Antique snake oil – ‘unpickable lock’

unpickable lock picked and re-keyed

We were asked if we could open this antique ‘Stephen Cox & Son‘ safe and make new keys for it. When we received a picture of the safe we were thrown off a little by the text on the lock cover saying ‘unpickable lock‘. High quality locks were available in that time that could indeed frustrate picking quite a bit. But in this case it turned out to be just one hundred year old ‘snake oil‘.

We picked it open and made new keys. The lock turned out to be nothing special and a true safe technician one hundred years ago probably could have done the same.

After servicing the unpickable lock and making new keys, the safe is back in use. Hopefully for another one hundred years.