Gun Safes - Recommendations?

I make this suggestion every time this discussion comes up.

I'm not recommending a specific safe,I am recommending that you take a look on Facebook marketplace and around or similar sites and gun stores in your area and see if you can find a good safe used.

When I bought my current safe my wife looked on Facebook Marketplace and we found a $600 Liberty Centurion for $325.

We bought it from an Air Force officer who was PCSing to SHAFE in Belgium and didn't want to ship it.

As others have suggested I recommend getting a larger safe than you think you need. There are valuables besides guns that you can put in your safe.

I'm also going to add you have a locksmith giving you his professional opinion in this discussion. I would listen to the man.
 
Last edited:
Rule #1. Don't buy a safe that's too big. Make sure it fits in your house and the room you want to put it in. My gun room has a 3' wide doorway, that's in a 40" wide hall. Not just any safe can make that corner. If you can secure your house, your guns will be safer, no matter what they are stored in. Electronic security systems are a bigger deterrent than a steel box. Steel window frames with thick tempered glass, plus storm windows. Locked outside storage areas, and locked attic doors, all help keep intruders outside. Also think about the fire hazards in your house. Clutter is tinder, clean it out. Put it in a shop or separate storage building. I know all this isn't as much fun as a new safe, but this is about security. Chances of true professional thieves striking your house are slim. They like jewelry stores and gold dealers better.
 
Last edited:
I have a S&G mechanical lock on a Browning safe that has been opened thousands, if not tens of thousands of times, since the early 1980's.

Every locksmith I talk to says digital locks are the gift that keeps on giving. If your safe has a digital lock, remove it, install a good grade mechanical lock before the safe door is ruined by drilling out the defective digital lock.

Locksmith recommended 6700 series of locks, specifically 6730. Has brass wheels, will last forever.

Group 2 Mechanical Safe Lock | Sargent and Greenleaf
 
Last edited:
steelslaver said:
I could cut a 18" square out of the face on with 6" slitter disk in less than 30 minutes and be attacking the rotation device. With my easy to carry 110/220 plasma cutter it would be way faster and quieter. Plasma cutters can now be had for under $200 that will chop right through 1/2" steel. You can easily carry one with one hand and a aluminum cylinder with 2500psi of compressed air and a regulator in the other. Steel, aluminum titanium, cobalt, a plasma cutter don't care it just cuts

If a good thief wants in they will get in a steel enclosure. My point is that past a certain point how heavy your safe is don't really mater. The amateurs are gonna stop at thin easy to pry open.

Spend some money on cameras because none of them want to be in the movies
Click to expand...
Given enough time , and the right equipment , any safe can be breached . The average residential burglar doesn't tote around a plasma cutter and air cylinder . Or even a cordless grinder . If your home security is so poor that somebody has the time to haul in tools to cut open a safe then maybe you do need to spend the money on the best safe out there . Might want to put some of that toward a better alarm system and door locks too .
 
Im a big fan of the Secureit lockers as opposed to safes. Levels of deterence: Cameras, 3 levels of alarms and 2 flights of steep narrow farm house stairs, between the front door and the "vault door" on my gun room.

A guy I met at Hunter Safety class had a $6 K safe (brand unknown) bolted to his garage floor. No alarms or cameras. When he was on vacation burglars ruined $10 K worth of his tools in failed attempts to get into the safe. The safe tech had it open in 12 minutes.

I did sheet metal fab in the machine tool industry for years. I know the tools I would need to defeat my lockers. Pretty much the same tools I would need to defeat most safes. Mine would just take less time, of course the vault door would take time too.

When my numbers hit I'm buying a Secureit Trusafe, of course I'll have to build a new house to support it.
 
djohns6 said:
Given enough time , and the right equipment , any safe can be breached . The average residential burglar doesn't tote around a plasma cutter and air cylinder . Or even a cordless grinder . If your home security is so poor that somebody has the time to haul in tools to cut open a safe then maybe you do need to spend the money on the best safe out there . Might want to put some of that toward a better alarm system and door locks too .
Click to expand...

Your average burglar can't bust into even a cheapo safe without some tools. A $50 harbor freight grinder isn't any more bulky or heavier than a pry bar and quieter than a hammer. You can pick up a cheapo plasma that runs on 110 for $200 and it isn't much bigger than a gym bag and easy to carry in one hand. It does need an air supply however. None of it takes any more time to get in your house than it would to get a crow bar inside. I could easily get my setup in your house with just one trip to the door. I would have to borrow my buddies high pressure carbon fiber air tank, but lots of paintballers have one of those and they are readily available and fairly cheap. Under $150 They are not very big or heavy but because they are pressured up to 4500psi they could run a plasma at 60 psi for long enough to chop open a safe. I would take 2 just in case. I can make an 18" cut through 1/4" plate in less than a minute. 4 minutes and the face of your safe is gone, out go the pins to the lock bars and its open. The inner panel of your safe would keep the spray out of the interior.

Yes, most burglars aren't very sophisticated, but what makes you think there are not plenty of well equipped smart ones????? It only takes one. Plenty of metal guys have went off the rails on drugs
 
Last edited:
djohns6 said:
Given enough time , and the right equipment , any safe can be breached . The average residential burglar doesn't tote around a plasma cutter and air cylinder . Or even a cordless grinder . If your home security is so poor that somebody has the time to haul in tools to cut open a safe then maybe you do need to spend the money on the best safe out there . Might want to put some of that toward a better alarm system and door locks too .
Click to expand...

This is true.

When I started locksmithing I was in central Oregon. Law enforcement called us every so often because a safe was found out in the high desert.

The thieves beat the heck of out them. They used torches and saws mostly.

Surprisingly many of the safes were unopened.

Lazy criminals I guess.
 
I have a Liberty with the S&G lock. Like Kanewpadle, I live on the wrong side of Washington in a suburb of Seattle. NW Safe company delivered and install the safe. Well worth the price. They also changed the factory lock combination to one that both my wife and I chose and can remember. When we moved, NW Safe moved my safe and bolted it to the concrete floor of my basement. We also store jewelry, passports and important documents in the safe. Our only regret is not buying a larger safe.
 
  • Like
Reactions: A10
Kanewpadle said:
This is true.

When I started locksmithing I was in central Oregon. Law enforcement called us every so often because a safe was found out in the high desert.

The thieves beat the heck of out them. They used torches and saws mostly.

Surprisingly many of the safes were unopened.

Lazy criminals I guess.
Click to expand...

Most guys who are into working steel are not lazy. It isn't a lazy mans material. But, like I said some metal guys get bend for one reason or another

Another way I would like to try on a safe is roll in a bottle of liquid argon, available at many wielding supplies, put on an SCBA (self contained breathing apparatus) and spray part of the safe down with the -303f argon, then wack it with a hammer.
 
I have a "gun room" in the basement and had the movers put my Liberty safe in there. The room is dehumidified as well.
Should have bought a bigger one as this one is full.
 
steelslaver said:
Your average burglar can't bust into even a cheapo safe without some tools. A $50 harbor freight grinder isn't any more bulky or heavier than a pry bar and quieter than a hammer. You can pick up a cheapo plasma that runs on 110 for $200 and it isn't much bigger than a gym bag and easy to carry in one hand. It does need an air supply however. None of it takes any more time to get in your house than it would to get a crow bar inside. I could easily get my setup in your house with just one trip to the door to the door. I would have to borrow my buddies high pressure carbon fiber air tank, but lots of paintball have one of those and they are readily available and fairly cheap. Under $150 They are not very big or heavy but because they are pressured up to 4500psi they could run a plasma at 60 psi for long enough to chop open a safe. I would take 2 just in case. I can make an 18" cut through 1/4" plate in less than a minute. 4 minutes and the face of your safe is gone, out go the pins to the lock bars and its open. The inner panel of your safe would keep the spray out of the interior.

Yes, most burglars aren't very sophisticated, but what makes you think there are not plenty of well equipped smart ones????? It only takes one. Plenty of metal guys have went off the rails on drugs
Click to expand...
Back to my original statement . ANY safe can be compromised given enough time and the right tools . MOST burglars have neither . Ask any LEO that has investigated burglaries and see how many had safes that were opened , much less by a plasma cutter . If you're carrying a plasma cutter then you must have prior knowledge that the home has a safe to start with . I don't think burglars carry one around on the off chance they'll need it . Grinder ? Time and noise issues . And there's still that whole pesky burglar alarm thing ..
 
Anything that locks is better than nothing. When I was getting started in working for a living I wasn't making a whole lot, so all I could afford was a "locking cabinet" for my guns. I wanted to make sure that at least somebody looking for guns to sell for a quick fix couldn't just reach under the bed and pull out an armful of my guns. I used two locking cabinets until I could afford a real safe.

And after I bought my safes a fellow cowboy shooter determined that my locking cabinets would work well in his trailer and bought them from me.
 
So much interesting talk; I like it. I learned one thing so I have a question:

Every locksmith I talk to says digital locks are the gift that keeps on giving. If your safe has a digital lock, remove it, install a good grade mechanical lock before the safe door is ruined by drilling out the defective digital lock.

Locksmith recommended 6700 series of locks, specifically 6730. Has brass wheels, will last forever.
Click to expand...

My locksmith can remove the electronic lock on my made-in-America Browning Pro-Steel safe???!!!???

THAT I need to know about!

==============================

Sidebar - as a general thing, burglars do not know which houses have safes in them. But if they do know and target YOUR house they're going to bring the correct tools, that I am sure of. :rolleyes:
 
My Cannon safe went under water in 2016 . They sent me a new safe but upgraded it to a larger size . I didn't want to refuse their good will so I accepted it gratefully . The problem was that it was too big to go back where it needed to . A friend of mine had a safe exactly like my old one so we traded . So my electronic lock has been operating just fine since before 2016 .
 
SafeTFirst said:
Thanks for all the great advice. The guy who wrote the article that URIT posted was from this company: Best Gun Safes for Home Gun Storage | SecureIt Gun Storage

What are your thoughts on his approach? Lighter weight, no fire liner, no backdoor codes…
Click to expand...

I've owned two of them. Bought them off Amazon, delivered to my door. They are very light weight, I have to check to see if they are certified as RSCs. Mine cost around a grand IIRC.

I don't believe that the safe will do much more then keep honest people honest and keep the dumbest of the dumb out. But, if you tube videos are correct, most other RSCs are in the same boat.

I purchased them because I move every couple years weather I want to or not and the lightweight low cost aspect make it easier.

If I put down roots I'd like an AMSEC or Army Surplus GSA approved safe with an actual rating and certified mechanical lock from KABA MAS. Bolt it into the floor, get an alarm system that can call 911 via cell or buried landline and ha an audible siren. Plus harden the house around it.

IMHO opinion the most important thing with buying a safe is to determine the value of what you are protecting and a realistic understanding of the threat you are protecting it from. Buying a 10,000 dollar safe to protect 1,000 dollars in guns, is a little crazy.
 
One thing to check on any safe , is the gap between the door and the frame of the safe. The wider the gap , the easier it is to get a prybar into. The 1" bolts coming out of the door are only screwed to 3/8" bolts. Some may be bigger or smaller ? That is how my Liberty is put together. A good pry bar will pop that door open in 30 seconds. If they can get that prybar into the gap.
 
You can actually get a Ft. Knox safe now with redundant locks. It come with both an e-lock and dial lock!
 
Last edited:
My safes have the electronic locks. I’d like to switch to mechanical locks, but just hadn't gotten around to researching if this was something I could do or would have to pay a locksmith. A buddy has about ten safes, he's a gunsmith so often has a lot of customer guns to store. He had an electronic lock go bad and the safe had to be drilled by a locksmith.

I'm sure mechanical is the way to go. We had an old army surplus safe at work. The old mechanical lock had most of the numbers worn off from time and use, but the lock was still going strong.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Beemerguy53
Gun safes: opinions and advice needed…
2 3 4
Replies
61
Views
3K
johnbeaver
johnbeaver
W
Credit to Cannon Safe customer service
Replies
7
Views
695
Tex1001
Tex1001
OutAtTheEdge
9mm Suppressor Advice Request
2
Replies
21
Views
888
zeke
Z
joespapa
Which 9mm 1911 for EDC
2 3 4
Replies
67
Views
3K
Dvus
D
H
Who's gone through their gun safe lately?
2
Replies
20
Views
793
Bald1
Bald1

Latest posts

Back
Top