Need help with a BIG ol' safe. . .

[Highpower]

Don't know how close the construction is, but the size is pretty close....

http://www.browning.com/products/cat...tem=1605403822

[doctor demo]

Double doors, but no flat bolt. Doors are 4" thick, with round bolts:

Well Frank, Your safe is heavier and more secure that Mine, My doors are half as thick as Yours. So My guess on weight is way off.


"Safe" People claim that anything older than 50 years is not safe by today's standards. I only use Mine for tools and welding rod storage, I have a Star Safe that I use for the important stuff. It weighs 6,000 pounds and came out of a Lucky Store in Orinda during a remodel.

Steve

[Disaster area]

Your fire-safe class B rating is a SMNA rating that is obsolete
(not to be confused with current UL class B rating).

Relevent information on this rating is located here:

http://crm.cr.nps.gov/archive/16-5/16-5-sup.pdf

Estimated weight: 1,000 - 2,000 lbs (quite light, due to rock wool).

This safe will give some fire protection, and limited burglary protection.
It is designed to protect documents, e.g. paper (not wood).
In a fire, the moisture in the rock wool turns to steam & transfers to the paper, & keeps the temp below 451 deg far.
This safe is not designed to protect wood from fire.... I guess there would be damage from the steam/moisture.

It's size however, will impress and reassure the customer, & I'm sure they don't want to know all these details.

ihth

[Frank Ford]

Thanks for the thoughts, everyone. Hope I didn't waste anybody's time here - as I was finally digging the safe out from the back corner of my shop, I realized I could easily estimate its weight.

So, I took one of my long pry bars and adjusted a fulcrum until by standing on the very end I could just lift two wheels off the ground. Then, by simple length measurement and math, I came out with a weight very close to 1800 lbs.




It's been so long since I doped on that green paint, I'd forgotten exactly what was written on the tag, so I used a bit of paint remover to reveal that it is:

[J. R. Williams]

Safe Weight

Frank
I did the same thing about 50 years ago when I was asked to get the weight of a safe only I used a 2" x 6" board and a piece of pipe. The safe was later run over a scale and I was only off by about 50 pounds.

JRW

[danlb]

What is the formula when you are only lifting one end? I want to know what my mill weighs, and this technique should work great.

153 pounds at the end of 5 foot on left side of fulcrum and 1 foot of lever to the mill = how many pounds? Does something have to be divided by two because the other end is still on the ground?

Thanks

Dan

[BWS]

Buried somewhere around here is a "contraption" that utilizes a torque wrench and muliple square hole spacing on lever arm.It saw limited usage doing weight checks on an E-Prod MGB.It lifted corners of car up,and in no-way is a subsitute for having scales....just sayin.BW

[A.K. Boomer]

In a related topic my old bossman had a knee high safe out in back of his shop, it belonged to a guy we knew who had some issue's with drinking - after he drank himself to death I was ordered to take a sledge to the safe and knock its hinges off to get inside and see what was in there before we took it to the dump,
Always up for demolition I jumped at the opportunity with gusto,
I beat on that thing from every angle and rolled it all around, got the hinges broke off but the door still didn't want to give up the ghost but one end was loose and I pry'd it open,

You'll never guess what I found, about the most scary'est thing you can think of,

Multiple sticks of Dynamite - and very unstable dynamite as the paper on the sticks was half saturated and soaked through,,,

The second I seen that I just stepped back and said ---whaohw

Most of my pounding was right in front of that door that I could have been wearing...

He also had some luv letters in there and the ladies name was not his wife's....

[johnl]

Some but not all old old safes were designed and built using about 1/2 stick of Dynamite in the door of the safe. Any locksmith/safe cracker worth his salt will be very careful with unknown old safes.
JohnL

[Frank Ford]

What is the formula when you are only lifting one end? I want to know what my mill weighs, and this technique should work great.

153 pounds at the end of 5 foot on left side of fulcrum and 1 foot of lever to the mill = how many pounds? Does something have to be divided by two because the other end is still on the ground?

Thanks

Dan

So, that would be the outboard section of the bar from the fulcrum divided by the lifting portion from the fulcum, multiplied by your weight or (5/1) x 153 = 765 to lift that end. In the case of a symmetrical hunk of junk like my safe, then the total would be twice that amount.

If you're lifting something like a lathe, you'd have to do both ends separately and add them because the weight is so clearly not centered. Not sure about the mill - 'spect it would be easy enough to do the operation twice. . .

[danlb]

Thank you Fred.

It's easy to find all sorts of formulas for fulcrums, but they always seem to concentrate on the amounyt of force applied, and never on how to use that force. I should have paid more attention in high school. If I'd only known....

Dan

[Doc Nickel]

Don't know about the old dynamite, but one of my board regulars is currently restoring/refurbishing an old storefront building in Texas. The building came with an old safe (open, empty) that has this sticker inside:



Supposedly the door contained (or may still contain?) a glass vial filled with "poison gas", that would shatter and release the gas if anyone tried to break in.

Anyone have any guesses as to what kind of "gas" it might have contained? The underlying sticker suggests "tear" gas rather than "poison", so maybe just an ammonia-based irritant? Like strong smelling salts?

Doc.

[Boucher]

Nostalga moment

Those old phone numbers bring back memories. Our first phone number in about 1945 was YAle-8306. That was 6 digits and no area code. I lived not far from the address on that old sticker. The YAle exchange changed to WHitehall then later the extry number 2 was added making it WH 2 8306 then finally the area codes came in.

[doctor demo]

Or Mustard Gas .

Steve

[madman]

Safe Cracking

Many Years ago abandoned safe. Asked to open with a Colleague. Opened it had a envelope full of cash and a Beautiful Pair of Mint Colt .45 Pistols. Colleague said well lets turn it over and i was thinking.... anyhow never open old safesd with anyone else around. Some people got **** for Brains. OH when we brought the stuff to the Guy he looks at it all and says I thought it would be empty.