16 SAFE & VAULT TECHNOLOGY | November/December 2023 www.savta.org TECH TALK The Stratford SX A Look Around A quick look with a scope confirmed that, sadly, the drill bit had drifted slightly to the left of my relock target and actu- ally drilled off only a part of the relock bar — but annoyingly left about half of it untouched. Thinking about it now, I suspect I was off target because the door’s hinges were removed, and thus was moving around a lot more under drilling pressure than they usually do. Well, that is my theory, and I’m sticking to it! I messed around for 20 minutes or so, trying to drill off the rest of the relock bar with a slightly larger drill bits and smaller drill bits at an angle. I eventually gave up, bit the bullet and frustratingly decided to drill another hole along the side of the first hole I had just drilled. I had the intention of cutting off the re- maining half of the plunger. I marked the safe again and set up the magnetic drill. Around 20 minutes later, I again had a hole through the safe body to the safe door. But this time the drill bit was a little to the right of the bar and missed the plunger by around 1/16". In fact, the drill bit had actually started drilling into the door plate itself. I was not really pleased at this stage. In fact, I remember thinking, “Oh dear me,” or words to that effect. This was one of those days when nothing goes right — and it was all my own stupid fault, I hasten to add. Eventually, common sense prevailed, and I decided to go back to the tried-and- trusted method of opening these safes. I now really wished I had done this in the first place, to be honest. Changing Course I removed the combination dial from the safe door and the dial ring — which for some reason was riveted to the door — and then unscrewed the safe han- dle. At this point, I could remove the stainless-steel plate from the front of the safe door, which would have prevented the magnetic drill from sticking to the door. Then I could drill through it. All I had to do then was measure and mark the safe door where the relock was (remember, I could also now measure from the side through my drilled hole in the side of the safe to double check mea- surements). I set up the magnetic drill yet again and started to drill through the safe door this time. The door was harder than the body, but it still took around the usual 20 minutes and three drill bits to get a hole through. The relock bar, or what was left of it, was directly in the center of my drilled hole. Once the hole in the door had been enlarged to around 8 mm, I was able to easily drill off the half of the relock bar that remained. I put the safe handle back onto the square spindle on the door, and it turned. Thank goodness that, at last, the safe was open. Well, when I say open, the bolts were back, but the door was not open — it had no hinges, if you recall. I had borrowed a pallet from the builders on-site. They were more than happy to give me a hand removing the heavy safe door — mainly, I suspect, on the basis that the sooner the Figure 12. This is a closer look at the mechanism. Figure 11. Here is the safe door mechanism. “The door was harder than the body, but it still took around the usual 20 minutes and three drill bits to get a hole through.”
