So you’re looking to keep your firearms and other valuables safe, but you don’t want to spend a fortune getting what you need. Well, good news for you. Finding cheap gun safes for sale doesn’t always mean you have to settle for rubbish. Having said that it’s not uncommon to find safes put together with shoddy craftsmanship going for way more than they should. Clever marketers will often mask the products true nature and you have to be a smart shopper to see what you really getting for your cash.
It’s recommended by most security experts that for home protection, a gun safe weighing 750 lbs should be the minimum. Unfortunately, most safes over 750 lbs easily surpass the $1500 mark. Though there’s no true substitute for a stout build, there’s a close second. Be sure to find a safe built for anchoring. Bolting the box to a concrete floor greatly reduces the chances that a thief will tip it over, or wheel it out. I should note, however, that if you own a 750+ lbs safe, you should still anchor it to the ground.
Don’t fall for word decorated feature descriptions like 1/2″ thick steel walls. Online stores do this with cheap safes all the time. While the safe may certainly be 1/2″ thick, I can assure you that it’s not solid steel. Such a safe would be several thousand pounds, and live inside a bank. Typically, safes with these associated deceptive claims are a composite material sandwiched between two pieces of sheet metal. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this, as long as you know what you’re getting into (and don’t pay too much).
You’ll also want to mind the arrangement of the locking bolts. Are they linked directly to the lock, or are they engineered in an ‘active’ fashion to take the direct impact of a punch break in attempt off of the lock? If you’re spending less than $1200, you’re generally not going to find a marvel of security engineering, but at the minimum, the safe should have a few active locking bolts.
Most cheap gun safes, those under the $700 range anyway, won’t even offer fire resistance protection. Safe manufacturers aren’t even held to any universal fire protection measuring standard, and most literally make up they’re own. That said, just because a safe claims to be rated for one hour at 1400 degrees, doesn’t necessarily mean it will actually survive it. Be sure to look for continuous welds, universal distribution of fireboard insulation, and some degree of steel thickness.
There are a lot of inferior products out there, but if you do your homework you can come away with well made gun safes for cheap.
Related posts: