It isn’t he sexy answer, but probably the most practical one. If you can remove it from the wall you will be surprised what a 6 foot pry bar can do.
If you can get a lock smith to crack it and give you the code, go with that so you can use it. You can put your weeeed in there. Or your guns. Or other precious items, like Benedict Cumberbatch’s lock of hair you took off him while he was sleeping on the tube. (Or at least someone who looks a lot like him…)
The inside of John Malkovich’s head.
I’m told that high quality safes can have layered armor that the vendors are very secretive about. Plates of tempered glass supporting stacks of overlapping greased disks so that drill bits will just spin, layers of highly flammable material, layers of asbestos… apparently if you can think of it, somebody’s done it.
Imagine starting your cut and hitting a layer of thermite! 
“You know the guy who’s buying our house? I’ve got an idea. We need the door from an old safe, a few feet of moulding, and some glue…”
If you’re using a drill i doubt it’d set off thermite, but if someone was using a torch then yes. The whole thing would go up quite spectacularly, which i’d pay money to see a poor safecracker encounter.
Don’t mess around. Serious safes need Serious tools.
http://makezine.com/2010/02/22/thermal-lance-is-every-bit-as-aweso/
This wouldn’t be a problem if there was a government-mandated back-door in every safe.
Why, it could be full of terrorism!
See: https://youtu.be/Waw11zhaKSk?t=46
for an explanation of the Feynman method. The man was amazing!
Hopefully there is at least 25 K in there because that is a 20 K fine.
Safeman’s Guide, 1970 - see page 34 particularly
Only if you get caught.
Is Rob an alum?
A little digging through online safe enthusiast forums suggests this safe was probably made at the United States Safe Co. Elizabeth, PA factory, near the beginning of the 20th century (the factory was torn down in the early 1930s.) The lock specifically is by Yale, probably one of the most common lock manufacturers at the time. Clearly I need more things to take up my time at work.
Possibly. I drilled a couple holes through a Stihl rollomatic chainsaw bar, which is two plates of superhard spring steel sandwiching a plate of softer stuff, and it seemed like I only had to take my eyes off the oil feed for a few seconds for the bit to go straw-yellow and snap off. The flying end plowed a furrow through my hair above the face shield, thankfully missing my scalp, but necessitating a haircut. Expensive drill bit, too, so I was doubly annoyed.
Anyway, these guys are talking about using an oxygen lance now. That’s what you use to cut through a locomotive encased in concrete and swallowed by Godzilla. It will literally ignite and consume iron like a regular torch ignites and consumes paper. It is what you use to threaten giant robots and outbrag the owners of plasma cutters. Thermite would do no more damage than the splash from an oxygen lance.
Please post a clickbaity new topic for us to enjoy
“I finally broke into the safe we found in our new house and what was inside will blow your mind. Or not.”
Would EDM do the job, just spark through?
Or perhaps the trick used for glass - a copper (or so) tube as a drill bit, in a little “pool” with suspension of a suitable abrasive?
The EDM scene sucks since Front 242 went techno.
Yeah, if I had the rig, I could probably spark through. At the time I was trying to deal with a much, much larger problem - 50 tons of tree fell on my stable and barn, which is where my shop is, and I was modifying a large chainsaw to make a poor man’s “alaska mill” in a hurry. I ruined a couple drill bits doing things the quick and dirty way, and nearly set my hair on fire, but in the end it all worked out OK.
