Evening star., 1936-08-08

tCOnLlnueQ from rage BID
tecting its valuables, it seems, par
ticularly feminine human nature.
A girl in an Office, who mad been
opening the safe daily for eight years,
couldn't get it open one morning and
called Raymond.
This safe could never have been
opened with this combination" Ray
nlond told her when she wrote down
numerals indicating right and left
reversal. He found the combination.
She had had right and left mixed up
in her mind her entire life. until that
day, and had got along perfectly until
she learned right from left through
some accidental experience except
that she couldn't open her safe the
next morning.
Once Raymond opened a bank safe
deposit box for lady who discovered
that she had the keys in her hand
bag after it was all over. She'd
looked every place before she hired a
locksmith but thought the Keys in
her bag opened something else. It
takes a court order to open a safe
deposit box after the death OF it's
renter, Raymond says.
Sometimes persons forget the entire
comolnatlon, particularly for safes
seldom entered, but often they merely
get the sequence mixed up, or a fig
ure or two wrong. If they know one
number and its position for sure it's
a great help, Raymond says. Indi-
viduals certain about the position of
a number, but wrong about it, cause
lots OF trouble in safe openers lives.
Although Raymond refuses to DEM
onstrate how he opens safes without
drills or acetylene torches, he declares
firmly that there are no Jimmy VAL
entines. He hasn't extraordinarily
sensitive finger tips, he says. Safe
opening takes knowledge, experience
and lots of patience.
TUMBLERS in a combination lock
are revolving discs, not plungers,
he says Except in fashioned or
badly worn safes there isn't murmur
from the mechanism until those tum-
blers are aligned, when one bolt drops
into the grooves and the safe is ready
for opening. But it takes the correct
combination to get those tumblers
into line.
Most of the safes Raymond has
worked on have four-Wheel locks and
have millions of possible combina-
tions. Five-wheelers have hundreds
of millions Of possibilities. But Ray
mond has never failed to open a safe
yet, although many times it takes
adroit drilling, done with little dam
age to the safe. With three-wheel
lock, dialing one combination of num-
bers every 80 seconds, which is pretty
fast work, it would take 2O9 years
working night and day to try all pos
sible arrangements, if it turned out
that the last one tried was the cor
rect combination-which 1t probably
would.
Raymond has worked as long as
eight hours on this trial and error
system. Then he gives up and uses
a drill.
Once Raymond opened five safes in
an hour.
With certain obsolete makes I'd
bet any one could open the safe In
is minutes" Raymond says. When a
guide wheel is worn there is slight
click, felt by the fingers, as the COM
binatiop numbers pass the notch,
making the job simple.
Called by police and insurance men
to examine an undamaged safe robbed
of $1,000 on the premises of cafe
terra, Raymond opened the safe in
2 minutes. Every one had thought it
must be an inside job, but suspected
no one. It was decided that some
night brigand probably got into the
thing
Some burglar-reSsting safes are SO
hard they cannot be drilled, Raymond
says. They are constructed of case
hardened cast steel, manganese steel,
or a cast alloy steel hardened all the
way through.
On these, acetylene torches must be
used, unless one has clue to the
combination. These are the same
kind Of torches you see cutting street
car tracks late at night. They will
cut through nearly anything metal,
but only the most foolhardy bandits
use acteylene torches attempting to
make the contents of safe their own,
because they create a frightful racket
and the splitting red, white and blue
flames can be seen 20 stories up and
several blocks away.
Acetylene torchase heat to about
1000 degrees Fahrenheit and make
metal flow. They consist of two tubes,
one forcing jet of acteylene into the
metal, and the other oxygen, the lat
ter to blow out the molten steel.
p AYMOND is scornful of this busi-
ness of opening safes on ships
long sunk in the seas, as is done in
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