Safes: To Crack or not to Crack, that is the Question! Though we don't really have a lot of safes lying around the house, we did once receive a safe from an estate sale. We promptly locked the combination inside (dumb, yes, but lets assume the fault lies with one of our children!). Two possible scenarios came to mind to access the contents of the safe: one was the scene from the The Apple Dumpling Gang (a movie we recently felt compelled to expose our kids to from our own childhood).

I don't remember the details of the scene, but it ended with a large explosion, money flying everywhere, and no one injured - only a bit of soot on everyone's face. Though there was no disclaimer, the scene screamed at me “DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!” My next thought was of The Italian Job and Charlize Theron. She had quite a touch in opening the most difficult safe under stressful situations successfully and without causing any damage to the safe. Not knowing Charlize personally, I decided to call my local locksmith to get his take on the situation. It turned out that he had seen this problem before and had quite a “sensitive” ear for this type of thing. So, when needing to access a safe, there is one simple question to ask: Do I need to keep the safe intact?

Though it was not a realistic option for me, brute force is one of the methods for opening a safe. The other main safecracking methods involve either lock manipulation or manipulating a weak point on the safe (or as seen in popular media: drilling). For all intent purposes, lets assume that we are trying to break into a safe illegally. Then we get the added pressure of being caught and have to consider how much time and noise the job will take.

The best method to use is lock manipulation. How sweet would be the satisfaction to leave no sign of having ever been there! The safe owner comes in on Monday morning, opens his safe, and all the gold bars are missing.

There are no indications of a break-in. Though you could leave a calling card inside the safe, something that says, “Safe cracked courtesy of the Ghost” (or whatever cool name you come up with).

Surprisingly enough, the first way a safecracker will usually attempt to open a safe is to guess the combination. Manufactured often come with a manufacturer-set combination, which many people fail to reset. Flasher Infinity Best By Sanjeev. Most of these try-out combinations are industry standard and are accessible to locksmiths and safecrackers. With time being an issue, you might as well try the easiest thing first.