safecracker at large

Murder mysteries abound, but there are precious few books, fiction or otherwise, for the general  public about safecracking. Murder mysteries have more appeal to writers, readers, and moviegoers.  It's hard to maintain reader or moviegoer interest for very long when the topic is safes and safecracking. It can be done, though, and if you keep your eyes open, however, every once in a while a book or a movie about safecracking and safecrackers comes along. Aside from relatively recent and well-known safecracking-themed movies like The Italian Job and The Score, here are a few books and movies I've uncovered: The Great Train Robbery Fiction, by Michael Crichton, the man who brought us Jurassic Park --- This book is easy to find, and was made into a very good movie with Sean Connery (opinion of course). This is the fictionalized account of a real and daringly well-planned heist that took place in England aboard a train carrying safes loaded with the British Army payroll fo...

Copyright 2012 by Ken Dunckel Safecracker Serving San Francisco Bay Area and Northern California CA License 1985 CA Contractor 553337 415-203-7298 kendunckel@aol.com Gun Safes and User Expectations One of the biggest mistakes gun safe owners make is expecting too much from their safes. If you buy a gun safe to store a collection of expensive long guns and handguns, you're doing the right thing safety-wise. If there are children in the home, any firearms need to be stored where a kid can't lay hands on them; no brainer, right? Second, an owner doesn't want to lose one or all of his or her weapons in a burglary. Firearms are popular theft items. Losing personal property is hurtful enough, but it's more disturbing to think yet another nice handgun will end up in the hands of some lowlife. Fact: Most residential burglars don't come equipped with the knowledge or tools needed to defeat a safe that can't be carried off. That last comm...

Seems like I'm hearing it more lately . . . "you want more to open it than I paid for it!" Mostly this comes from people who bought their (now broken or forgotten combination) "safe" at some big-box store. Often enough, they're right. No apologies from this quarter, however. Some companies currently making and selling what pass for safes have their products made in other countries where the labor costs are very low in comparison to what Americans have to earn to keep their families fed. Couple that with the ferocious competition among safe makers to sell products in quantity. The only effective way to do it is by selling cheaper. It becomes the race to the bottom, in both price and quality. Case In Point: Last week I was hired by a safe maker to repair a gun safe. The owner bought it at a discount house, but discovered a problem with it as soon as he tried to use it. He found his way to the safe maker's help line. A company rep told him he thought h...

This is a response to one of the questions in the readers' comments regarding where to learn to do the type of work I do. I'll just outline the path I took. You could call safe and vault work a locksmith specialty, though many safe and vault companies and their employees don't do any locksmith work per se . I began as a general commercial locksmith, which is a common path to becoming a safe and vault specialist. After a couple of entry-level jobs I went to a (now-defunct) school devoted to the locksmith trade. It was The New York School of Locksmithing, and it used to be in Hempstead, on Long Island. One apprentice job and one geographic move after the school I was lucky enough to get hired by a locksmith who specialized in safes. Safe techs most often learn their work by doing. If they're lucky it's under the tutelage of one or more experienced competent technicians. The man who first taught me was very knowledgeable. Though I didn't realize then, he us...