What is it? Set 327

[Marc Dashevsky]

Yep. I just encountered them at the Basketball Hall of Fame.

[DoN. Nichols]

1873) My guess as to the function is to define/layout the spacing of bearing points for gears in a clock or watch type object. (This could include things like dial indicators and such as well).

Profession: Watchmaker

1874) Looks rather nasty. At a guess, it is for picking up something like as stove lid. 1875) Looks as though it was designed to orient prisms or jewels for some purpose. Since it does not have visible angle scales, I'll say that it was not likely used for things like X-ray diffraction measurements.

Hmm ... a (probably slow) electric motor to rotate the one part.

1876) Another form of horse hobble? Looks as though it clips around the ankle of something the size of a horse's leg. 1877) Well ... several of the parts on the bottom center and right assemble to make a breast drill. The bottle looks to contain gunpowder (black powder). The top left thing looks like a torch fueled by alcohol, gasoline, or something similar. Left just above the bottom-most object looks like a fueled lamp of some sort. Not any clue what the triple-cone thing is for, and not enough detail about the can type thing near the bottom left to tell. One of the drill bits looks more like a long wood screw. 1878) Too thin to be a vacuum chamber, especially without a safety cage around it. Wires coming in from the chain attachment point nearest the point of view.

At a guess -- for setting off mild explosions held between the two strange blocks.

Now to see what others have suggested.

Enjoy, DoN.

[Kevin(Bluey)]

1872 , watchmakers tool of some decription ,maybe for setting/measuring clock gear center distances or similar

[Andy Dingley]

Blackpowder was used for a very long time in blowing safes. Unlike Hollywood, the trick wasn't to "blow the safe" (ie burst the case) it was merely to disrupt the lock. The solution to this was simple, the "powder proof lock" which was strongly constructed but also designed so that it had little internal empty space (sometimes by merely adding a wooden filler plug to an existing lock). This meant that there was no longer enough space to get a fill of the relatively weak black powder in place.

Nitroglycerine in US safe-cracking practice was merely a more powerful explosive. There was still enough room in a powder-proof lock that it could be disrupted with a nitroglycerine charge. The solution to this was the development of relockers - mechanical devices that if the lock mechanism was destroyed would simply wedge the bolts in place permanently (it was then a long and noisy task for a locksmith to dismantle the safe, often requiring a replacement safe).

The British "gelly boys" developed a rather more sophisticated approach. Having had military experience of high velocity explosives, they realised that a shock wave could be used to cut the plate of the safe, without destroying the contents too. A hole was drilled in the plate and their secret weapon deployed on the inside - a condom. This was then filled with nitroglycerine (made at home by extracting it from commercial gelignite). Because of the good contact, the shock wave from a small quantitiy of nitroglycerine was enough to break the safe plate (and the more hardened it was, the better).

[Upscale]

Hey Andy,

I've got a couple of safe jobs in mind. You available?

[steve robinson]

With many older safes its easier to take the back off if you can access it

[Andy Dingley]

If you have a safe that old, it's probably worth more now than the contents. Those were iron (not steel) safes, made of plates held between L-angle corner frames. They could be attacked by "peeling", taking each of the several plates out one-by-one by levering them up from a corner, like a big tin opener.

The US defence against that was the "cannonball" safe. Spherical, cast in one piece, with no corners, no thin plates and a single skin layer that you had to attack all in one go (or usually fail to). Britain used better(sic - British hardened steel wasn't too good at first) flat steel plates in single thick plates. Later the safe began to be made by folding rather than joining and "round cornered" safes appeared. The sides, top and bottom were formed as one piece, with the join underneath, and were hard to attack from the sides. These still needed to have front and back inserted and so they were weaker than the sides. Some safe breakers were known to cut through a wall to get to the back, as still being the weakest route in.

[Andy Dingley]

Only thing I have to do with safes these days is eBay thieves ripping off my images for selling their own combination locks 8-(

[Lew Hodgett]

Learn something new every day, or try to.

Lew

[Rob H.]

Yesterday I sent an email to the owner of this device asking about the wires but I haven't heard back yet, I'll post their reply when I get it.

Still not sure about number 1875 but the rest of them have been answered correctly this week:

[Artemus]

A photo of the tag/label on top of the base would be helpful too. Art

[Rob H.]

Under the last photo of this device on the web site was a link that said 'Close-up of the name plate', it went to this image:

[Artemus]

Ahh! I missed that. Art

[Robert Bonomi]

He's living dangerously these days -- =not= in a 'safe' line of work, his vaulted expertise not withstanding. *GRIN*

[DoN. Nichols]

There *was* one -- but you had to click a text link to see it.

Enjoy, DoN.

[krw]

Nitroglycerine? A safe job, or a safe-job?