Chubb book room door safe

Here's a picture of me hand cutting a key for an old circa 1900s Chubb book room door safe. We received a call to attend and make keys for this as the builders had lost both keys. Now under normal circumstances making a key by hand would take approximately two hours but as you can see in the pictures the door pan ( the big bulky thing) had to come off.  With the help of my fellow safe engineer Dave Kneafsey we numbered all the handmade bolts (important that they go back in the same order) then proceeded to remove the door pan, being careful not to damage the marble tiles, a chore in itself, then we could reveal the old hand made Chubb 7 lever lock. Obviously this old safe and all that comes with it is no longer being made so we were not able to simply replace the lock. 

A master key was then hand-crafted lever by lever, bit by bit, and once the master key was finished, I was then able to cut another key by machine. The keys were tested and all good so back to refitting the door pan finally.  After about an hour or so the pan was back on, all the bolts in the correct order and working just how it should do. As you can imagine this was an expensive lost keys moment so be careful when handing keys out to anyone!