Originally Posted By: ireckon


None of the safes in this thread are good for security. A bored/curious teenager who is testing the safe has made a decision to break the law. That person has morals that won't stop him from using a crowbar to get in. None of the safes here are suitable for stopping such a person.

Anyway, please explain how you're getting 15 minutes to go through all combinations on the safes I posted? The second safe I posted has 2,200 combinations. If you average 4 seconds per try, that's 146 minutes to go through all combinations. As I said above, it's easy to make a mistake, and you don't know if you made a mistake until the safe doesn't open. You'll very likely make a mistake on the correct code and won't know until you've gone through all combinations (146 minutes), and then you'd have to start over.

I know Simplex locks have limitations, but let's at least not pull numbers out of mid-air.


True, none of these safes are good for true security, but some are better than others for certain application. That's is why the first question I asked the OP is who/what was trying to secure against. If the OP has teenage kids in the house, are they going have access to the safe? What if they bring friends over? Don't underestimate the curiosity and ability of teenagers. Maybe he has nosy roommates? It's not always a thief with a crowbar that you're trying to defend against.

As for the 15 minutes, it's well established how long it takes to go through the combinations, these are not made up numbers. I said 15 because that's how long it would take me because of my fat fingers, 10 minutes is what other people can do with practice. There's no reason for me to embellish these numbers when it's very easy to verify. Your estimate of 4 seconds per combination is very conservative, even at a normal relaxed pace 1-2 second per combination is common. If you look at where simplex lock mechanisms are used, it's usually in a high traffic, low security application. At my work there are simplex locks on many of the doors, hundreds of people pass through them multiple times everyday, so you're looking at thousands of openings every day. It does not take 4 seconds to punch in the combination, and if people are in a hurry the lock barely slows them down. And these locks are designed to be relatively easy to use, a mistaken number is easily noticed by even a new user.

(warning, boring technical details below)
The second safe you posted is the exact same simplex lock mechanism as the first one. So yes, that first safe technically also has 2200 combinations also (2162 to be exact). This was briefly mentioned in the link above how it works and why it's not used. I've tried it using it before, and I tend to agree that it's really not worth the hassle. I bet the simplex lock you have now also has that capability, but it wasn't mentioned in the manual. So in practical use you're looking at about 1000 combinations. Now if you consider the fact that most people are not going to use just 1 or 2 numbers, you can eliminate quite a few off the bat. Chances are they won't use 3 simultaneous button pushes either, so that reduces the practical number of combinations even more. I'm even willing to guess that most people will use 4 numbers, either individually or with 2 simultaneous button pushes, so now there is a much smaller number of probable combinations to start with (how close am I to guessing your combination?). Now you see why these types of locks are only used in small lock boxes, never on a decent sized safe. Compare that to a cheap combination dial lock which has 64,000 possible combinations, and it takes much longer to try each one. A high quality dial safe lock will have 1,000,000 combinations, and can take up to half a minute to dial each one.

I'm not trying to convince you or the OP to change your choice in handgun safes. If it works for your needs, that's great. But be informed and don't get a false sense of security, because that will lead to disappointment. A good test would be to find a teenager, put $50 in your pistol safe and then hand him the list of possible combinations and tell him he has 15 minutes. See how long it takes him to get in. I think you'll be surprised.