Adam Savage's Miniature Vault Door Build! (Part 5)

Added: 2026-05-11

[00:00:07]Hey everybody, Adam Savage in my cave.

[00:00:10]Um, yeah, vault. The vault. The vault is back.

[00:00:16]We are uh we are nold.

[00:00:20]Okay. What is the vault? Uh, if you The vault is a project I started uh a long time ago. 18 months.

[00:00:29]A long time ago, I wanted my machine skills were getting better and I was thinking about things I could make that no one else has made. And I started making this vault out of a giant chunk of raw steel. This is a 6-in billet of steel that I've slowly been turning into my vault door. I've been obsessed with vaults uh since my early 20s when I found myself in a bank with a vault on view and I s stood there in line and counted the gears and realized that they were all multiples of 12elves.

[00:01:05]There were 24 gears with 24 teeth on each gear and a big ring gear with 240 teeth on it. Why? Why all these marvelous symmetries? Especially as I went into other banks and noticed that those symmetries carried across brands.

[00:01:21]So, a bank vault works in a very specific way, the kind of bank vault I'm replicating in which it has pins that radiate out from the center. These pins have gearing on them so that a single ring gear that turns in the center activates those gears, those little rack gears, and pushes the pins all out. It's very, very secure way to lock a door.

[00:01:46]There's no backlash on it. I don't know why I'm talking so loud. Let's talk about projects that we leave by the wayside for a while. Um, I got this door to a very reasonable place where it was hung in a frame. There's its frame.

[00:02:02]And many things were working about it.

[00:02:05]And I could have kept on going, spending time on the aesthetics like the the the layout of the of the bolts and stuff on the thing and the cleanliness of the door.

[00:02:17]But the next step for me was to make the combination lock. And I'm going to make this vault actually work. I'm going to give it a tiny little combination lockoop.

[00:02:30]And then you'll boop turn a lever.

[00:02:33]And then you'll turn another lever that will pull the pins in. All those months ago, 18 of them or more, I got to this point with the vault and I was like, I'm terrified of the lock mechanism.

[00:02:49]Like, I just can't picture succeeding at it.

[00:02:54]And it's not like, hang on, it's not like picturing myself succeeding is a requirement. Obviously on this channel, I don't mind failing, but there was something about that one that made me like daunted by continuing, and I'm sorry about that. I know that a lot of you have been asking to come back to the vault, and here I am. I'm coming back to the vault. Um, so I've got a lot of aesthetic problems solved, but really mechan this, a vault is a machine. It's a machine for locking and it needs to take a very tiny human input like a little lock and turn it into the big vault output which is all the pins landing where they should go. There's so many things for me to screw up here.

[00:03:39]And might I mention there's been some other vault action online since I started this project. This is one of the This is one of the uh uh uh Oh, that's where you went. Okay. Yeah, there's a couple of other vault projects I've caught wind of online. I haven't watched them, but I've noticed they follow my same form factor, which is the brass rings on the inside of the vault door. Um, that's fine. I expected that I was doing something no one had tried before, so other people might be like, "Oh, I want to try some of that." Um, those are CNC moments, so I don't feel like we're trapesing in each other's territory, and I haven't watched anybody else's vault videos. I don't I don't ever want that other noise in my head. So, uh, if you've made another vault video, know that I'm continuing mine in complete ignorance as to however anybody else has been doing with their vaults. Um, I'm just keeping my side of the fence clean.

[00:04:36]So to make a combination lock where its longest dimension is going to be 34 of an inch, the discs themselves are going to be like 450 thou or so. I'm going to make them.

[00:04:53]I'm I'm actually I've pulled out the jeweler's lathe and my little Where is it? There's my little drill press. Um, this is this week. This is I want to get this settled this week. I probably won't. Welcome back to the vault, everybody. Okay, so how do I attack a mechanical system like this? Peace meal.

[00:05:18]Uh, let us start with the lock mechanism itself. I'm going to make a standalone lock mechanism 3/4 of an inch by a half an inch. I'm going to start laying that out. I have all the drawings I need in my sketchbook. Um, and then I'm just going to start to produce parts. Um, it won't be until this mechanism is complete that I then start to figure out how and where it interfaces with the vault itself and then how it interfaces with the locking of the vault. I don't have that all clear in my head. Uh, but we're going to get clear.

[00:05:57]We're going to get clear.

[00:06:01]There's a lot going on. Picking up an old project is a process of layering back into your head a whole bunch of challenges. For me, picking up a project that I have left by the wayside is go is a process of going back to it and opening my mind back up to all the parts and bits and pieces. So, I haven't gotten much done. I've taken this thing apart. I've reassessed some aspects.

[00:06:30]I'm learning I'm learning that my All right. Here's the mistake that I have learned that I made last year.

[00:06:42]These pins, they don't go through center.

[00:06:50]It's not the kind of thing that anyone's going to notice but me. Uh, and it shouldn't overly affect my build in a negative way, but I have to accommodate for it. I have to anyway. Um, there are problems I can solve and there are problems I can't solve.

[00:07:14]Problems I can solve. Well, problems in the construction of this. I have to kick those away because I can just go back into mcking around with the the the the the vault door. And what I really need is to be concentrating on the lock body.

[00:07:34]So, I'm going to make the lock body.

[00:07:40]I've got some really nice thin gauge.

[00:07:45]What is this? 25 thou slightly over half a millimeter thick brass here. That's what I'm going to build the lock body out of. Um dials, dials, dials.

[00:08:04]I mean the dials really ought to.

[00:08:12]So, I'm very clear that in the wrapping my head back around this project that there's going to be some wheel spinning in the beginning. And that's what I'm doing right now. I'm spinning my wheels, just kind of wrapping my head around all the parameters. I now think I know how I want to make my little lock body. That's great.

[00:08:34]That's that's test piece right there.

[00:08:37]Uh, I'm going to make it for real out of this. I'm going to use the mill I'm also going to see about I need three wheels for this lock body. They are each going to get a tab and a slot and a center spindle.

[00:08:55]And the question is, do I punch those at a plate or do I slice them out of stock?

[00:09:06]You see what I mean here?

[00:09:13]I'm just going to see about slicing them out of stock.

[00:09:18]No, I mean the other way.

[00:09:21]The other way.

[00:09:23]Yeah, actually that could work. Um, all right.

[00:09:29]We're going to try cutting everything out of this 25 thou brass. It's now time to build an official version of this little escapement cage that will hold the pieces. Um, I'm also going to set up I think I'm going to set up a stop on the mill. First, I have to tram my milling vice in. I got to tram it in so it is tight as a drum. Then then I'm going to set up a stop on it so that I have some measurements that don't go away. And then I'm going to start making the uh the lock body. Um it seems it seems hilarious to use 3,000 plus pounds of equipment to make this tiny tiny little thing, but there it is.

[00:10:55]So, uh, now I am going to be I'm drilling out all the basic frame work stuff for my, um, for the lock body. Um, Yep. Darn it. All right, that's fine. I can uh Oh yeah, this will actually work. Okay, cool. So that bring this back in. You get a hole in the same exact spot.

[00:11:57]All right, I can see irregularities.

[00:11:59]We're not going to accept that. That is going to be garbage. Great.

[00:12:31]Oh, for that's fine. That one will work.

[00:12:42]All right. So, I'm using a little um a center drill here, which has a supported tip to make sure that I'm putting all my pilot holes in the exact right location.

[00:12:53]So, there's that. Then there's 125 Heat. Heat.

[00:13:39]Heat. Heat.

[00:14:28]Okay, I've got my slots But it's time to glue these onto a little arbor.

[00:16:31]It felt um it felt a bit like a fight to get this combination look done. It is um not quite as tiny teeny as I was hoping, but you know what this the the I have to say like working at this scale is a whole mindset.

[00:16:50]Everything moves slower and I'm I like working at a certain kind of pace. So, even though my machine skills have improved over the decade and a half I've been doing this channel, they've improved a lot. Uh, I still have my own proclivities and this was a it was a fight. Uh, so I have I have made the three dials with inside the mechanic of the lock. They register to each other. So, they do what a combination lock does. But now they need a combination. And that means that it is time for me to build the little lever arm inside here that chunk goes into. So like once you line up the three slots of the wheels of a combination lock, there's a p that goes in and allows you to move something that allows you to unlock the thing. So I need to make that mechanism. And the other part is the dial. I need to make the little brass dial. And it is going to be brass. Um, it's going to have a little nurl.

[00:18:02]Yeah. Uh, I may make that first because it's really fun while I think about the other one. Uh, and I have to decide upon a size for my brass dial. So, I'm going to do that. Uh, and then we're going to get on the dialing cuz that'll be really fun.

[00:18:30]What heat?

[00:18:46]Heat.

[00:19:00]Heat.

[00:19:17]This is what's going to be called pressure knurling where I'm simply just pushing this into there.

[00:19:23]Not my favorite kind of knurling. It's hard on the spindle here, but that's fine. Uh, what am I looking for? I'm looking for that. There we go.

[00:20:14]What?

[00:20:19]Heat. Heat.

[00:20:40]Heat.

[00:20:55]Heat.

[00:21:17]Oh, that's great.

[00:21:19]At any rate, that's the form factor for this. Uh, well, let's go and mess with it. Perfect.

[00:21:43]Uh so uh I've got a test piece for a dial which is I'm very happy with. Uh I have cut it in the wrong order which means there's it's all tapered surfaces.

[00:21:53]There's nowhere for me to grab it to put a little registration hole in it. And I also have to figure out how this thing registers inside this thing. I have an idea. Um, but so what I'm going to do is I'm going to remake this. I'm going to remake this on the lathe. Uh, and it's going to have a little port in the back so that I can have an extender in it.

[00:22:17]And then that can interface with the lock like that.

[00:22:24]Heat. Heat.

[00:23:40]Well, so I I got a nice little dial here. And then you can visually see that the hole is off center. Uh, this is something that happens. The drill bit can wander on its way through a piece of material.

[00:23:58]But it turns out that I have a watchmaker's lathe and I do have the ability to hold on to a sensitive dial like this with great sensitivity.

[00:24:08]Um, and that is what I'm about to do.

[00:24:11]I'm going to uh I'm going to I've just put a center drill in here and the uh and the thing that I like um I am going to drill a little bit of an eigh inch hole and then I'm going to solder a brass rod to it. And the brass rod will be how I hold on to it from here on it.

[00:24:36]Just getting to know this thing. But it's a really fun little machine.

[00:24:41]That was great. What else would get me a little perfectly centered 8 inch hole in the bottom OF THAT? NOT MUCH ELSE.

[00:25:06]The combo does not work unless there's a combo. So, I need to put some numbers on this dial here. And that is what MY PANAGRAMRAPH ROUTER IS FOR.OOP boop boop boop. So, what I need to do is I need to put this on the panagramraph router at this angle, right? Whoop. Whatever that angle is. Uh, and I'm also going to have to mount it inside. I have a whole plan here. Um, what I have is a rotary table and I've got the ability to put Oh, wow. Is that that concentric? Really concentric enough.

[00:25:56]So, uh, now it's time to set up on the panraph mill. Um, this is an operation I have not done before. I'm going to be setting up a rotary table on the carver.

[00:26:11]Uh, and I'm going to be setting up a number and line department over here on the uh, stylus.

[00:26:20]So, let us get to the meat of this.

[00:26:57]Oh, really? You know. Uh, all right.

[00:27:35]Oh. Oh. Oh. Wait, right, right, right.

[00:27:38]Um this is there's with each machine with each machine there is a a set and reasonable order of operations to execute in order to operate the machines. Um, with the panagramraph mill, every single time you set it up, depending upon the scale, uh, the relationship between the tables has to be sort of figured out. And it just took me about half an hour to kind of wrap my head around it. But I've got a little I've got a little straight path sitting at the bottom of a VB block. And um my my hard stop is actually this is great. My hard stop allows me to do a ring of I'm going to do 36 divisions, one for every degree. I think that's how many I can fit on here. And then I'm going to make little tiny numbers for them. But what that means is I'm going to do 36 short lines. Then I'm going to go in and I'm going to do every five a slightly longer line. And I'm going to go in and do every 10, of which there only be three, a slightly even longer line. And those were the those will be the ones that I number or label so that you can see them with your tiny eyes. Uh but I'm going to get you a nice shot here of this I figured out how to grab my I figured out how to grab my uh safe dial using an ER32 collet. That's what this is. Um, and uh, I just held it really nice and flat.

[00:30:14]Hang on. I'm going to pull this out here.

[00:30:21]There we go. That is a That's a concentric hole, ladies and gent. I just can't believe this. I got to send a picture, everybody. So, I got my I got the holes concentric.

[00:30:34]I am putting the dial in the middle.

[00:30:40]in the middle of the safe.

[00:30:43]And so I'm drilling a hole for it right now. I'm doing a pilot hole of a quarter inch. It's going to be a 3/8 inch hole.

[00:30:48]And I'm actually hoping to use a circlip to hold the dial into the safe. So, well, it's a long story. You'll see how I'm planning to do this in a second. I'm just going to drill a hole right there in the middle of that.

[00:31:08]What is this?

[00:31:54]A couple of them might be the longer persuasion.

[00:32:03]So, I did a thing where I don't think I was getting perfectly centered in this inside the lock body. Um, and so what I did was I widened all these holes and I lowered the diameter of this by about uh half a millimeter overall. So, no, yeah, by about a millimeter overall. So, half a millimeter on a side. I'm going to try and put this back in. But I'm going to try and do it where I get it and I can feel it engage. That's the dial. I want to be able to engage with that so I can feel the two go together.

[00:32:47]Come on.

[00:32:55]Ladies and gentlemen. Oh, we got it.

[00:33:06]Oh my goodness. Okay, now we're going to put in the uh we're going to put in the uh the the flatheads. Each of these Okay. So, none of them are tightened right now and everything spins pretty great.

[00:33:33]Everything is moving exactly as I want.

[00:33:35]So, I'm going to start to tighten them down and see if I feel binding.

[00:33:40]No, not too much.

[00:33:46]a little bit.

[00:33:49]Maybe what we'll do is we'll do a disassembly and a reassembly with some uh lapping compound in there.

[00:34:14]One, two, 3, 4, 5, six. Okay.

[00:34:31]I want that turn to be a little smoother.

[00:34:37]But I'm going to get you a camera angle in here. Okay. Right in there. That's where the money is. Okay. So, when I turn Yeah. See, I got to get it so that it's smooth turning and doesn't move other wheels when I turn that wheel.

[00:34:51]Yeah. So, this is just going to be some finessing. But there it is. All three lock wheels engaging and disengaging. Yeah, I know.

[00:35:03]Some stuff to find. Just some stuff to refine in there. A milestone. A milestone.

[00:35:10]Um, not a millstone, although it has felt like a millstone around my neck at times. Um, that felt to me like the hard part of this execution minus one. The next step for this is to actually finesse this, which means to take it apart, put it back together, take it apart, put it that back together. Doing a lot of lapping compound, a lot of spinning, a lot of turning, a lot of finessing. Everything gets marked so it goes back the same way every time. And then I figure out the combination. That is just me coming up with three numbers between 1 and 35 36 and uh then dialing the combination and then making a mark across all three wheels. Now when I make a mark across all three across all now when I make a mark across all three of those wheels that's where I cut in my slot and the slot will be a little arm that comes in funk and allows me to open the lock. Now, what is that allowance?

[00:36:14]What does that look like?

[00:36:16]Yeah, it's a great question. I'm wondering that, too. Um, I think it's going to be like a turning lever here that turns the brass ring gear here that goes here and sends these out. So, I think it's going to be a little a little uh a little bell crank coupling, right? You move this and this moves. We will see.

[00:36:43]But I don't I don't yet know how that interface works. And by the way, in order for like one little lever arm to move 12 posts, everything in here has to be at the at the just so smooth. It's got to be so smooth.

[00:37:02]We'll get there. We'll get there. Uh dude, I mean, there's so many little things I have to do. I have to take every single one of the pins uh that goes out. I have to take every single one of them and I have to put a pin in it so I lock its orientation cuz I have to machine every single one down because uh I had a I had a collet with a square holder and the square isn't in the center of the holder which I DON'T KNOW DEFEATS THE PURPOSE. I DON'T MEAN TO YELL. I REALLY apologized about that, but I was very upset. And hey, I hear you some of you folks who are listening when I drum on things and I apologize. I did that for dramatic effect and I think well I achieved the effect I wanted. I apologize if it was overwhelming.

[00:37:48]Anyway, that this is a milestone. Uh and it feels like slightly less now of a millstone. So, I'm going to do some cleanup. And once I get my workbench clean, I'm going to set out some nice materials for finessing this. And uh yeah, the next time you see me, I will be working on the other half of this equation, which is getting this ring gear with some kind of mechanical attachment built into it. Uh moving all of these bars in and out. Yeah, it's going to be a thing. A lot a lot a lot a lot a lot a lot of busy work, but we'll get to it.

[00:38:33]Add them out.

[00:38:35]Thank you guys so much for watching. One of my favorite things we make in our tested store are demmerit badges. These are like scout badges, but for screwing stuff up, because screwing up is not just a part of the making process, it is intrinsic to it. And we like to celebrate that. We've got 27 so far in the supervisors bundle that you can go buy right now by clicking on the link in the description. But we also have a booster pack of some brand new patches.

[00:39:01]This is the demerit badge for burning off your eyebrow. I am proudly sewing that to all of my clothes. This is the demerit badge for having a messy workbench, which I do not get today. My workbench is super clean. And we have new octagonal patches that are yep merit badges. This is the merit badge for sweeping up your shop. Congratulations.

[00:39:20]I'm so proud of you. And this, oh my god, this is great. This is the merit badge for creating a clean space on your badge. Hey, we got to take our successes where they come and meet them there. Go to uh the tested-door.com or adamsavage.com to buy any of these or click on a link in the description.