failed, the safe had to be drilled to open it and repair, implying that the failure wouldn't be in the keypad. I see this is an old thread but thought I would put my situation in. My American Security safe is about 3 years old and I had trouble getting it to beep when pressed the numbers. The C would and 0 would beep once but the other numbers would not beep when pressed.

I replaced the batteries figuring 3 years they probably finally went bad. I then put in the numbers and all beeped as they should unlocking the safe. I thought well that was good. The next day again I opened it okay and for some reason I locked it while it was open to test it again.

It again acted like before replacing the batteries. I tested the batteries with a meter and checked ok.

I reinstalled and then the numbers worked ok. What the heck is going on? There are two kinds of safe owners: electronic vs dial lock people.

Both of course have actual and potential advantages. For me and how I use my safe, my Liberty with an electronic lock sits in my garage next to my work/gun bench. I shoot and piddle around with my firearms and reloading stuff every day, and thus am into my safe maybe a dozen times a day. I may lock it, then a few minutes later have this or that reason to get into it. If my Liberty was in some distant corner of my home, maybe upstairs, i would be much more likely to leave a gun out if I am going shooting later in the day, or similar circumstance. And if i had to carefully spin a lock, less likely to lock it if I was going to be away from my bench for a few minutes.

I replace my battery every year, and so far, no problems with my keypad. I live in a residential area that makes it unlikely a crew of thieves with a dolly could break into or abscond with my Liberty without being noticed, esp with my home alarm system. I guess a prospective safe purchaser needs to carefully think over how he/she will use their safe. My white Liberty with an electronic lock, sitting in the corner of my garage works fine for me. All the best. I know someone who has been a professional lock smith for over 30 yrs and he told me to stay away from keypad combos for various issues,on the other hand my S&G mech combo has been giving me headaches for the past couple of years.

Sometimes it would open the first try,sometimes the 15th. He said whatever you do don't spray lube in the combo,2; never spin the combo,3; make sure the handle is in the full lock position,4; he told me to try each number with a +1 or -1,Ex: if the number 13 try the combo at 12 or 14.

Well it turns out that one of my numbers I had to add a digit,it opens everytime now. I think that the UL rated electronic locks are getting pretty good, but a mechanical dial is hard to beat for reliability over many years.

The advantage of the electronic lock is that it is quicker to access when working properly, especially with old eyes. The disadvantage is that they are still the source of most gun safe lock failures and when they quit, there is usually no indication until you need your gun. I still like mechanical locks myself. I'm not in that big of a hurry to not be able to spin a dial to get in a safe.

For quick access I use a handgun safe with a mechanical push button lock. No battery concerns or fried electronics at the worse possible time.