If you were to ask Christefer Tull how he came into his line of work, he’d tell you he more or less fell into it by accident – which is pretty fortuitous, seeing as he now owns one of the most unique businesses in Hattiesburg and the surrounding areas.
Growing up, Tull helped his father in an auto body shop, but spent most of his free time at his wooworker neighbor’s house, where he made clocks and other items. One day in his 20s – while he was working as a welder – Tull came across an old safe inside of a warehouse.
“The owner didn’t have the combination for it, and he said he didn’t care if I took it,” Tull said. “So I took it home and I was just going to paint it Harley (Davidson) colors, but I started listening to the combination with a mechanic’s stethoscope.
“My dad came over to the house, and he’s like, ‘you’re never going to get in that thing,’ but I could hear what was going on inside. About an hour or so later, I heard a ‘clink,’ and I started laughing. My dad stuck his head around the corner and said ‘you’ve got to be kidding me.’”
Tull then decided to fully restore the safe – complete with original artwork – and research its history, at which point he traced its history back all the way to the Civil War and its owner who helped patent modern-day dry cleaning. He put those findings on an online forum and was soon contacted by another participant on that site.
“The guy said ‘that’s amazing, but if you have the skills to be able to put all that artwork back on and do all the woodwork on the interior of that safe just like how it was original, there’s collectors all over the world that would buy that, and you could make a good living doing it,’” Tull said.So was born Tullson’s Hands of Time Safe & Vault Restoration, which Tull runs with his wife, Sara Wilson-Tull, along with helping raise their three children. The business specializes in restorations, custom woodwork interiors, fireproofing, vintage parts, new part recreations and machining, installations, deliveries and more.
Each safe is done in-house in Hattiesburg.
“I’ve done safes in 47 different states and six different countries, and I’m the only person I know of in the world that restores them back to original like I do,” Tull said. “It’s a documented process – every stripe, every pinstripe, every brush stroke, all the artwork gets documented.
“I go back in historical archives and track down the safe and the numbers of the safe to see where it came from. The safe gets completely stripped down, and I meticulously paint everything back on where it’s supposed to be. Sometimes they come in and the artwork is completely gone … so I cases like that I put them back as close to original as what they would have been.”
Some of Tull’s favorite safes to work on are those that may have some historical significance, such as one out of Brookhaven that belonged to a prominent resident of that community.
“He owned a general store there, and he did a lot of things for the local government in the 1800s,” Tull said. “His daughter was also a successful singer, and she traveled all around the United States in orchestras and as a vocalist.
“Then later on, she came back to the community and was a teacher at the women’s art school there in Brookhaven. So pieces like that are pretty cool.”
Tullson also has worked on safes that have been involved in robberies with the likes of Butch Cassidy and Jesse James, as well as other unique vaults.
“There’s a whole other line of it – sometimes they come in and have booby traps and stuff inside, and sometimes they have tear gas inside, and I have to disarm it,” Tull said. “I’m doing four bank vaults in Indianola, B.B. King’s hometown – he banked there at that bank.
“I’m restoring two standup vaults – one’s a four-ton vault and the other one’s a smaller vault – and two floor safes. The historical pieces are cool – the ones that tell a story.”
Tull said many people may not realize that safes were very decorative in the 1800s, as they might be more familiar with a plain black safe in the back of a warehouse or other workplace. However, there’s a reason why many safes have been painted over.
“That reason is pretty much that in the 1940s and ‘50s, after World War II, a lot of people came home from the war and took over their parents’ stores and businesses,” Tull said. “At the time, Underwriters Laboratory started testing new safes – the lighter versions, the ones that weren’t as heavy, they were thinner, they were used in asbestos fireproofing.
“They went into these businesses and said ‘well, that safe you’ve got there is too decorative; it’s got all those paintings and murals on it. If you get robbed because it’s too flashy, we’re not going to cover your business.’ They tried to get people to buy new safes, and in that generation, if it wasn’t broke they didn’t fix it, so a lot of those mom and pop places just painted over them and started sticking them in the corner or under the cabinets and painted right over the artwork.”
Business hours for Tullson’s Hands of Time Safe & Vault Restoration are from 6 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday through Friday, Saturday and Sunday hours are by appointment only.
To contact Tull, call (217) 520-7831, visit www.tullsonsafe.com or check out the business’s Facebook page. Examples of his work can be found on both websites as well.
The address is by appointment only.
“A lot of people around here don’t really know about me, because they didn’t know this was a thing,” Tull said. “But we’re in Hattiesburg, and I’m proud to be here.
“It’s really unique, and we’re working on some big things here.”
