Meanwhile back in Finland...

[Kola]

Condolences to you and your family.

[Tayls]

Our condolences to you and the family, AK-G. Sending strength to all of you during this difficult time.

[AK-Gunner]

Thank you guys.

In the meantime, my longing for Africa is getting worse and worse: Hello Impodimo!





Remember I told you about that large Kaso professional quality safe which I transformed to a gun safe? Well, here is the origin story...

In May 2016 a friend of mine spied with his eyes an ad for a "tall safe practically for free", but the caveat was its challenging location deep inside its owner's garage and its weight. Moving the one metric ton safe out from the garage and on a trailer took about two or so hours and about two bucketfuls of sweat, but finally we were able to haul the giant to my garage where we repeated the same feat vice versa.

And boy were we exhausted. Being exhausted lessens your ability to think straight, I know this for a fact. However...

However, we decided to take a peek under the hood, so that we could plan how to replace the original mechanical locking mechanism with an electric one with a keypad I just happened to have hanging around. Inside the safe door behind this panel is the mechanism with many interesting anti-burglary countermeasures, so better think straight during dismantling and re-assembly. I think you already know where this is going...



We made some mental notes (no, for obvious reasons I never take a photo from the insides of my safes) and put the thing together...ish, as it very soon turned out to be. My pal closed the door, turned the handle and said "Funny, it feels very stiff..." and I was like "A-ha...": no alarm bells, no questions like "why does it feel stiff", nothing. And then he used some force and turned the lever locking the safe with an audible clang. Naturally the handle didn't move a bit after this grave error in judgement.

Nope, the handle won't turn and the door won't open. Not even if the combination is wrong or correct, no can do. It looks like we messed up putting the mechanism together tired as we were. It's time to congratulate myself: now after five hours of work and all that driving I've got an useless one ton steel cube in my garage. Lucky we didn't put anything in there before we closed the door...

It took me ten months to calm myself down and figure out how to break the safe open in such a way it wouldn't render itself useless. The moment of relief after destroying a dozen top quality drill bits, cutting through hardened steel alloy, aluminium, smoke inducing and cut-preventing materials like concrete and drill bit suffocating fibers etc. was priceless... Yet another couple of hours of extra work. After which the same vice versa again, repairing the damage I caused to the integrity of the safe.


Happy me moments after success...




A wife of my neighbor and a security professional colleague said to me after this ordeal:

"You guys have to be very much like criminals in order to do your jobs properly, don't you!"

"How come?"

She said, "Well you just broke into a safe which isn't supposed to be breakable, didn't you?"

Point taken.

[Sweet]

Epic, AK-Gunner!

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[Brendank]

I'm sorry for your loss brother. Late but sincere.

[Brendank]

Thank you guys.

In the meantime, my longing for Africa is getting worse and worse: Hello Impodimo!





Remember I told you about that large Kaso professional quality safe which I transformed to a gun safe? Well, here is the origin story...

In May 2016 a friend of mine spied with his eyes an ad for a "tall safe practically for free", but the caveat was its challenging location deep inside its owner's garage and its weight. Moving the one metric ton safe out from the garage and on a trailer took about two or so hours and about two bucketfuls of sweat, but finally we were able to haul the giant to my garage where we repeated the same feat vice versa.

And boy were we exhausted. Being exhausted lessens your ability to think straight, I know this for a fact. However...

However, we decided to take a peek under the hood, so that we could plan how to replace the original mechanical locking mechanism with an electric one with a keypad I just happened to have hanging around. Inside the safe door behind this panel is the mechanism with many interesting anti-burglary countermeasures, so better think straight during dismantling and re-assembly. I think you already know where this is going...



We made some mental notes (no, for obvious reasons I never take a photo from the insides of my safes) and put the thing together...ish, as it very soon turned out to be. My pal closed the door, turned the handle and said "Funny, it feels very stiff..." and I was like "A-ha...": no alarm bells, no questions like "why does it feel stiff", nothing. And then he used some force and turned the lever locking the safe with an audible clang. Naturally the handle didn't move a bit after this grave error in judgement.

Nope, the handle won't turn and the door won't open. Not even if the combination is wrong or correct, no can do. It looks like we messed up putting the mechanism together tired as we were. It's time to congratulate myself: now after five hours of work and all that driving I've got an useless one ton steel cube in my garage. Lucky we didn't put anything in there before we closed the door...

It took me ten months to calm myself down and figure out how to break the safe open in such a way it wouldn't render itself useless. The moment of relief after destroying a dozen top quality drill bits, cutting through hardened steel alloy, aluminium, smoke inducing and cut-preventing materials like concrete and drill bit suffocating fibers etc. was priceless... Yet another couple of hours of extra work. After which the same vice versa again, repairing the damage I caused to the integrity of the safe.


Happy me moments after success...




A wife of my neighbor and a security professional colleague said to me after this ordeal:

"You guys have to be very much like criminals in order to do your jobs properly, don't you!"

"How come?"

She said, "Well you just broke into a safe which isn't supposed to be breakable, didn't you?"

Point taken.

The nightmare of all gun owners. At some point most folks have lost their safe keys, similar outcome.

[AK-Gunner]

Thanks Brendan.

The nightmare of all gun owners. At some point most folks have lost their safe keys, similar outcome.

Yes, this is why I really like combination locks even if they are slower to open than a lock with a key, plus there is no key to hide and to be found by the wrong folks.

[Tayls]

Thank you guys.

In the meantime, my longing for Africa is getting worse and worse: Hello Impodimo!





Remember I told you about that large Kaso professional quality safe which I transformed to a gun safe? Well, here is the origin story...

In May 2016 a friend of mine spied with his eyes an ad for a "tall safe practically for free", but the caveat was its challenging location deep inside its owner's garage and its weight. Moving the one metric ton safe out from the garage and on a trailer took about two or so hours and about two bucketfuls of sweat, but finally we were able to haul the giant to my garage where we repeated the same feat vice versa.

And boy were we exhausted. Being exhausted lessens your ability to think straight, I know this for a fact. However...

However, we decided to take a peek under the hood, so that we could plan how to replace the original mechanical locking mechanism with an electric one with a keypad I just happened to have hanging around. Inside the safe door behind this panel is the mechanism with many interesting anti-burglary countermeasures, so better think straight during dismantling and re-assembly. I think you already know where this is going...



We made some mental notes (no, for obvious reasons I never take a photo from the insides of my safes) and put the thing together...ish, as it very soon turned out to be. My pal closed the door, turned the handle and said "Funny, it feels very stiff..." and I was like "A-ha...": no alarm bells, no questions like "why does it feel stiff", nothing. And then he used some force and turned the lever locking the safe with an audible clang. Naturally the handle didn't move a bit after this grave error in judgement.

Nope, the handle won't turn and the door won't open. Not even if the combination is wrong or correct, no can do. It looks like we messed up putting the mechanism together tired as we were. It's time to congratulate myself: now after five hours of work and all that driving I've got an useless one ton steel cube in my garage. Lucky we didn't put anything in there before we closed the door...

It took me ten months to calm myself down and figure out how to break the safe open in such a way it wouldn't render itself useless. The moment of relief after destroying a dozen top quality drill bits, cutting through hardened steel alloy, aluminium, smoke inducing and cut-preventing materials like concrete and drill bit suffocating fibers etc. was priceless... Yet another couple of hours of extra work. After which the same vice versa again, repairing the damage I caused to the integrity of the safe.


Happy me moments after success...




A wife of my neighbor and a security professional colleague said to me after this ordeal:

"You guys have to be very much like criminals in order to do your jobs properly, don't you!"

"How come?"

She said, "Well you just broke into a safe which isn't supposed to be breakable, didn't you?"

Point taken.

Ha ha ha -- I feel your pain, bud. Please post some pics of the safe (outside) so that we can get a better idea of what moving it entailed.

[AK-Gunner]

Here you go: one metric ton Kaso safe with a Rossi Puma .44 Magnum lever action as a yardstick. I posted some project pictures to this thread when I told about the actual retrofitting process of this safe into a gun friendly form. It's about three years thadaway <==






You may notice I never installed the fancy digital battery operated locking system with the keyboard user interface, similar to this one I have on another even heavier (weight empty 1470 kg) Kaso safe:




Ryan Reynolds would ask But why? Well, I am a prepper/survivalist or as I'd like to consider myself a prevailer, meaning that prepping helps one to survive and when you survive you can start rebuilding and restructuring your society hence the term Prevailer.

And as such and as an officer in the military I do know for a fact that EMP is a real threat and a viable option for modern warfare. If for some reason Finland is subjected to high altitude nuclear event directly or as a collateral victim, this safe becomes instantly a just another extremely hard to open steel cube. Given time every safe will be opened, but the countermeasures in this puppy are umpteenth times harder than in that "easy one" I opened in a few hours.

So the fast and easy to open one with the electronic lock is arms length from me and the others with mechanical locking mechanisms are a bit further away, but every safe contains similar weapons to ensure availability of any applicable countermeasure regardless of from which safe I look for the tools of violence. Did The Bomb go off or not.



The heaviest safe thus far was this two and a half metric ton safe me and my buddy salvaged from a mall which was being demolished. The safe was originally lifted to the second floor of the not yet completed mall, after which there was an office built around the behemoth, which meant the bloody thing couldn't fit through the door of the room. Or the next doors for that matter.

We tore down a drywall and a half of another and then some, then moved the huge thing to the other end of the mall with a custom built safe dolly breaking some 80 meters of quarry tile floor during the process. There the demolition crew tore a big hole to the second floor wall with a huge excavator with which the safe was eventually lowered down to the ground.

Sometimes you need a little help with the heavy lifting...

[Tayls]

Phew... now that we have seen the pics, this makes your story even more impressive!! Well done.


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