Where should I place my safe to provide the most resistance to forced entry?

I answered this question on a forum recently and thought I'd repost it here, so that others might benefit.

QUESTION:
"A question for the expert, I'm about to move around my safe in the garage. Where is the best place to put it? I understand that big safes (mine is a Ft Knox) are actually more vulnerable at the sides. Would putting it in the corner at a 45 degree angle be the best option?"

ANSWER:
Yes, unless your safe is a UL TL-rated unit that is also designated "X6", the door has the most resistance to drilling, burning, grinding and other methods of forced entry by common hand and power tools used in burglary attempts. TL-15 and above also feature manipulation resistant mechanical combination locks or high quality electro-mechanical locks. Often these will also include a redundant feature for the utmost in reliability.

An X6 designation simply means that all six sides have the same rating and resistance to forced entry by the methods and tools described in the UL standards for testing.

For example:
TL-15 = Resistant to tool attacks for a net working time of fifteen minutes.

TRTL-30 = Resistant to tool and torch attacks for a net working time of thirty minutes.

TXTL-60 = Resistance to tool, torch and explosives attacks for a net working time of sixty minutes.

There is no UL rating (so far) for resistance to ballistic attacks, like you may have seen in the movie: Thunderbolt and Lightfoot starring Jeff Bridges and Clint Eastwood as a heavily-armed safecracker.

OTOH: safes can be built to higher standards but only test for a specific and lower level of UL certification. The Modul-X modular safes made in the USA by City Safe in New Jersey are tested for TL-30, but as you can see from the following YouTube video, they can withstand much more that what the UL tests for TL-30 throw at it.

City Safe MODUL-X safe panels are attacked by ballistic and explosives specialists from the Russian military

With regard to the best position to place it in, with a big heavy, well-made safe, the only sides you have to worry about is the top, left side, right side and the front/door. If I were placing your safe, I'd put one side against a solid wall, bolt the safe down and then move something else that is very heavy (like a metal cabinet, refrigerator or freezer) next to the other side. This will make it more difficult unless they move something, but it may also force them to waste time and tools attacking the front. By the time they learn that is easier to attack the sides, they will have to move whatever is in the way to start again. Since a large number of modern safes have the bolt of the lock facing down, an attack from the top is less likely to produce the desired result for the would-be burglars.

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© 2011 by Ken Doyle
Licensed Professional Safecracker
ADVANCED Safe & Vault
San Francisco Bay Area
+1 (415) 519-3401

A Green Safecracker?

It seems like long-term priorities get all screwed-up when we have to suffer through disasters or a depressed economy. Yes, I did use the "D" word. Politicians and economists alike have been very careful to avoid using the "D" word in front of a microphone or TV camera, despite the fact that many know that's exactly what we're in and have been saying so, privately, since the end of 2008. Hey, I understand, it's scary stuff. In addition to it being too scary to talk about, it also seems to be too scary to define. I'm sure nobody really wants their own personal definition of economic depression to be adopted by the talking heads in the media, i.e. "Doyle's Definition": "A recession is when YOUR NEIGHBORS AND FRIENDS lose their jobs or businesses. A depression is when YOU lose your job or your business goes belly-up." Just kidding, I didn't really say that. That's been around since the last great depression.

OK, I really am gonna get to get the point. I only bring that scary stuff up as an example of the kind of stuff that distracts us from seeing the big picture. Successful businesses, economies, governments and civilizations are those who can see the big picture and plan for the long haul, not a year down the line, not five years, but fifty or a hundred years. What's the point of having a healthy financial quarter or a great portfolio if your kids won't be able to earn a living or even be able to breath?

When I think about the future, I can't help but think about two films, made in the 70s with decidedly anti-corporate themes and the bleakest of outlooks. Bleak, that is, if you're just a regular person and not a corporate-person or a new globalist. I believe these films are an accurate prediction of things to come in the next 10-20 years if we don't take our collective heads out the sand. Rather than give my own opinion and interpretation of these two films, go to the IMDb links, read the synopsis, reviews and commentary and let's see if you don't agree?

ROLLERBALL
SOYLENT GREEN

OK, are you getting a hint about the depressing point I'm trying to make? Every couple of days, at my local supermarket checkout stand, I used to have to go through the mildly agonizing decision of whether I wanted "paper or plastic?". I'd think about it and talk about it with the woman behind the register and other customers who were waiting to check out. What's the point? If I say "paper", then I am condemning a tree, hurting the environment, but providing a living to loggers and their families, but killing spotted owls. If I say "plastic" am I not doing pretty much the same thing in only a slightly different way?

One of the greenest things that I do is to turn an old safe into something useful again. If I can also restore it to it's original function and appearance, the owner might tell me that it was money well-spent because, in addition to having a good, well-made safe to use, he now has an antique with considerably more collectable value than any modern safe could ever have and he receives admiring comments about it from everybody who walks into his office and sees it. "Wow" is usually the first word out of their mouths.

Another scenario might be that I go out to open a safe that has been sitting, neglected, for 30 years, but the new owner of the house or business wants to see if there is anything in it and also if it can be made useful again. Sometimes, if the safe looks pretty good, all I have to do is open it and do a little long overdue maintenance to return it to useful service. Sometimes, after the safe has been opened, repaired and serviced, the owner may want to paint it and decides to do that himself. Others may want to go the whole nine yards and asks about the ost to restore the safe to its original glory. Either way, what's happening is that we are recycling a useless hunk of junk that is in the way and turning into something of use, value, a sometimes a thing of beauty that reminds us, not of the age of cheap, throw-away, Wal-Mart-style consumerism, but of the age where people made things of beauty and craftsmanship in America. I think that is being green with a capital G!

Thanks for reading my latest rant. If you'd like to comment, please click the comments link or you can send me a private e-mail by clicking the following link:

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© 2011 by Ken Doyle
Licensed Professional Safecracker
ADVANCED Safe & Vault
San Francisco Bay Area
+1 (415) 519-3401
Send me an email 

Are you hiring a professional, a middleman or perhaps even a scammer?

Whether you "let your fingers do the walking" through any yellow page directory or you do an internet search for locksmiths or safe and vault opening and repairing services, there's a very good chance that a scam artist or boiler room operator is who will show up at your door. These operators prey on the emergency needs of unsuspecting consumers.

Newspaper and TV news stories all over the country abound describing horror stories of consumers being ripped off, over charged or otherwise defrauded by phony locksmith companies. These operators advertise in local yellow pages and on the internet under many names, sometimes using the actual names of local, legitimate businesses to dupe consumers into believing they are hiring these legitimate businesses to solve their home, car or safe & vault lockout problems.

The problem:
Consumers, inconvenienced by a lockout of their home, car or safe are desperate. Maybe they need to get to work or a medical appointment and they locked the keys in the car. Maybe they are getting ready to go on vacation and their passport is locked in the safe for which they have lost or forgotten the combination. Maybe they went out for the paper and the dog pushed the door closed behind them. Maybe they lost their keys somewhere and in addition to being locked out, they also need to get the locks changed to prevent whoever finds them from using them. Whatever mishap caused the problem, it's an inconvenient situation and people want to solve the problem as quickly and as inexpensively as possible. They suspend their normal skepticism for the sake of expediency and that's when they open the door to being scammed.

How the scam works:
A boiler room operation works by advertising and placing listings in yellow pages or on internet search engines. They offer emergency service and promise fast service at discount prices. When you call, the person answering the phone may be in another city or state. They may be answering the phone from a workroom in a prison in Utah or a warehouse in Newark, NJ or Las Vegas Nevada. The first thing they ask will be your phone number and your location. If you pay attention and listen, you may hear other operators talking in the background asking the same questions of other callers.

When the dispatcher/operator has all of your information, they say that they will contact their closest technician, locksmith, etc. and dispatch them to your location. When asked, they will quote a charge, usually less than $50 for the "service" and ask how you will be paying. They will insist on getting your credit card information. You say to yourself: "Wow, $50, that's very reasonable!"

What happens next isn't normal, usual or legitimate! In the best case scenario, the dispatcher will have a list of people in your area that they may or may not have dealt with before. They don't know if they are licensed, bonded or insured, only that they answered the phone. Maybe it's a real locksmith or safeman, maybe not! The dispatcher gives them your contact information and often your credit card information. Sometimes, the dispatcher may not have anyone in your area to "refer" the call to, and sometimes they do. If they do, and the person who actually shows up at your door can do the requested work, they will get your permission to perform the service. They will also explain that the "work" needs to be paid for, either in advance or immediately, preferably in cash. If you can't pay in cash, that's where the credit card information comes in. You complain that the charges were supposed to only be $50. "Sorry, you'll have to talk to my dispatcher aout that" will be the reply. You're still locked out, so you agree to the extra charges.

Sometimes the technician will say that the dispatcher made an error and that they can't do the work (a safe opening instead of a car lockout, for instance), but they have to charge a minimum "show up" or "trip charge" fee, but the they will make it right with the dispatcher.

In the worst case scenario, you may hang up thinking that help is on the way. The dispatcher will often not be able to find a person to refer your call to, especially if you live outside a metropolitan area or if it is in the middle of the night. You may wait for hours. Calling back, you will explain everything again and the person on the phone will offer to "call you back when they know the technician is on the way".

The corporate scam:
There's also a business version of this scam. The scammers are known as "National Service Providers". They target chain stores, restaurants, any businesses that have multiple outlets or branches, often in different areas or even in different states. Essentially, the NSP offers dispatching and consolidated billing for services commonly used by these chains. HVAC, refrigeration, plumbing, electrical, window and glass, locksmiths and safemen. They have a sales force who contact the chains offering one-stop shopping for these "services" at pre-negotiated, discount fees with easy billing. Basically, this kind of outfit consists of a toll-free number, the sales force, "customer service agents" or CSAs (dispatchers) and a billing department. They do not have the required business license or contractor's license to do business in local chain store's area and are not required to provide insurance or bonding, but there they are, none the less. These requirements are to be met by their sub-contractors, i.e. the local firms or individuals who actually "provide the services". Although the NSPs represent themselves as being legitimate service providers, aren't they nothing more than middlemen? They try, but frequently fail miserably, but because corporate departments don't always coordinate, especially between the accounts payable department and property/store management departments, one doesn't know what's going on with the other until long after the contract has expired. Often, delays in providing services, quality assurance problems, or additional charges are explained as "unusual circumstances" and are written into the contracts that way. In other words, the discounted prices are not applicable because of the "unusual circumstances". These companies frequently operate under lots of different names and may use a different name with every contract.

A typical NSP scenario:
Let's say you're the manager of a fast food restaurant in Stockton, California. You need to have the locks re-keyed and the combination of the safe changed because of employee turnover. You call or fax a work order request to the chain's security or loss prevention department or maybe your chain requires that you call the NSP's toll-free number, directly. You talk to the CSA (Customer Service Agent) who is located in an office in indiana. You give him the work order number and tell him what you want done. He says "no problem, we'll have our technician call you back to make the appointment."

Although there is no cash or credit card information being exchanged, what happens next resembles what happened with the boiler room operation I described in the previous example: the customer service agent puts on his dispatcher's hat and starts calling contacts in your area to try to connect you with a "real" service provider to take care of your needs. Again, how successful he is depends on the number of service contacts that he has on file in your area. A service contact is merely a company who has agreed to service the NSP's clients and bill the NSP instead of the store. If there are none of the needed contacts on file, the NSP's CSA starts calling providers listed in the yellow pages and on the internet. Does the CSA check references, licensing, bonding or insurance requirements for the firms he's contacting? He just wants to get this particular service request off his plate so he can move on to the next. Do you see where I'm going with this?

You as the local manager could have called in a local company yourself, but that option is no longer available to you because of corporate policy to use the services of the NSP. The NSP is simply a broker of services, not the provider, as the name implies. They rely on actual providers in your local area to service your needs. What sounded like an efficient system starts looking like a service nightmare. Delays, poor quality, "loss prevention incidents" and other failures of the system start showing up. The dispatcher may not have a local provider, so now he's trolling the yellow pages in ever-widening areas trying to find one who will take this call of his plate. When two days have passed, he starts getting desperate. He may go with an individual who he knows isn't qualified.

On the other hand, maybe the firm that the NSP uses in your area is the same firm that was providing these services to your store before the NSP got involved, only now he's billing the NSP at discounted rates and with charge limits imposed that are known as NTEs. He agrees to this because he wants to keep his techs busy and YOU are no longer calling him, directly. He still needs to maintain his license, insurance and bonding as well as the other cost of doing business, i.e. rolling stock, payroll, parts and supplies, etc., but he's no longer getting full price for his services. How likely is he to put your needs ahead of his "real customers", many of which he has a history with and may even know by name, when he has to share his service revenue with an out of state, unlicensed NSP who doesn't share in HIS cost of doing business and often pays his invoices, not in 30 days, but in 60, 90 or 120 days or longer? Is there any loyalty to the customer? Rarely. NSPs often play one service provider against another in order to get the lowest charges. Is this illegal or unethical? Not really, but there are other things in their business model that are.

The similarities between the locksmith scammers and the NSPs are undeniable, but one is condemned as a scammer, and the other may be lauded as an entrepreneur with a successful business model.

Conclusion:
There are things that you can do to avoid being scammed, whether you are a consumer looking to hire an independent contractor or a business manager considering contracting with an NSP firm. These things will be discussed in a future posting.

© 2009-2017 by Ken Doyle - The Safecracker
ADVANCED Safe & Vault
San Francisco Bay Area
+1 (415) 519-3401
Send me an email

How do I change the combination of my safe?

There are several different types of combination locks found on safes used by homeowners, gun enthusiasts, businesses and others and the procedures may vary by maker and type. Usually, a new safe will include specific instructions for both mechanical and electronic safe locks, as well as any necessary tool or change key required for mechanical locks. See below for how to find that information.

IMPORTANT: after changing either type, care must always be taken to test the combination and operate the door bolts several times with the door open before closing and locking the door.

The two basic types are:

MECHANICAL: (dial-type)
Changing of this type is accomplished by
A) first opening the door by dialing the existing combination to the opening (12 O'clock) index and then dialing the existing combination to a different "changing index" and using a special change key to reset the combination to the new numbers or
b) removal and mechanical disassembly in order to re-arrange the individual settings of the combination wheels.

Specific instructions for every lock type would be impossible to post here, but that information is usually available at the safe or lock maker's web site as a download. You can also call the maker's toll-free customer service number for assistance in replacing misplaced instruction sheets. Here is a link to the Sargeant & Greenleaf web site where PDF downloads for lock operation and changing instructions can be obtained:

Sargeant & Greenleaf Product Support

ELECTRONIC: (push-button keypad) In order to change this type, the existing code or PIN must be known and the safe door must be in the locked-open position. Then you follow the lockmaker's procedure for that particular lock (the simple instructions will vary by lock maker). These procedures will usually takes less than a minute to perform. Because the instructions are different for each maker, I will only give the basic steps here. Specific instructions for all kinds of electronic locks are usually available (as a download) at the lock or safe maker's web site. For instance, here is the site to download instructions for La Gard electronic safe locks:

Kaba-Mas/LA GARD INSTRUCTIONS

When you buy a new safe, always keep a record of your safe's model name/number and/or serial number, as well as the maker's customer service toll-free number. Often, it's only a matter of a simple phone call to obtain the specific instructions for your specific safe lock via e-mailed or fax. The serial and model numbers will help in identifying the particular safe lock model on your safe.

You can also do a GOOGLE search by safe and lock maker to find a particular maker's web site or a professional safe & vault technician that has expertise with that maker's products.

GENERAL WARNING: Never attempt to lock your safe door unless you are absolutely certain that you have read and followed the instructions carefully and have tested the combination and door bolt function several times. If in doubt, leave the door OPEN and look in the yellow pages and/or on the WWW for a local safe & vault expert. We can be found under the heading: "Safe Expert" or "Safes & Vaults Opening & Repairing" in both the yellow pages or using google to search those terms. Include those search terms, as well as your area code, zip code or city and state, but make sure to include the term "licensed" to avoid internet scammers. For example, here's the search performed for Novato, California:

GOOGLE SEARCH for Safe Expert in Novato, CA

The Safe & Vault Technicians Association (SAVTA) also has a directory of members that is searchable using several criteria. Here is that web site:

SAVTA TECH SEARCH


I hope you've found this information helpful and informative or at least I've given you some good resources. Questions and comments are always welcome.


© 2009-2017 by Ken Doyle - The Safecracker
Telephone: +1 (415) 519-3401 
San Francisco, Bay Area and Northern California
ADVANCED Safe & Vault
Send me an email