TexasCHLforum.com

I need recommendations for a gun safe as far as brand, fire rating, and locking system are concerned. This is for a friend and I don't know how many guns she has, so don't worry about capacity.

Thanks in advance,

Crash

This site has the best info on gun safes I have seen. http://gunsafereviewsguy.com/buyers-gui ... -gun-safe/

On the front page are his recommendations for best cheap gun safe, best gun safe for the money, and best real safe for guns (he notes that vast majority of "gun safes" are not really safes, they are gussied-up residential security containers with safe-like features).

Your friend's best bet is to go to a real gun safe store where he can see and touch the different safes.

I know you're not in the Dallas area, but I bought mine from The Safe Company in Garland. They took the time to explain everything to me with no pressure, so I could choose the one that fit my needs.

The site ELB posted would be a good place for educating himself before he goes.

One more thing. He should get a bigger safe than he thinks he needs. Gun collections have a way of outgrowing safes.

I love my Liberty Fatboy
http://www.libertysafe.com/safe-fatboy-safes-ps-9.html

May as well put in my $0.02. Simply put, there are two parts to owning a safe: the protection of valuables against thieves, and the protection of valuables against fire.

The former is actually easier than you might expect. Just bolt it down to the ground so the baddies can't just wheel it away. Make sure the door is nice, thick, and heavy so the baddies can't drill in, and most importantly, the four remaining sides of the safe (yes, top included) are inaccessible. The safe is only as sturdy as the sides, which can be cut through very quickly with a circular saw. If the safe is in a nook somewhere that requires a thief to spend over 10 minutes to access the side of the safe, that's enough time for the cops to arrive assuming they tripped the alarm entering the home.

The latter is, well, much better assuming the house has a monitored alarm. Think about the time it takes for the alarm to trip and the FD to show up and extinguish the flame. That's how many minutes worth of protection is necessary. Just make sure the contents will be fine for the rated temperature. It's not about the minutes as much as the internal temperature of the safe when it reaches that time.

I ended up with an el-cheapo Amsec safe. I figure I can get 3.5 years worth of monitored protection with the money I save, which I have anyway.

I'd like to mention a significant detail that most buyers, myself included, don't pay enough attention to; the interior.

I was very proud to have made a great deal on a premium safe. I chose an interior layout, but didn't notice how flimsily it was assembled. Like many others, it uses little shelf clips that bend, break or pop out. The vertical panels are so weakly attached to the floor and back that they will shift, allowing all the shelves to collapse on themselves. I bought some nice coated-wire handgun racks, but now I have to keep everything in gunsocks to protect from dings and scratches. Eventually I will use most of the parts to build a solid shelf/rack system with its own frame, but you shouldn't have to do that for a safe that cost over $3K.

+1 on Liberty Safes, I'm a very happy guy. Nice safe.
Buying bigger than you need is a good idea, my guns seem to be procreating on their own.

I have good experience with Liberty and Champion.

I was told the guy doing Champion was the same person that started Fort Knox and then sold it and started the Champion company.

Look at Brown Safe if you want an actual safe. Though you are going to pay for it.