Can a Locksmith Open a Safe? How Locksmiths Crack Safes

Keypad Failure | Dial Combination Stopped Working | Lost Combination | Safe Drill Points | Opening a Safe Without Drill Points

Safe cracking is for good, quality safes that need to be opened professionally so that the safe can be reused in as-good-as-new condition. Safe opening is expensive so the safe and it’s content need to be more valuable than the service. With professional safe opening, you’ll be able to maintain your investment and continue to use the safe for many more years to come.

For cheap, big box store safes, almost anyone with tin cutters, and in some cases just a magnet, can open a safe without the key. The cost to professionally open and repair a big-box-store safe is more than the safe is work so it’s simply better to break in and buy a replacement.

Locksmiths can open safes when the safe combination has stopped working, the combination has been lost, the safe dial or keypad has failed, or the door linkage has broken. Locksmiths will use replacement parts, dial manipulation, or drill points to gain access to a safe. When they are finished opening the safe, it will be repaired and function like new.

This is one of the most advanced locksmithing skills, and many locksmiths never learn it. It takes time, and mastery only comes from years of experience.

To get pricing on safe opening, check out our article Cost to Open a Safe.

How Locksmiths Open Safes When Combination Doesn’t Work

Electronic Combination Has Stopped Working

Here the safe locksmith must diagnose the issue causing the problem. There could be several reasons the combination no longer works.

1. The batteries are low. Often, batteries have enough power to light up and hear when pressing a key on the keypad. But they lack the power to pull the solenoid so the safe can be opened. You can start by replacing the batteries before calling a locksmith.
2. Something on the keypad has failed. This is the most common failure of electronic safes. For example, one of the numbers no longer registers when pressed. For many new electronic safe locks, the faceplate can be replaced to solve this issue. Your local locksmith will know which part you need. When you replace a faceplate, your existing combination still works and you’ll get straight in. Contact Us to order a replacement faceplate for your safe.
3. If the electronic lock has failed in some other fashion, the safe will need to be drilled (see How Locksmiths Drill Safes below)

Dial Combination Has Stopped Working

Safe Dial Manipulation

Combination dials fail too. Lubrication wears out, dust and dirt are introduced, and the numbers used to open that safe will drift away from their center points on the dial.

This stops the lock body gates from aligning and prevents the safe from opening.

For this reason, you should have your combination lock serviced every few years by a local locksmith, to keep it in good functioning order.

Often, when presented with a dial safe, the safecracker will make attempts to open the safe by using this information to drift-dial the combination in.

So, if the combination was supposed to be 10 - 20 – 30, they may start by trying values near those values, and then incrementally expand those to larger offsets When this works, it’s much faster than drilling a safe and parts won’t need to be replaced.

You can try this yourself without any danger of further damaging the safe. See What to Try When a Safe Combination Stops Working for details on the technique.

If you do gain access, be sure to have your safe serviced so the problem doesn’t occur again soon.

How Locksmiths Get Into Safes When There is No Combination

At a high level, locksmiths will typically, but not always, drill the safe when the combination has been lost, the lock has completely failed or the internal door linkage has malfunctioned.

Try to Get the Combination

If the combination has been lost there are a number of other things the locksmith will try before drilling, and you can try them too before calling a locksmith. See our article I Lost My Safe Combination – How Do I Get In?

There are some situations where a safe company has an override or reset capability for an electronic lock. To get the safe company to provide the information usually requires the use of a locksmith to verify you are the owner verify ownership of the safe. ACME Locksmith’s Phoenix safe opening service, will try to obtain an override code for electronic locks or the dial combination before drilling.

If the combination retrieval doesn’t work, or the combination has been changed from the factory setting, the locksmith will drill the safe open. This also applies to combination locks where manipulation has failed.

Safe Opening With Drill Points

Locksmiths with the proper certifications can usually obtain specific drill points for a given safe. Safe drill points are the location by which upon drilling the safe, the safe technician can gain access to the inner workings of the safe through a very small hole of around 1/4 inch. Drill points are heavily guarded secrets and are only provided to a verified locksmith.

From that drill point, the technician can use a lighted scope or video camera scope to see the mechanicals of the lock and bypass it to get the door open. The photo at the top of this page shows one of our safe locksmiths using a scope to see and thus manipulate the dial wheels.

The drill point can then be filled with a steel rod and cut flush. The lock body or dial is replaced, and the safe can be returned to service.

Safe Opening Without Drill Points

When drill points cannot be found, the safe locksmith can still access the safe, but it will take longer. The locksmith must use his knowledge, and drill the safe (potentially several times) in an attempt to find a spot where scope can be used to see the mechanicals so that the safe can be open.

Because of the expertise and training and often licensing or tradesman membership being required, you can expect to pay more for a safecracking locksmith compared to other locksmith services.

As such, we often have people locked out of low-end safes who find the cost to open the safe to be more than the safe is worth.

This is especially true for big box store junk safes that are constructed using plastic walls instead of metal. They aren’t built to be repaired.

In these cases, a locksmith may just use brute force to gain entry at a much lower cost to you. After which you can buy another low-price-point safe or possibly upgrade to one that is much harder to get into.