I had to have a safe drilled today - No cheap locks!

Wow! For $600 I might have cut my losses, taken that money and bought a 'real' safe

Mind posting the brand/model?

Where I live, they charge 500 for a drill and fill, without replacing the lock.

I would have done it myself to see if I could.

No that`s cool, I was just kidding. I hate safes that is why I have a Arms Room.

I have an Oxy-Acetelyne cutting torch that I'd love to have tried on it, just for fun. Bet I could get that sucker open.

Torching safe

I saw a safe once that had $50,000 in it when two knotheads stole it, took it to a remote location and cut it open with stolen equipment. They got it open, but the only money left was what was melted into a puddle and merged with the metal of the safe. You could still tell what some of the individual coins had been. This was sitting outside the sheriff's office in a small town in Oklahoma.

Trust me having it drilled was much cheaper than replacing the contents.

Most gun safes will succumb to a fire ax or a skill saw with a composite blade faster than a cutting torch, or just pick it up 6 feet and drop it on a corner. My favorite move thing is when the safe is blasted or cut and the paper money is just fine, yeah... right, that's real 'real'

In the early eighties I ran the property room in my police department for two years. One of our investigators seized a small fire safe in a narcotics investigation and had a warrant to open it. It was a cheap safe, but I wanted to learn how to drill one... so... I contacted a prominent local outfit that handled that brand (among many others) and asked if one of their techs would show me how to measure, and where to drill etc. A very polite older guy took me through it step by step, and sure enough I was able to do the job myself (nothing of any consequence found inside...).

Here's the best part of the story, that "polite older guy" was actually one of the Watergate burglars, in fact he was their lock guy back then..... He'd done his time and was back doing what he knew how to do. His instructions were so precise that I was able to use the exact size bit, and expose the wheels I had to turn, etc. I wonder if he's still kicking around.

Wow,that is an interesting bit of history! Lightman

I've lived and worked in the south Florida area now since 1971, first in the Miami area then up in Broward county. One of the facets of the Cuban migration to Florida all those years ago are some very interesting folks you might get to meet occasionally. A guy working as a waiter may have been a doctor or lawyer in a previous life... A quiet pudgy guy might just have been a fighter with a deadly history -or nobody at all. Many are at the end of their string if they're still around at all. Can't say I'd like to live anywhere else... particularly as long as the Everglades allow you to get away from everything in very short time.

This is why I no longer use electronic locks. I had two S&G electronic locks fail on me. The second time I had to have it drilled and I had the guy put a dial on there.