ONCE YOU HAVE THE DOOR OPEN, ALL YOU HAVE TO DO IS GREASE THE GEARS. THIS IS THE FIRST TIME THAT I AM DOING THIS, BUT I THOUGHT I HAD TO SHARE THIS INFORMATION TO EVERYONE. I AGREE THAT THIS SAFE IS MADE POORLY BY SENTRY SAFE, BUT IF YOU DON’T WANT TO BUY ANOTHER SAFE, DO THIS WHAT I’M ABOUT TO WRITE AND IT CAN LAST YOU A LOT LONGER. I guess if this safe is ever involved in a fire it will open automatically as all the parts melt! As you can see, these are all just cast parts, which means they are probably very soft metal. One of the comments to lighthouse’s post was by a guy who used his “saws-all” to cut through the pins. When I pried the back off, there was all kinds of plastic slag and crap sitting at the bottom on the ledge. So, if you need to whack your safe, you can see that the upper right (as you’re facing it) would be the place to smack. Looks like the actuator in the upper left is the source of the problem. Since I never did anything about my safe since I opened it last, I decided to pry the plastic cover off so I could see the innards and determine what to lube. So my son purchased a Sentry safe today and I warned him about the sticking problem. I think Sentry Safe has sold many of us a bill of goods…what do you think? POS!

Needless to say, I’ll be taking it back to Sam’s and getting my money back, regardless of whether it’s in or out of warranty. Exactly my problem! All you need is a Rubber Mallet (or a hard fist), some WD-40 and a screwdriver. I then started looking on the web and found this post by lighthouse.

Viola! The actuator fired up and it opened. Being somewhat mechanically inclined, I decided to whack on the front of the safe with my fist (didn’t think I would hurt it) after entering the code. I could hear the actuator trying to work each time I entered the code. I first tested all four batteries with my handy-dandy battery tester and they all passed with flying colors. Since this safe can only be opened with an electronic code, this is a BAD situation! My wife recently tried to open it and, even though it agreed with the combination that was entered, the electronic opener refused to release the lock. I have a Sentry Safe that I purchased from Sam’s a year or two ago (too lazy to look it up).

Dead battery sentry safe open