What would be better, 2 small gun safes or 1 large? The 2 small ones would equal the same gun capacity as the large one and strangely enough would be about the same cost. Are there any drawbacks to locating a gun safe in a workshop (separate building)? And lastly, I was considering building a gun room in my workshop with block walls and using one of the safe type doors specifically for this purpose. Has anyone here done this and can offer some advice?

One thing to keep in mind is accessibility, particularly in an emergency. A lot of people keep a quick access safe near the bed in the event somebody tries to visit when you're sleeping, but what about other times of the day? If you're in your family room and somebody kicks in your front door are you able to protect yourself? It won't help much if your gun is in the bedroom, now behind the bad guys.

For this reason I keep smaller safes and a number of handguns in "strategic" locations throughout the house. Hopefully if I ever have the need I'll get to one of them before the bad guy gets to me.

Just a thought.

I eventually went with two large safes, as opposed to more smaller ones. I figure if anything else, the larger safes are harder to carry away. Make sure they are bolted down. Mine are bolted to both wall studs, and to a concrete floor with lag bolts. A lower level - basement is always a good choice for location, as it provides some theft deterrent, and protection in case of a fire.

Never built a walk in gun safe, but I would think I would use hollow blocks, reinforced with rebar, and the hollows filled in with concrete. Poured walls with rebar reinforcement would work just as well, I would think. Blocks alone, especially hollow ones, can be defeated pretty easily with a pick and sledge hammer. How about the roof? Picture yourself as an inmate being held in this room, with unlimited access to tools, and the desire to escape. How would you do it? Should work both ways....

Larry

I have always been an advocate for multiple safes for medium to large collections. Not that I would call them "small" necessarily... but, for example, I'd rather own two 24-gun safes instead of one 48-gun safe. They are easier to move up and down stairs, there is much greater flexibility in where you can locate them and you can even hide the smaller safes in closets (if your wife will allow it!). It should also take twice as long for a thief to steal your collection. And as you point out, the cost is often the same or less for multiple safes.

That said, I am not advocating safes that are so small they can be picked up and stolen intact. Also, one very large built-in safe or hidden, hardened safe room is damn near impossible to beat. Add a suitable "decoy" safe and your prized collection likely ain't going anywhere.

Borrowing a couple of the ideas from above I'm thinking it might be a good idea to have the built-in safe room in the workshop and another free standing 24 or 48 gun safe in the house. The one in the house can easily be placed in a storage room. The built-in unit would be about 8' x 9' with a safe door covered up by an ordinary door. The walls would be concrete filled 8" block with a cast in place 4" concrete lid. Two of the walls are exterior so they will also have a wood framed wall on the outside. Lights are obviously needed but what about HVAC?

A few more random thoughts...

In general, the separate (unoccupied) building thing can be problematic from a theft target perspective. All depends where the separate building is relative to your occupied house, other structures providing cover and even occupied neighbor houses. I would never leave my collection in an unoccupied structure.

It goes without saying that a proper alarm and surveillance system is essential, especially for an unoccupied out building.

For maximum security, the vault's exterior walls should be just as strong as the interior walls.

Most high-security vault doors I'm aware of open out. That may cause an interference problem with your planned outer door.

HVAC/humidity control requirements will depend a lot on where you live.

The more safes, the more difficult it would be for burglars to do a clean sweep. They don't have the time to either crack two safes in place or attempt to cart them off.

The separate building could be a problem if it has easy vehicle access. If the burglars have adequately cased the job and show up with a truck with a hydraulic lift gate, the safe is theirs if they can free it from the floor.

If you have excess capacity in your safes, consider adding several hundred pounds of lead ingots to each. Once you get a safe to around a thousand pounds and throw in a staircase in the upward direction, only a professional safe mover can get the safe up and out. My 1050 pound safe, damaged in hurricane Sandy, was hauled away by professionals. They used an electric stair climber resembling a miniature tank, to bring it up the basement stairs.

As others have said, layer your security: alarm system, fortified doors, concealment, etc. I've never built a safe room but if I did, I would forget the cement blocks, put up forms and use poured concrete with rebar. You'll need to work with pros to insure that the safe door and poured structure may be joined together.

If your workshop resembles Home depot as mine does, all tools that can be used to attack the safe or its mounts must be out of sight, elsewhere in the house or under lock and key.

I still like the idea of the separate room in the workshop. Actually it's a good sized barn made in the same style as our house. As added reinforcement I could put in another 4" or 6" concrete filled block wall inside the 8" concrete filled block wall and put a layer of steel sheets between them. The concrete lid would probably be OK because it would be fairly close to the second story floor joists restricting access to work on breaking through. The community I live in is rural and we live on top of a hill with gated access. So I'm sure there are easier pickings elsewhere.

Go with 2 large safes. Your stuff will grow to fill any safe you have.

I wouldn't put one in an unheated building.With temperature changes,you'll end up with condensation.....and rust.

Very good point.

I'd go with the big one, and keep it in the house.

Yes, avoid non-climate controlled areas.

I would go with two safes that as big as practical to put in seperate closets. I like to advertise as little as possible. Unless it's in a room with very little exposure, like an office or spare bedroom. I have a safe sitting in the middle of the den in eyesight of the front door. So every service man, delivery guy or neighbor who comes in the house can see that I have it. I would rather it was more concelled.

My neighbor, a retired cop, had a 800 lb concrete gorilla stolen from his front porch in the middle of the night, while they were at home. So make sure whatever you get is bolted down, and preferably not on a ground level.

I will vote for 2 smaller safes.. not to small as others have said as they fill up quickly.


I have 2 smaller safes, one at each end of the downstairs of our house... as someone else said makes it harder for a burglar to get all your stuff, cracking two safes instead of one.
Also makes it easier to get to one of them if needed in a SHTF scenario..(keep matching ammo to the guns in each safe!)
Also in case of fire (don't think for a second a safe is fire proof!) being in two locations in the house, fire might be cooler at one end than the other and you still might not lose it all.

BUT.. that being said, I'd love to be able to have a vault (safe room) built into my house..

I'm with the 2 smaller safes crowd, especially if you ever plan on moving. I keep long guns and miscellaneous in one, handguns in the other.

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I have one medium sized safe downstairs that holds most of my guns.

The I have another smaller safe upstairs in the master bedroom that holds a few long guns and a couple handguns.

The upstairs safe in of the biometric type, so I can get to the guns quickly.

The downstairs safe is the old dial type comb lock which is useless for home defense firearms since it takes a long time to open.

I bought, but haven't installed yet, a small pistol safe for downstairs so I can put a readily available firearms there.