Posted on April 06, 2020
Have you locked yourself out of your safe? Whether your locking mechanism has failed or you have simply forgotten your code Go Assist are here to help.
Suddenly finding you can’t get into a safe in your home or at work puts you in a quandary. Whether the locking mechanism has somehow failed or you’ve simply forgotten the code, not being able to access whatever valuables you keep inside can range from inconvenient to borderline disastrous.
But what throws many people when they find themselves in this situation is the simple question - who do I turn to for help? Is this something a regular locksmith can help me with? Or do I have to track down some kind of specialist safe breaker to save the day?
The confusion perhaps stems from the fact that we tend to associate locksmiths with key-operated locks. This is because, in the vast majority of cases where any of us have to call out a locksmith, there is usually a key lock involved. When we watch them at their work, they do clever things like picking the lock, or else insert some kind of fast-solidifying resin into the keyhole from which they can quickly fashion a replica key.
What we don’t often see is locksmiths working with the kind of combination or digital locks that most safes rely on. So does that mean we always need to track down a specialist when we can’t get into our safe?
Type of safe
The answer is that it depends on what type of safe you have and how sophisticated the security measures it employs are. It isn’t true to say your local locksmith is probably only able to work with key-operated locks. Especially in the modern age of electronic and digital locks, all locksmiths have to be skilled with a wide range of mechanism types, covering everything from combination locks to keyless entry systems on-premises.
Many domestic grade safes, while designed to make it difficult for any would-be intruder to get inside, nonetheless employ comparatively straightforward locking mechanisms that the majority of qualified locksmiths should be able to handle quite easily.
On the other hand, more sophisticated and industrial-grade safes may well be beyond the scope of what your standard local locksmith can manage. The highest security locking mechanisms are purposefully designed to be completely tamper-proof, which means all the typical tricks and skills even the most experienced lock specialist has learnt over the years won’t be to much avail.
Can I open my safe?
The most straightforward way to get an answer is to contact a local locksmith and ask. If you give them the make and model of your safe, they should be able to tell you if they are able to crack it or not or advise where you can find someone who can. It may well come down to what kind of equipment they have available to them. With digital locks, for example, cracking them usually requires a special gadget or computer interface to connect to the lock and override the programming. If your local locksmith does a lot of work on keyless digital entry systems, they probably have the right equipment to get into digital safes, too.