It was Wednesday last week (7th Oct) when I had my hair cut last with Amy, her salon located right next door to Cambs Lock & Safe, where I first started in the Locksmith trade.
Before I had my hair cut, I went in and shook Gary's hand (the guy who manages but does not own the shop, the one I did most of my close work and learning with), I thanked him for his time and said my goodbyes.
Had hair cut. Nervously watching phone to see if anyone I texted about having a drink in the pub across the street may show signs of coming - I haven't held drinks for myself, a birthday do/party or anything of the like since the Wedding - and even then, that was sort of all arranged around/for me and was an occasion where it doesn't count as a "birthday" or "farewell" type drinkie-poos gathering. So I was nervous no one would come. I'd asked Terry Wade if he'd be able to make it, as he was definitely one man I wanted to buy a drink and thank personally for his impact upon my learning and attitude to sticking it out when the times got really tough. He said from the beginning he wasn't taking on anyone new, but he'd always be on the end of the phone for me - and thank god for him, he is a true inspiration to me.
So, first Alex came (my friend I've done some modelling with, his partner Rod is the one who was teaching me some digital photography in his studio), then Terry showed up, and Del was there (as he was driving me home later)
After several (too many) happy-hour fuelled Gin & Tonics, I'd said my piece to Alex, I'd had my chance and said my thank yous to Terry, and he had to leave - we were winding up and he casually says "Oh, I've got another big Chubb safe to open tomorrow, got to drill it - like the one you came with me on in town a while back - would you like to come?"
WOULD THE POPE LIKE A BALCONY??
So the next day he picked me up, we head to private residence - he's been in a day or so before and quoted the price (none of my business) to gain entry to this safe - and as I've tried to explain before, there is "drilling open a safe", and there is "drilling a hole in a safe to get a tiny key-hole surgery opportunity to manipulate the lock, if you've drilled in the right place and not hit a booby trap which permanently locks the safe and you're screwed" - the latter is called "Non destructive opening methods" and this is one of the reasons I like Terry's work so much - he specialises in this line of work, rather than destroying whatever lock it is and replacing it - when it's a SAFE you're going to either OPEN with SKILL or DESTROY like a criminal, then you want to know exactly what you're doing - and wow, he does.
So. Here's a photo journal of the day, photos all taken discretely, with Terry's permission - after all, this is a private residence. A person had passed away, the family needing access to the contents of the safe but not knowing the combination - and there was this safe, plus another safe (Terry had opened that one already for them) plus we suspect at least another one somewhere in the house - it was a magnificent house.
The safe is a Chubb Treasury. It's cash rating is approximately £80,000 (that is a MAMMOTH amount for a private residence safe - even the job he took me on in town for a major book retailer that had the same safe only with a digital keypad that had locked up was two or so grades below this in heftiness and value-rating. Same make, different lock and higher security rating. The one in town in the store was cash rated £60,000 - this gives you some idea of how expensive this safe in this private home is/would've been in the day)
This safe, due to having a combination lock, even had a key to allow you to turn the combination dial in the FIRST place - glad that was present and not hidden or lost.
In his van, like last time at the job in town, only I didn't see the drilling, I only helped plug the hole, replace the digital lock and keypad and clean up a shit load of mess, Terry had a spare part of what the inside of this safe was suspected to look like, and a combination dial which was the same dimensions - this is how he measured out how deep/far back along one side we needed to drill our "keyhole" to view the back of the lock, which of course is attached to the door.
This is Terry measuring out how far back and down to drill the hole, based on the example lock and spare part he had from a previous opening job - and this is crucial - 2mm to the wrong side and we'd hit the inner door, triggering the dreaded relockers. 2mm to the other side and we'd have to widen the hole to see forwards at the lock. It really is like keyhole surgery.
Right, so we've marked out the X where to drill, this is where Terry believes will have a clean line of sight to the back of the lock, allowing him to put his scope in and read the back of the dials, convert those readings in to a formula only he understands, and obtain the four digit code. I might add here, he'd spent a good three or so hours on a previous day "feeling out" the combination, again in a way only he knows how as he understands the inner workings of the combination wheels. This ain't no highschool Master padlock we're talkin' about here. And he believed he successfully identified the final two numbers, but could not get the first two - hence the need to drill and view the lock from behind. (This annoyed him greatly, as he would have preferred not to drill at all - understandably, as it consumes expensive tungsten drill bits like melted chocolate and overheats the drills and takes a shit load of time and a lot of mess!)
We start drilling - for the first 45 mins or so, we made progress of 32mm in. We'd gone through the outer shell and hit the first "inner layer" of "anti-drill material", which is rumoured to consist of the stuff they pull of the sides of furnaces - very very hard material, unknown exactly what it is, but it's like concrete and blunts your drill bits like nothing else, it's embedded with these crumbs and chunks of extremely hard rocky crap, designed to deter the person drilling, obviously.
This is a video recorded on silent (I had ear plugs in, it was deafening, nothing to hear but drilling anyway) which shows how hard the impact drill is working, how we were bugger-all in by this point, and the concrete-like chunks that were being spewth forth as we drilled.
Interchanging between the impact-type drill and the sds drill as they each got to the point of overheating, Terry hands me the Impact drill and says - have a go. I freak out! No way! I don't want to fuck it up! He says, using the Verniers to measure, "We're only 37mm in kiddo, you can't fuck much up at this point" - and so I am now in love with impact drills, but not that muck that you have to drill through! There was at least three layers of that, and at least one layer of alloy, and two layers of extremely thick solid steel.
THIS photo shows a huge chunk of that concrete-like substance embedded with what might as well be diamond chunks, for how quickly it ate through the drill bits, it shows a piece on the right hand side, about to fall in to the hole we're drilling. We're about 1.5hrs in by now and about 68mm.
At this point, I'm not to do any more drilling, as Terry decides it's getting close to coming through into the inner door, and this is make or break time - was the X marks the spot and the hole SPOT ON? He sticks his scope in to look - we were slightly off by just under a mm or so, but it was workable, took a bit more drilling to make the correct angle for him to scope it better.
Then he starts manipulating the lock, using the example lock to show me what he's seeing through the scope, and asking me to dial in certain numbers - it's not as simple as it sounds to a newbie, you have to start 5x in a clockwise direction from a certain number, the next number is 4x anti-clockwise, the next one is 3x in a clockwise direction, etc... He was instructing me what to do as he viewed the wheels through the change hole, a tiny tiny peep hole, which we'd drilled for 2hrs to get to, without tripping a booby trap.
Terry's pissed off at himself because, now he can see the backs of the wheels as they are working, the two numbers he had deciphered before drilling WERE correct, 98 and 70. Through instructing me what to do, he got the third number, as he viewed through the scope, and then the last number he couldn't see, his scope literally was not long enough to see that deeply in to the final wheel. He said he knew it was a low number - and we sat for a while, over a can of diet pepsi each, trying to see if there could be a pattern to the numbers - as there often is.
We continue for about 20 minutes, me having to dial in from scratch each time he tells me to stop on a certain number for the final digit - and I say to him at the beginning of this process that "13 or 15" - it's got a different "FEEL" to it, but I didn't know how to explain any better than that as I don't have the lingo or knowledge - he showed me on the example lock why I might be feeling what I was, a bit like the arm of a record player returning to it's sitting position ... so I stayed quiet, but I knew it was somewhere around 15. He had me stop on 10 for the final digit so many times, frustrated he couldn't see quite deep enough - I was so sure it was 15.
The last digit was in fact 15. CLICK. Terry told me to go and get the customer (which took time in itself, wandering through a huge house, not wanting to trudge the concrete chunks and dusty shit through the place, calling her name) - although Terry knew he'd finally found the combination, the owner is the one to open the safe - I love his professionalism, I really do.
I felt a tingle when those bolts retracted as she turned the big hefty handle and I could hear the mechanism working, pulling in the massive rods of steel. The woman was delighted. I stepped outside for a moment to let Terry talk shop, to let the woman discover what was in her deceased relative's safe etc ... and only took pictures once she'd removed her valuables, whatever they were. I saw purple velvet wrapped items, so we guessed silverwares and Jewellery and so forth, but that's none of our business.
FRICKIN AWESOMENESS!
Now, as the lady only needed access to the safe's contents, and not use of the safe for the foreseeable future, we did not need to plug the tiny hole up on the outside. Whereas, the last job I went on with the same safe - I only saw the changing of the lock and the plugging of the hole and the cleaning up of the mess. This time, we didn't have to do that.
Here are photos showing how, where Terry knew how to drill on the SIDE of a safe because of his knowledge of that type of safe - meant that he got in through the side of the safe, therefore in to the side of the safe's inner door but without tripping any relockers off - I've highlighted the holes to show what a neat job it is, and how very close it can be do absolute disaster. This man is freakin' awesome in his knowledge. Bless him for thinking to invite me along in the first place.
And no, this ain't giving away any trade secrets per se - there's so much more to the photos and story I've told you to fuck up in between that this is like showing you pictures of a recipe and describing the tastes, but not giving you the amounts or names of the ingredients to put in, or how long to cook it for, in what dish etc...
So, here's the holes and how they let us in to the inner door, so he could "view the back of the lock" to manipulate the third digit and finally the forth ...
1.
Where our drilling came in to the body of the safe
2.
Where that hole then meets and penetrates into the door of the safe, where the locks (and booby traps are) whilst it was shut. This is a great picture to show you just how much 2mm or so could have meant hitting something other than that cavity which exists between the inner door and where all the lock stuff is...
3.
This shows what the safe looks like now we're in through side, through the inner door into the cavity, and the cover of the inner door is now open, literally we had 2mm or so either side to hit something really really bad. Which we did not! I hope this is painting a bigger picture - it certainly did for me once I saw a drilling job from beginning to end - absolutely amazing knowledge over years and years required to do this. Not to mention some seriously expensive pieces of equipment.
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This was truly the most eye opening locksmith experience on site I've ever seen in my life and may ever likely see. The precision involved will never fail to impress me.
If you're not asleep yet - here is a video, about 4 mins in length, but it shows all the inner lock working, Terry explains how many relockers this safe has, and displays just how AWESOME it looks whilst the mechanism is locking and unlocking - mechanical locks ring my bell!
Go on, take a look - he took the time to explain to me, and I've taken the time to blog it all for you. (And man, it's taken me over two hours to do this! The photos kept f**king up) I want to be anywhere ANYTHING NEAR Terry when I grow up.
I hope this wasn't too boring for you, this is my passion - maybe Ill find someone like Terry in Ireland ... but I tell you now, he's a rare gem. Can you imagine being 50 and LOVING what you do for a living, LOVING teaching people who want to learn, LOVING your job every day?? Having this kind of amazing knowledge that you've EARNED YOURSELF the HARD WAY?
He said he'd be a ref for me here in Ireland, and has given me some names to chase - but being Terry, doesn't have contact details, so they'll certainly take some chasing - but I thought it was lovely he offered to be a reference for me. And all the time he's taken. What a top bloke. Kudos to you Terry, even though you will never read this.
