Cracking safes used to be a veritable pastime for many with a mechanical bent of mind, but modern technology has increased the complexity involved, what with onboard electronics and so forth. It makes sense to start with the basics, however, and that’s what we’ll look at first, lock manipulation.
This is the kind of safe-cracking you see in the movies, with someone listening carefully while slowly turning the combination dial. Sound or tactile feedback is used in the case of your basic rotary combination lock, but most such safes are now more sophisticated and employ wheels of a lightweight construction for purposes of noise reduction. The employment of serrated wheels, making for false tumbler notches, renders tactile techniques less effective.
As can be imagined, lock manipulation is often quite time-consuming. However, it’s the preferred way to do things because it leaves no traces behind: no damage needs to be done to the lock or safe. The only other way to crack combination safes without a trace is the bad old-fashioned way, simply guessing the combination. This method may sound inane, but if secrecy is paramount manipulation has failed there is really no other chance to get in the safe so discreetly.
Guessing the combination, however, may turn out to be easier than expected sometimes, as people often like to set easy-to-remember combinations that reflect their birthdates, domiciles of record, and so on. Moreover, the famous physicist and mathematician Richard Feynman has discovered a curious fact about many a combination lock that may be employed to a safe-cracker’s advantage, such that the time required to exhaust the number of possible combinations is significantly reduced.
A handful of other methods are known to hobbyists and professionals. And where padlocks are concerned, there is even the not-too-unlikely chance that applying leverage to the shack while turning the dial will provide clues!