Home Made Safe ?

[golddie]

Hi Oz
That idea is worth a trophy.
It is too bad you cant patent that.
It is so simple but nobody would think of it.
But now that its in this forum the value is not the same
Thanks

 

[Anonymous]

Hi Oz
That idea is worth a trophy.
It is too bad you cant patent that.
It is so simple but nobody would think of it.
But now that its in this forum the value is not the same
Thanks

Nobody would think of it, the idea has already been used.

When Germany invaded Denmark in World War II, the Hungarian chemist George de Hevesy dissolved the gold Nobel Prizes of Max von Laue and James Franck into aqua regia to prevent the Nazis from stealing them. He placed the resulting solution on a shelf in his laboratory at the Niels Bohr Institute. It was subsequently ignored by the Nazis who thought the jar—one of perhaps hundreds on the shelving—contained common chemicals. After the war, de Hevesy returned to find the solution undisturbed and precipitated the gold out of the acid. The gold was returned to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Nobel Foundation who recast the medals and again presented them to Laue and Franck

 

[golddie]

That is something!
The things I don't know about.
What else are you guys going to teach me here in this forum.
I think that there is plenty of knowledge here.
The problem is that it is scattered everywhere.
You cant find anything
For example I remember reading about refining polishing waste and this was written by Harold and now I cant find it.
He had numbered the steps one by one
I have busted my brains trying to find this and I don't know where it is.

 

[Noxx]

Thanks a lot guys for all the comments (a lot more than what I expected lol)

Ok, the safe is not made for any insurer request or whatever. It serves the sole purpose of protecting my and my customer's values.

Any thief with a bottle of compressed air ( scuba tank ) and a suitcase plasma cutter good for maybe 20 minutes of cutting with this set up could cut through any exotic metal used to manufacture a safe.

Your 1/2 mild steel safe is no challenge to a thief, if it were me making a safe I would use titanium heavy wall pipe with a couple of rings welded near the top.

Perhaps... But why would a thief cut a safe with a plasma cutter where most of them contain paper money anyway...

Gouging a chisel into the lid will only spin the lid within the two welded rings. You do not want any hinges on your safe any hinge becomes a weak spot.

Are you sure about that, even if they are in the inside of the safe ? What do you propose then ?


Thanks a lot everyone.

 

[Anonymous]

Any one handy with an oxygen acetylene/propane torch is able to cut a nut from a bolt without damaging the thread. I have done this thousands of times during my tenor as a scrap man.

So my guess is that a good man with a torch could open any safe with out harming the contents paper or other valuables.

Plasma cutting does not heat the work zone like acetylene does.

Looks like I got the scuba tank wrong on the suitcase plasma rig, they come with an on board compressor.

A plasma cutter is a relatively easy-to-use tool to cut steel and other electrically-conductive metals. These cutters work by using a high-voltage electrical arc and a compressed gas, usually air. An electrical arc generated by an internal electrode ionizes gas passing through a nozzle, creating a concentrated arc of plasma at the cutter's tip. The arc's contact with the working surface makes a high heat circuit which melts a section less than 1/16" (1.6mm) wide. The force of the plasma flow then literally blows out the molten area on the work piece, creating a fairly clean cut with little or no slag. The plasma arc travels through the nozzle at a speed of up to 20,000 feet per second, and at temperatures as high as 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit (16,600 Celsius)!

Light, portable plasma cutters use 110 volts with an output of around 12-35 amps. To simplify their use, these machines often feature with on-board air compressors.

For only $917.70 it can be yours
http://www.bakersgas.com/HYP070783.html

 

[Noxx]

The hinges will be on the inside of the safe (welded on the inner walls).

Also, the scrap yard man used a plasma torch to cut our plates to make them enter my civic.
It cuts very fast, but also creates large amounts of sparks and molten metal. Any flammable material in the safe would be burnt in no time...

 

[Anonymous]

Noxx you may also consider a laser beam alarm, here are the details for a DIY project, this would compliment your place of business with even more security.

http://www3.telus.net/chemelec/Projects/Alarm/Laser-Alarm.htm

 

[golddie]

Hi gustavus

Don't forget concrete and steel.
It's cheap and easy and can be very time consuming to breach.

How easy would it be to bet into this kind of a safe and how many minutes do you think it will take crooks to get into something like this

 

[Chumbawamba]

I've been lucky. All my safes have come from my work as an electronics scrapper. I recently acquired (for free) a large data safe. It's big enough for someone to step into and close the door (about 6' high). Being a data safe means it's primarily used for storing papers and computer tapes and whatnot, but I got it because it would be far superior to my existing gun safe According to the label, after 2 hours of a fire with an external temperature of 1000F the safe should max out at 175F inside.

The only problem was that it didn't come with the key or the combo. Fortunately, a friend of mine knew a locksmith, and he got permission to crack the safe for me on his own time using his company van. He was able to get into it in less than a hour, which is a bit disheartening, but then how many gun thieves are also master locksmiths? Hopefully not many He drilled through the combo to remove the dial, drilled a hole into the combo lock to see the combo discs, then used a laproscope to peer inside and line them up and voila! Open. Luckily, the adjunct key lock was unlocked, so we didn't have to deal with that. It cost me $75 to replace the combo dial (we couldn't get working an electronic combo lock that I also got through recycling because we couldn't manage to reset the combo on it) and a nice G4 Macintosh in my scrap piles.

Another thing that makes me wary is that I was able to move this safe into my house by myself. Granted I had a big truck with a heavy duty liftgate, but then so did gustavus' crack head friend (I am not a crackhead But I was able to push it up the remaining few feet of the driveway into my garage on its crappy casters. And I originally picked it up in my Toyota 4Runner, with the help of two other guys and a large moving bar (it had a long handle and big casters on the bottom on either side of a big plate...not sure what the proper name is). So a determined crackhead could, conceivably, steal this safe with a couple crackhead buddies and a pick-up truck. At least until I weld some mount points to the bottom so I can bolt it to the floor.

I keep my valuables in some GSA locking file cabinets that are also fire rated for a couple hours. I got these from another customer. They have 5 drawers each, and each drawer has its own combo lock. They were all open when I got them but over the time I had them stored some of the locks were spun and I got locked out of some of the drawers. I was able to determine the combos for all but two of the drawers by opening up the locks on the ones I could and manually reading the combos off the discs (on one cabinet that had two drawers locked all the combos were the same). For the final two I couldn't get open I managed to track down the lady in the company from where I got them and she still had the combos recorded. So now I have 15 mini-safes basically (with new combos of course). I'm considering opening up a bank Each of these suckers weighs 668 pounds (according to the tag). Once again, these were moved into my garage with the help of a liftgate and a burly friend. So conceivably they could also walk away, at least until I figure out how to disengage the lower drawer so I can bolt them to the floor.

 

[golddie]

Hi Chumbawamba
How about lining the walls of this safe with wire mesh and steel wires and concrete
make it about 2 inches thick

 

[jimdoc]

a large moving bar (it had a long handle and big casters on the bottom on either side of a big plate...not sure what the proper name is)

It is called a johnson bar. You really need one of these to move heavy items.

 

[Anonymous]

a large moving bar (it had a long handle and big casters on the bottom on either side of a big plate...not sure what the proper name is)

It is called a johnson bar. You really need one of these to move heavy items.

Years ago they had a thin sheet which slid under a heavy appliance then using the output from a vacuum cleaner to inflate the bag you could move any heavy appliance with ease by yourself.

Now they have air pallets available that will lift up to 5000 lbs, and larger air jacks lifting upwards 5000 metric tons.

Rescue teams and towing company's use large air bags to upright vehicles as large as overturned loaded semi's

 

[Anonymous]

Noxx,
I remember reading a story about some nobel prizes, goes like this, germans are coming, the germans are coming (actually Nazis), someone possessing 2 nobel prizes, a museum, of 2 nobel prize winners, dissolved the prizes in AR and places them on a shelf with everday common chemicals, end game, gold goes unnoticed, nazis defeated, guy returns, drops the gold from the AR and sends to the Nobel Prize committee, they remake the Prizes and reissue to the orginial prize winners.

I had sort of the same thing, I had my shed pilferred, got some hand tools and some copper, did not bother the jar of browish dirt on the wall.

Jim

 

[Chumbawamba]

How about lining the walls of this safe with wire mesh and steel wires and concrete
make it about 2 inches thick

Hi Golddie.
It's secure enough as it is. Once I have it bolted to the floor then most idiots who would try to break into my house would leave it alone anyway. The uberidiots would fuss around with it for maybe a few minutes and then realize they were in the middle of a burglary and get on with the lower hanging fruit. I was burglarized once but I think it was an isolated incident. It might've been an ex-girlfriend who was a closet meth addict (they all are, btw). It might've been local kids. Who knows. But either way, I think it's secure enough without modifying it. Nobody is going to get inside of it unless they are determined...or a locksmith

As others said, a safe is a diversion anyway. You want the knuckleheads to waste their time trying to break into it (or break it off the anchors so they can try to take it with them). Meanwhile, your valuables aren't even in there, but stored somewhere else entirely where they'll never find them.

True story: our house was burglarized when I was a kid. The idiot that broke in tried to pry my dad's gun safe open with my dad's buck knife. Score: Safe - 1, Buck knife - 0. The bastards stole my piggy bank and my mom's wedding ring. (Unacceptable comment deleted, although I agree with it 100%. Harold)

 

[goldnugget77]

wouldn't it be great if there were no crooks

 

[Noxx]

Hey, it's me again.

I started the building of the lock mechanism today. It's works good so for but a little tuning is still needed.

I have two questions:

-What is the easiest/faster way (don't tell me laser) to cut through 1/2'' steel plates ? It took us 2 hours to cut 4' with two Mastercraft grinders.

-Where can I find a safe door handle ? I don't want to use a standard door handle, it does not look good lol...

Thanks a lot.

 

[EDI Refining]

-What is the easiest/faster way (don't tell me laser) to cut through 1/2'' steel plates ? It took us 2 hours to cut 4' with two Mastercraft grinders.

Call a place that sells steel, they may have a shear. This would yeild a clean cut, unlike if you torched it.
Having it torched/plasma cut would be the next best thing

 

[Harold_V]

-What is the easiest/faster way (don't tell me laser) to cut through 1/2'' steel plates ? It took us 2 hours to cut 4' with two Mastercraft grinders.

Call a place that sells steel, they may have a shear. This would yield a clean cut, unlike if you torched it.
Having it torched/plasma cut would be the next best thing

Shearing yields a heavily rolled edge, and often curls the material. Unless that is an acceptable condition, I recommend against the idea.

Most weld shops use track cutters, either oxy/acet or more state-of-the-art methods (plasma) to cut material. In the hands of a qualified person, cutting can be quite precise, even torch cutting.

Sawing is an option, but it requires a reasonably decent saw. If the part is small enough, it can be done in a horizontal cutoff saw. Otherwise a vertical band saw would be required. A description of the starting material and the resulting piece(s) would help provide better input.

Harold

 

[stihl88]

Funnily enough most of the new industrial safes these days use a special mix of concrete for their walls and doors.
I saw a document on it yesterday and was quite amazed when i saw them pouring these concrete molds...

 

[golddie]

Hi stihl88
That video about making a safe sounds interesting.
If you saw this on the internet can you give us the link
Thanks