Best Gun Safe to buy?

all right Aaron Parker Parker say some balls Shelbyville Tennessee um I'm not going to do a uh video about a particular safe but I thought I would do one um about shopping for a safe right so you you decided you need a gun safe or any safe for that matter and um you know you're just not sure you're just getting started right so there's a lot of a lot of clever marketing out there there's a lot of you know radio ads and things like that that you know make their safe sound the best but if you're looking for a safe I think there's just a few things that you can look at real quick and then you'll know whether you're dealing with um clever marketing or um or good sake so the first thing I would look at if I was looking at a new model I would just look at the overall weight right so right off the bat what's what does a safe way that tells me probably a little bit about how it's constructed as far as you know how thick the the steel is on it maybe what kind of how many layers of firewall they're using whether it's you know concrete type stuff or drywall um but the overall weight would would tell you a lot so uh you know like a little I'm trying to be a little bit unbiased so I don't I have a safe here with no logo on it a lot of you probably recognize what safe this is and quite frankly I am a little biased so I'll try to just tone that down uh but this safe is pretty close to a thousand pounds and it's it's 30 inches wide UH 60 inches tall and while I'm on that subject a lot of companies use their dimensions in their models or in their in their model line so if you're not sure what that means like what are all these numbers right so say um you see uh I don't know FW 6032 that usually means that whatever that's safe is the FW say would be a model and then the 6-0 would be how tight tall it is and three two would be how wide right so uh 72 40 72 inches tall 40 inches wide and a lot of companies do that but I've noticed uh over the years that that's just really confusing if you don't get that in your head kind of quick so anyway keep in mind that the the numbers are usually associated with the dimensions um and so I would look at I would look at weight first and then after weight I would start trying to figure out like what is what's the door made out of um uh what you know what are they putting in there as far as steel is it a is it a solid plate on the outside is it a composite door and you know a lot of people don't know the difference between that so A Solid Plate would mean that you've got a full chunk of Steel across the entire door face right so in this in this instance it's it's a solid half inch plate some safes are just what they call gauge steel and they're kind of designed um they're kind of designed to fool you they look thick when you open them up they might be you know they might be an inch and a half thick or so but they're they're just Hollow so they have an outer skin then sometimes um and maybe a layer layer or two or three of of drywall and then another layer of Steel sometimes to kind of hold that all in but often what I see is one layer of gauge steel rather thin steel like 12 gauge or sometimes 10 11 um let's see so this might help a little bit this is a this would be a gauge a composite door safe right so this is the face of a door and it's going to be just thinner steel here right I think in this case that's about 12 12 gauge so that's it though so then they would have sheetrock in here this little void in here would be where all the Boat Works are and then they might have a layer of sheetrock here and that's it so your Steel on that door even though the door Edge kind of looks thick it's probably just gauge steel one layer fairly easy to grind or cut through and that's it right same thing goes for the body so the body a lot of times are just one layer of Steel and then a couple layers of sheetrock or drywall and so if you were to cut that steel off the you know cut a cut a square off of the uh off the you know the back or the sides you're in you push that drywall in or Bust it in and that's it you're done some safes have like two layers of Steel with a concrete type material in there uh some have ceramic but of course two layers steel and then those thicknesses that's going to make a difference so you might have to cut through one layer of Steel kind of chip or chisel out all this all their fire cladding which may be like a concrete material and then you're still working in that trough in and now you got to cut into that next layer of Steel before you get into the contents if you're wondering about it like when you swing a door it should kind of feel substantial like this one does like it's it's you know there's a lot to that right there another thing you can do see me um and let me pull this off okay so now some stores might might not like this idea right but um we don't mind here but you might want to you know be careful if you're going to do something like this and and be careful doing it but if you put your foot here and then put your hand here and pull on the pull on the top a lot of times you can see that entire door Edge Flex right so you'll you'll feel it like the whole door moves that is generally going to tell you that you've got a uh you've got a composite door um because a steel door isn't you know Solid Plate or you're just not going to flex it so why is that important well um this particular this and and this was a entry level safe I would call it a big box store brand but this safe we we pride the door right off of this with I didn't I shouldn't say we but my son did um with a with one of our big pry bars I wanted to get in there and strip all the drywall out it was the safe was kind of destroyed and we were just going to take it to a strap a scrap yard but I had to strip the sheetrock out first and I said hey see if you can get into that just a few minutes it wasn't long it was surprisingly short I wish I had a video of that but anyway that can be done with pry bar you you can get you know you can just start bending and things will flex and and uh and you'll gain access probably quicker than you think um with a plate steel door you're probably not going to do that I mean like jaws of life maybe would move something but a pry bar is just not going to get it you know wedges are just not going to get it Sledgehammer not going to happen so um all right so overall constructive so weight overall construction um you know door Flex check all that kind of stuff out and then then I would start looking at their fire ratings there's a lot of there's no industry standard on fire ratings so unfortunately right so you if you can find a company that has done an independent test like these guys have uh this this safe was tested or as safe like it was tested by an independent company and that to me carries a lot of weight I run into some other companies some of which I've stopped carrying now where I've learned that the fire ratings were just completely fabricated just made up no testing no nothing and I think what they did is they just did the math perhaps on how many layers of sheetrock would give you x amount of time right so but as far as I know there was no testing and that's kind of what they told me so um we dropped that company or those two companies and we're trying to carry stuff that we can you know feel good about and and be happy to sell the people and stand behind so keep that in mind so not all fire Rings just because there's a fire rating out there does not mean that it has been tested uh so if it hasn't been tested you know maybe the maths right but man I would rather have a an independent company that's not affiliated with a safe manufacturer do the test warranties are another thing so most safe companies will have have a you know they'll talk about the lifetime warranty but check them out see if they're going to charge you for Freight uh one or both ways or for an installer to come and get the old one and put the new one in and all that because if they're if they're um if they're charging you if they set the price for that they're probably going to get a lot of money back out of you for a quote unquote free free warranty replacement so be careful with that these guys they do no charge so you know when if you have a warranty replacement um you know they'll pay an installer to come in take the old safe out put the new safe in the customer doesn't pay anything so so that's kind of cool but another thing to check out and then after that I would say then once we look at construction fire rating all that I would say the next thing to look at is just you know how is it laid out is are the you know it's a door organizer if it has one is it is it just the cheapest nylon they make or is it more of a you know more of a ballistic nylon thicker gauge stuff and you know you can tell that just by looking at stuff like yeah like in this case uh you know the shelving's all padded you can just tell that it's they've taken some time to do it all um but be wary of of things like you know they're when they're trying to sell light kits and door organizers and dehumidifiers and adding all that in there saying free they're trying to get you to buy the safe but you can always buy that stuff later right you want the best box you can afford first then we can deal with all that other stuff right so the the amount of bolts to me don't really matter if the door doesn't flex and the body doesn't Flex right so you could have like on a lot of you know government safes or or commercial safes there might only be a few maybe half inch or 5 8 inch solid Rod there's none of these most of the time these great big bolts that you know kind of make this safe door look flashy you don't need that if the door doesn't Flex in the body doesn't Flex so if those two things are going to stay put you could get by with probably two bolts two locking bolts and none on the top or bottom in this case we've got four-way active bolts and and a Gear Drive and three-stage bolt Works which that all does add up to a more secure safe but in reality if you can't if nothing flexes and you can't pry into it I think the bolts are secondary so you know Corner bolts and flat bar stock and quote unquote military style locking bolts probably is more of a gimmick to me in my opinion than than a real you know feature I hope that helps I think I think I've kind of covered everything I was thinking of but locks are another thing you know mechanical locks have been around since about 1848 specifically to they've been around longer than that but the sergeant Greenleaf you know mechanical lock has been around since 1848 they haven't changed much now there's some off brands of that that are kind of competing they're most of them are really good electronic locks have come a long way in the last even 10 years and so most of those are good too these guys have have their own brand of Lock and you can check that too like how easy is the battery to get to in this case we have dual batteries um you know is it going to give you any trouble jump online and see if there's a lot of problems with that particular lock and if that's the case ask for a different bar you know but anyway I think that ought to do it um if you have any questions if I missed anything if something you want me to touch on just let me know you know another thing I like is where the safe is made these are made in the U.S okay so watch that one too so a lot of them will say um uh made in America well that might you might be thinking U.S but it might be Mexico right still America North America um so or um uh what is it us assembled in the USA with global components that can just about mean anything that could mean their shipping the entire safe over and the company that receives is putting the lock on so assembled so be careful with that but made in the USA usually means made in the USA so they're I mean it's hard to get away from components from overseas but but at least you know where the safest man all right well I hope that helped and like I say if you have any questions leave them in the comments and appreciate your time

Channel: PARKERS SAFES

Views: 56,302

Keywords: best gun safe, gun safe, best safe, gun safes, safes, gun safe review, good gun safe, choosing a gun safe

Id: Mr9qa1lI968

Length: 13min 21sec (801 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 17 2023