Safe maintenance isn’t usually high on a gun safe owner’s list of priorities, but there are good reasons why it should be. The whole purpose of owning your safe is making your valuable possessions and firearms hard to reach – for people who shouldn’t have access to them. Unfortunately, a broken safe makes your valuables hard to reach for everyone, including you.
Getting a Locksmith to Open Your Safe Can Be Expensive
Cracking a safe, especially a large, well-constructed and reliable gun safe, is no easy task. It could potentially take a locksmith several hours to accomplish. Plus, you may end up needing to pay for trip or service fees as well.
Once you’ve paid to have your safe broken open, you then must decide if it will be better or more affordable to repair your safe or if it makes more sense to just replace it. Your decision will likely depend on the quality and price of your safe.
If you have a particularly large and expensive gun safe, it will likely make more sense to replace the lock, even if the job costs several hundred dollars or more. If the safe was already old, offered substandard security or was relatively inexpensive, now may be a good time to upgrade to a better, more reliable gun safe model.
Some of the Most Common Reasons Safes Break or Can’t Be Opened
Opening Bolt
– The gun safe’s opening bolt is the component that needs to release if you’re going to open the safe door. If this bolt becomes stuck or for some reason can’t release, you won’t be able to get your safe open. This bolt can also get stuck when the door is open, making it impossible to lock the safe again.
If the locking mechanism suddenly seems harder to turn or becomes progressively more difficult after several uses, call a locksmith as soon as possible, as it may be a sign of failing bolts.
Lockouts by Design
– Some electronic safes have a lockout feature that triggers if the wrong combination is entered too many times. Certain models also have similar time delay settings, which only allow you to access the contents of a safe at certain times or a set number of times in a given period. Thankfully, the safe experts at
Dixie Safe & Lock Service Inc.
should be able to help you fix it if you are locked out by your own safe’s security measures.
The Safe Gets Damaged in a Burglary Attempt
– If a safe performs its role properly and stops a burglar it may end up requiring a locksmith to get it open again or to repair damage that was caused. Blunt force battering can dislodge internal components or knock the safe’s bolts out of whack. You should call a locksmith for a consultation to see if the safe can be salvaged or if the damage done is irreparable.
Damage to Wiring or Dead Batteries
– One problem specific to safes with digital and biometric locks are electronic glitches or failures. A good gun safe locksmith should be familiar with biometric and keypad locks in addition to analog dial combination locks, so you should be able to schedule service and get your safe opened again.
Lost Safe Combination
– Unrelated to maintenance failures or damage, there are situations where a combination could just be lost or forgotten. If you haven’t used the safe in a long time or a loved one with memory impairment has a safe they can no longer open you may require professional help to have a new combination set.
Broken Components
– Safes are complex pieces of security hardware, and there’s the potential for a lot of components to break or stop working due to lack of maintenance or user error. Internal relockers can fire, spline keys can loosen, drive pins can break and all types of other issues can potentially arise. Many of these component failures can be caught before they make your safe inaccessible if you schedule maintenance on a regular basis.
Get Reliable, Experienced Safe Maintenance Services from Dixie Safe & Lock Service Inc. in Houston
If you don’t want to ever find yourself in a situation where you can’t gain access to your firearms or possessions in your safe, it’s a good idea to have an experienced locksmith or safe expert inspect and service your safe. Safe maintenance usually entails disassembling some components, replacing worn or compromised parts, lubing the necessary moving parts and reassembling your safe. You can schedule fast, convenient and affordable safe maintenance by
calling Dixie Safe & Lock Service Inc.
at
(713) 643-5767.