This Samuel Withers Safe at a home in Winstanley, Wigan hadn’t been opened for at least 40 years. It was inside the house when they moved there in the 70’s and potentially hadn’t been opened for a good while before that. Quite rightly the owner now realised that it was a safety risk to have a locked safe without a means to open it under duress and was also curious as to its contents.
We were not the first company to be called to this job, the previous engineer advised that the lock was seized and that the safe would need to be drilled open. After a disagreement with them the owner contacted us and we went to perform the opening. The exterior of the safe looked quite rusty from the pictures but surprisingly the interior of the lock looked remarkably clean when inspected with our optical equipment which is small enough to fit through the narrowest of key ways and give us a clear view of the inner workings. With a suitable pick selected we noted that the lock was responding well to the picking process and proceeded to pick it open in a short period of time.
With the lock open we faced the next hurdle of getting the locking boltwork to retract by turning the handle which was stiff but without too much of a fight we got the handle to move to unlock the door. The final hurdle was to get the door to open which was the hardest part of the job, with some lubrication and some gentle persuasion however we got it to swing.
The owner found some interesting old paperwork inside and we were happy to have performed another non-destructive opening as we always endeavour to do.
Hi I have the same problem! no key for a Phillips & Sons Birmingham safe!
I’m sure we could help you with that. Please use the contact page to let us know where the job would be located and we can give you a fixed price quote.