Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Cannon Gun Safe Failure -

I've had good luck so far with my canon. It's an electronic lock and works great . I change the battery every couple of years or so. It is opened and closed everyday.

Didin't your mother tell you " you gotta look at everything you buy" ?

I am having trouble feeling sorry for you.

Brown Safe , not cheap.

S&G type mechanical combinations have worked in reliably for almost 150 years . Everyone wants an electronic keypad that is battery powered and made of plastic that will fail, most likely when you need it most.
If the combo lock is functioning and releasing the bolt that blocks the handle from moving, run the combo, then immediately tilt the safe towards the hinge side and the weight of the hinged bolt rack will cause it to slide open. The door bolts on the door hinge side are fixed, but the opposite side bolts will retract from gravity when tilted. You cannot tilt the safe first as the weight of the mechanism may prevent the lock bolt from retracting. Get a friend over to stand in front of the safe door to help manage it as 65% of the weight is in the door and if you got too carried away while moving it, it might want to tip over door first. Have another friend slide a refrigerator dolly under the side opposite the door hinges and when you run the combo,immediately have him leverage the dolly to raise that side up maybe three to four inches. IF the combination retracted the lock bolt, when you tilt it you WILL hear the rack retract! When this happens, the door will try to Swing OPEN! Have a ratchet strap around the safe that is just loose enough to let the door open an inch or so , so that when the friend operating the dolly lets it down you don't have an out of control, several hundred pound door swinging around !!!
All of the above is predicated on the combo being functional and retracting the blocking bolt which then, should release the pivoting locking bolt mechanism. If you get the door open, then find out why the handle is not functioning, there is a shear pin in there to prevent trying to overcome the combo retracting bolt from direct brute force by using a sledge hammer on the handle.
Good Luck! and let us know how it goes. Lee.

Electric lock on one of my safes.
Never even put the battery in.
Use the key.

Bummer.

I can tell you with mine, it had nothing to do with the electric lock. A weld failed on one of the actuating rods. Cannon sent a Smith to my house and he drilled a small, maybe 3/8, hole in the side, opened it up, and repaired the rod. Took him less than an hour. Cannon covered it.

Granted, the hole was filled with epoxy and is noticeable even after touched up with paint, but it doesn’t bother me a bit.

I’d keep bugging them. Hopefully they’ll get a work order out to a local service tech. If not, returning it may be cheaper than paying a Smith out of pocket.

I have the same safe and with mine I punch in the combo, snap the wheel to the right (it'll only go about 1/2") then turn to the left to open. Mine sounds off 2 beeps when I enter the right combination. Mine didn't come with a key, bought at tractor supply black friday sale.

When my Winchester wouldnt open i called my local locksmith and he suggested the same thing, tilting. I did as he suggested and IT WORKED! The door opened. The problem was a faulty electronic lock. This was the second time that the lock would not unlock the safe. I solved that problem by installing a mechanical S&G lock and did it myself. I even set the combination to the same as my other safe. While i had the insides torn apart i used LocTite and tightened every bolt/ nut. I will never have another electronic lock.

Raise hell enough until Lowes hates to see you coming. Have a Lawyer call the manager.

I agree. You can ignore a dial mechanism for decades, and when you need to open it. it will work. I wouldn't take a free safe with an electronic lock.

Update - went round and round with Cannon. Their position was that since I bought it on clearance that I knew it was defective or had been tampered with since it was a “floor model”. Whatever. I paid my local locksmith $150 to drill into the side where one of the bolts was. I punched in the code and he pushed the bolt in and it opened. Took him all of 5 minutes. Turns out there is a weld broken inside the door that allowed the handle to spin. No way it was from someone turning the handle too hard. Just a piss poor weld job from
The factory. I’ll have one of my guys from work swing by and weld it up and I’ll plug the hole on the side with jb weld putty. At the end of the day I have a large safe at a cheaper price than I could have normally gotten (even after paying the smith) and I am content. But Cannon support sucks as far as I’m concerned. They did offer a free replacement lock, but the lock is fine. Just poor QC at the factory.

Back in business, good

Exact same as mine.
Schitty metal prep and a failed weld.

Happy you got er working!

I'd get what I could off of the cheap bastids.

Making sure the cheap SOB's get a million dollars' worth of bad publicity is the best revenge. Flooding every social media platform you can find with the same info you've posted here would be a good beginning.

Do electronic safe mechanisms have any advantages over mechanical at all.

I’ve had a smaller (12-15 longarms?) mechanical Cannon safe for 20 years, no problems, tho after reading this thread I want to take a look at the innards..

The way this thread is going, it wouldn't surprise me to learn that Lou got fired for being too helpful.

If it was sold as a fully functioinig full warranty safe, Lowes or Cannon should be keeping him whole.

I would send Cannon a picture of the defective weld along with a copy of the locksmiths bill and tell them to pay up.

Show Lowes the bill and tell them it was defective. And also tell them you saved them storing it and returning it.

Go after Cannon as well for not inspecting their product after it got off the orient express

Go S&G mechanical spin dial or go home. EVERY other spin dial solution is less reliable.

Electronic are supposed be be harder/impossible to safe crack with a guy sitting there with stethoscope and lotsa time.