Hello citizens of Bad Ideas. I have recently found a old combination safe in the trash that I don't have the combo too. I talked to the owner and she said it belonged to a coworker that was no longer around and no one had the combination. They threw it away because a mouse died inside of it and started to stink. I remember reading something about a master code to some safes and I emailed the company asking just that.

Assuming I don't get any good info back from them, and I don't expect to, is there anyway I can get into this safe without destroying it?

google is your friend.

I highly doubt that there is a master code for all the safes from one manufacturer, and even if there was, it would probably be kept very well from the public because safes are very safe if anyone can just put in the master code to open it.

If you want it open without destroying it then you should probably find a locksmith to open it for you.

describe the safe. do you have any lock picking experience. I also suggest posting this on lockpicking 101 . com

I can't believe they're throwing it out. If I had something like that it would drive me crazy until I got it open.

It would probably be trivial to cut open. Any safe that's small and light enough for you to take home probably isn't very tough to cut through with the right tools.

Cracking the combo could be a lot more difficult, and probably not worth it. If you want to use it yourself or use it for practice that's fine, but there's no easy set of instructions anyone can give you for how to crack it. If you just want to find out what's inside it you may as well just blowtorch/angle grind/plasma cut the top off of the thing and call it a day.

I'm really curious how the hell a mouse got into a safe...either it's got teeth that can bite through hardplate, or someone wasn't paying attention while the door was open.

The manufacturer might be able to help...none of the safes I worked on professionally ever had a "master combination", though they might have the actual combo in sales records. We retained them at one lock shop I worked at, and the customer could call up with a verbal password decided at the time of sale/installation so we could give them the combo if they lost it.

Even if you take it to a locksmith (unless they own an autodialer and you're willing to pay a big fee for what is, in all likelihood, an empty safe) they're still going to have to damage it to open it. In complete lockout, at best they could drill the lock to read the wheels from inside. They can plug the hole afterwards, but no matter how you go some part of the safe will be at least minorly damaged in the process.

You could always just buck up and invest the time in trying likely combinations...if it's a commercial safe, they tend to be set to numbers on the zeroes and fives, like 30-65-20, because any store's ever-changing roster of managers and leads are going to have trouble remembering combos. And the numbers will usually follow a high-low-high or low-high-low pattern (i.e 70-25-65 or 20-70-45) because of the mechanical nature of safe locks. Just use your computer to make a list of all possible combos on the 0's and 5's and spend an hour every day trying them out. :)

Can you tell us the brand of safe? Or preferably, post pictures? I might be able to help you out, because any safe left behind by a company for any reason is sure to have been emptied (no one forgets where their money is), so spending hundreds at a locksmith would be a waste of money.

EDIT: It would probably be trivial to cut open. Any safe that's small and light enough for you to take home probably isn't very tough to cut through with the right tools.
Good point, it's probably cheap if it's small enough to carry. I wouldn't try torches, though, especially for someone who doesn't know about safes. If you do decide to just go a destructive route, get a power drill and a reasonably thick drill bit, and drill a pattern of holes in the top to make a square shape. (The closer together the holes the better.) Then just bash in the square with a sledgehammer. Or just drill two holes of about 1/2" each, shine a flashlight in one and put your eye to the other to see if it's even worth opening.

I'm really curious how the hell a mouse got into a safe...either it's got teeth that can bite through hardplate, or someone wasn't paying attention while the door was open.


I may be wrong, but I think vermin have special jelly-like bones. I definitely remember my pet gerbil being able to crawl under the cracks in doors.

mouses can dislocate their shoulders when entering small cracks. I think I heard somewhere mouses can squeeze into cracks the depth of a quarter

I don't have a pic of it but I can tell you its built by the Dayton safe co. The mouse got in through the top. It has a turn tube type thing where you drop bags of money in the top, burn the handle, and it drops down into the safe. I'm sure there's nothing in the safe, I just want a safe. Sure I could drill the locks/hinges or even burn a hole in it with a bunch of thermite, but I want to use the safe as a safe. I've been in the market for a safe for a while. I have one I can buy from a friend for about 100 bucks so hiring a locksmith to get this one open would be a waste of money. Assuming the locksmith would cost more than 100 bucks anyway.

yeah and when the locksmith opens it and finds a half-rotted mouse corpse in there hes gonna be real happy.

I may be wrong, but I think vermin have special jelly-like bones. I definitely remember my pet gerbil being able to crawl under the cracks in doors.

Get the fuck out of here, must of been some really big cracks.

I doubt that any combination lock would attempt to have a "master" combo (ie more than one combination).
http://img230.imageshack.us/img230/1961/ldskjasldkasldkjaldkjqwrf2.jpg
This is an image of a combination lock that I pulled from wikipedia. See those two discs with the dips in them that I circled in red? Those discs determine the numbers that will open the combination lock. As you might have guess, one disc = one number.
I won't go into more detail about how a combination lock functions, because to be honest I do not think I could do it dignity via the facts in my head. However, I'll share a few educational links for anyone who would care to take a look.

Howstuffworks (http://home.howstuffworks.com/combination-lock.htm)
moar howstuffworks (http://home.howstuffworks.com/inside-lock.htm)
wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combination_lock)


I've digressed.

The lock on a safe functions relatively the same way as in the combination lock I've posted above.

The reason I believe that no manufacturer would have two combos would be because that would incur the cutting of another dip in each disc.
Unfortunately (or fortunately if you're the thieving type:p), by doing this you would create more than two combos.
Example:

54-21-49
34-0-48

In the above example, you could do 54-0-49 or 34-21-49 (et cetera). Adding more dips would also fuck with the lock. Unless you're shelling hundreds of dollars, the locks mechanical tolerances will be loose.

Adding more combos reduces the security of the lock if you're going to do the pen and paper method and start cracking. Also, it would require a nonstandard wheel fly (the little nubs that protrude from the discs). Mind you, nonstandard in comparison to single combination combination locks. I imagine that these would be marginally more expensive to produce.

Most likely there are methods that would allow for just two (or whatever number you wanted), but this would probably be overly complicated and not cost-effective as just having one combo.


However, there is always the chance that I may be wrong, so if any other poster (or lurker) has information that differs from what I have said above, please correct me.


I would just like to add that with pin tumbler locks, you can have a locks that can be opened up with more then just one key.
Once again, I'm not going to bother composing a rendition on how locks work.

Masterkeys explained on howstuffworks (http://home.howstuffworks.com/question710.htm)
Wikipedia on pin tumbler locks (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pin_tumbler_lock)

Sledgehammer.

Just bash the dial off and drill through the locking part. Then buy your friends.

Ok, I called a locksmith, he says getting it open without damaging it is a waste of time. Guess I'll just scrap it.

there is probably a body in there or something... how the fuck does a mouse get into a safe?