How do I break into a safe?

BDB Lock and Safe are award-winning safe engineers. We refurbish, service, and sell second hand safes. We are passionate about traditional safes and we believe that traditional build quality is more secure and better value for money than your average modern safe.

With this in mind we thought we’d have a little poke at the cheap, modern end of the market. We are professional safe engineers with decades of experience, but we firmly believe that isn’t needed to break into a cheap home safe.

Breaking in – it’s not hard to crack!

If you buy a lightweight safe from a DIY store for around £50 you can expect to find a lightweight steel plate construction which a good tin opener can get into! It will have an electronic lock with a simple override key, and we wouldn’t be confident in the time it would take an attacker to break into it.

Here’s how we would break in:

1. Pick the override key lock: The override key on these cheap safes are a simple camlock and are very easy to pick.
2. Hit the safe! Yes that’s right, no technical skills required. A small solenoid pin is the only thing stopping the handle from turning. Hit the front of the door, bounce it off the floor on its side at the same time as turning the handle. This will be sufficient enough to bounce the solenoid pin and allow the handle to turn.
3. Reset the code. There is a small red button on the inside edge of the hinge side of the lock. Just drill a small hole 4 mm in diameter, then insert a small rod to push the button and reset the code.
4. Remove the front panel: This will create a large hole in the front panel allowing you to insert a wire and push the solenoid pin down and then open the safe.

In all four of the above options you don’t need any special tools but once you are into the safe the replacement parts are not available or cost effective to buy to repair your safe. As the modern safes move up the range you will find better and heavier safes with higher quality locking options.

If you’re looking for a quality safe which cannot be easily broken into then you should look towards a safe with more weight, better quality locks and bolts, thicker wall lining and of course something more traditional. We have some superb reconditioned safes in stock now, and you won’t find us writing about their poor quality locks or how easy they are to break. Pick one up today via our reconditioned safe section.

(Note: you won’t be able to literally pick our safes up – they’re serious safes and are reassuringly heavy!)