safeman's scrapbook
In the beginning......
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Toolbags and Tramcars
As the grandson of the 'guvnor' it was pretty certain that I would get all the worst jobs going. However on reflection it did me no harm at all - having to find out everything for yourself is often the way to lasting knowledge.
Watching and listening when Alex Aikman the foreman was opening safes gave me reasonable groundwork in the basics. I suppose you always remember your 'first time'. Opening my first safe is still clear in the memory even almost 60 years later. It was a Chatwood 'Household' which Alex had already drilled when he was called away on an outside job. The end of the bolt was visible, and inserting a thin tapered punch to apply a little force while moving each lever in turn the punch suddenly gave as the bolt withdrew. What elation. Hardly all my own work but a start. Alex was not happy with me!
The company, Fishers for Safes Ltd, specialised in opening, repairing, and reconditioning safes. It had been started in 1934 by my maternal Grandfather, John Fisher, when he was in his mid 60's. The Company was the sole agent in Scotland and Northern Ireland for the Ratner Safe Company which put all their service and installation work our way. The workshop when I started in 1948 was only two side by side benches at the back of the single windowed shop premises which was mainly taken up by a small office and showroom for our reconditioned safes. The remaining space was used for the preparation and hand painting of safes. Between the painter's bench and mine was an iron sink which unfortunately served for more than its intended purpose when the removal squad came in for their tea break. As the lorry was open with only room for the driver and foreman in the cab, the rest of the gang had to brave the elements huddled up among the boxes rollers and tarpaulins on the back so it was no surprise that they welcomed the 'comfort' of the workshops and especially the old dilapidated cast iron fireplace where tea was brewed and scotch pies heated.
My basic tools were, hammers, screwdrivers, punches and chisels, adjustable wrench, pliars, 'junior' hacksaw, torch, grease, and spring wire, plus the standard templates for the mounting screws of Ratner and Milner locks. Also included were a 6" warding file, a rat-tail file, and a 12" coarse file which was used for 'draw filing' the edges of door plates that were binding due to dropped or worn hinges. Pieces of tin and tin-snips were also carried to cut makeshift shims for worn hinges. Improvisation was the name of the game when away from the workshop! For openings a 1/2" Wolf Electric drill was taken along, making it rather difficult to struggle on and off tramcars. If it was a blown 'drill-proof' Ratner which had to be opened then the oxy-acetylene equipment was taken to site on the removals lorry. This would then be used to transport the damaged doors back to the workshop for repair. As shown below, hydraulic tail lifts were not commonly available in the 50's, only rollers and levers - just like when they built the pyramids.
When the first service van was acquired in 1955 -a pickup actually as seen on the right - this allowed all damaged safe doors to be taken back to the shop for repair, assuming it could'nt be done on site. On the average run of the mill safes at the time the top hinge was rivetted on to the door plate so if no drill was available the countersinks had to be cut out by hand before punching out the rivets themselves.
With the better quality safes the top hinge was normally held by screws and location pins, Milners from the inside and Ratners from the front. It was extremely difficult to locate the 3 Ratner screws as they were boiler patch screws which had their square heads cut off after tightening and then the surface dressed down, puttied and painted. The only method of unscrewing was, having scraped and located the faint line indicating the head, to loosen the screw by applying a foals foot chisel with heavy hammer at the top edge to create a notch and allow enough purchase to get the screw moving.
Although that could hardly come under the heading of tricks of the trade, the method of freeing safe or strongroom doors which had jammed shut but unlocked due to either over zealous painters or often a coin having been lying on the lower sill when the door was forcibly closed, was the ever successful practice of hitting the door at a certain point with all the force available while exerting as much pull on the handles as possible. I believe that the certain point should remain a trade secret among us mechanics as in the celebrated reason for charging vast amounts of money for opening safes in such circumstances - " you were only here five minutes and charged me £100" complains the customer. " Yes, correct, £5 for my time and £95 for knowing where to hit it!"
The four and a half inch method of opening Milner List 2's is'nt much of a trade secret nowadays as there can't be all that many left still in use. (or am I deluding myself) After all they were made about 125 years ago. Suffice to say - if there are still any out there who don't know - that there is a certain rivet on the door which, if removed by cutting out the countersink and punching through the door, will cause the rather flimsy tail strap to pass behind the bolt of the lock when sufficient torque is applied to the handle. No drill required!
Before I forget I must mention an incident which happened not long after I started learning the trade. Not wishing to dine solely on scotch pies I often opted for the restaurant of the YMCA across the street from our showroom. One day my regular waitress who knew my line of work directed two young men to share my table despite the fact that the restaurant was quite empty. It did'nt take long until the conversation turned to what I did for a living, and eventually "you can open safes then?" Gradually the penny dropped and true enough, along came the 'show stopper', "how would you feel about doing a wee job for us?"- "no problem getting in, we've got someone who'll leave a window open, and you can have half the takings!" Difficult - how do I extract myself from this without upsetting them. I managed to effect a polite but positive refusal and to my relief they left the table without staying for lunch! I can't imagine for one moment that I'm the first, or last, lock or safe man to be so propositioned. Perhaps on a later occasion we'll touch on the recent story of the safeman who took the bait and was caught on the premises of Cartier the Jewellers with his case of tools bearing his name, address, and telephone number!
In about 1951 we moved into larger premises. Up until that point the only machinery he had was a very small bench grinder with a stone at one end and a dolly mop at the other, plus a basic manual cylinder key cutting machine. We now had space to allow the luxury of a multi-speed vertical drill, a heavy duty grinder, and a small Myford lathe. No key machine though - all keys were hand cut with radiused steps, and finely polished with emery cloth before being buffed. The only other thing which sticks in my memory was a sp
lendid fitted wooden case with a full set of stocks, taps, and dies, all Whitworth thread of course from 1/16" to 1/2" which we had brought with us from the old workshop. Pity Milners did'nt use the otherwise standard Whitworth thread, it would have made life much easier.
Our safe work was divided into something like 75% opening and repairing safes which had been blown, and 25% on the usual run of lost keys and jammed doors. By this time I was fortunate to have the assistance of two excellent trained mechanics, Peter Osprey and Bobby Calder. Much of the work at that time involved the removal of explosives from locks and is covered in more detail in the Peterman site.
The most effective way of releasing the Ratner doors was to burn out one of the 'CompoSteel' rivets which fastened the vertical door flanges (see drawing 'improvements') and with a wire probe, clear the re-locker. (they were not cross-locked) Ratners would supply replacement locks and drill resisting rivets. Because most of these safes were fitted with a pair of drawers at the bottom, the fire chamber on being blown off would burst into the safes interior but stop against the drawers at the bottom while tilting over at an angle at the top. The result was that many of the blown safes could still not be opened as the bottom of the chamber was jammed behind the lock case flanges and could take a further half hour or so to release.
In these post-war years many of the established safe companies were merging with the like of Milner with Chatwood, Hobbs Hart with Chubb, and eventually, Chatwood-Milner and Chubb. As Milners were by far the most widely used safes in Britain - the whole of the Glasgow Municipal Buildings for instance plus almost every solicitors office having a basic List 2 (sometimes called a church door Milner) servicing was often difficult for the public to obtain as the name Milner had vitually disappeared from the telephone directories.
This is where my Grandfather's commercial skills came into play as he had always maintained a strong advertising presence in the South of Scotland with a regular weekly 2 column inches on the front page of the Glasgow Herald (at that time all adverts) a large permanent sign at the exit from platform 6 in the Central Station where the bulk of south side trains disembarked, and in Murray's Diary, which was the popular pocket sized railway timetable of its day. This led to Fishers benefitting from most of the servicing, opening, and removal work which had previously gone the way of the manufacturers.
Being a small company there was no demarkation of labour with the result that mechanics were often called upon to help out on the removals squad when more than three bodies were required. This usually happened when a safe had to be 'walked' up stairs where two men worked below the safe and two above. Looking back on it now a Health and Safety Inspector would have had a hairy fit if he'd seen the risks that were taken.
The technique involved in moving safes weighing up to 6 cwts. up a stair was to firstly wind a rope around the safe horizontally to give a means of purchase. The safe was then tipped from back to front (easier as the centre of gravity is nearer the door) and the rear of the safe 'walked' onto the first step. The next move was the difficult one, lifting the front of the safe to tip the balance over centre where it was held by the men standing on the steps above while a wooden box the height of the stair riser was placed below the safe, and a roller (wooden preferably) laid across the box and upon which the safe was slowly returned, the action causing the back edge of the safe to kick inwards and upwards onto the next step. This process was then repeated step by step. The loading over 3 steps of a safe and 4 men must have far exceeded the design limit on some of the 'hanging' spiral staircses which were only attached on one side to the outer wall.
I was lucky I suppose, apart from crushed and split fingers the only other mishaps were big toes broken on two separate occasions, the first when loading a Milner Holdfast, and second during a safe test at the Fichet factory in France. (photo right 1966). This rather spoiled my night out in La Place Pigalle. My Grandfather had told me when I started that I would never be a real safeman until I lost a finger but at least I can still count up to ten without taking my shoes off!
If any more incidents come to mind I can always stick them on the end of this......
first posted 22/12/05
revised 23/12/05
