How to Choose a Gun Safe: The Truth

gun safes i tell you right now there's a lot more involved in the manufacturing of gun safes than i ever even fathomed every time i visit the shop we're about to go to i learn a lot more this is a true educational video on the differences in gun safes and the manufacturing of gun safes my buddy kurt who i purchased all of my fort knox safes from i have all my says throughout the state of florida different locations and kurt's a professional and as you're about to see he's extremely articulate and he knows his stuff so whether you're in the market to buy a safe now or someday years from now come back to this video and watch and listen to kurt because he'll teach you on the questions you need to ask and the knowledge you need to have knowledge is power i think you'll enjoy this i know it's a little bit lengthy but i tell you what when we spend our hard-earned money on a pricey product like a safe whether it be six eight hundred dollars a thousand dollars or three four thousand dollars you want to have the knowledge knowledge is power by the way welcome to weaponseducation.com let's go inside here we are at ce safes my friend kurt the owner is inside he's going to give us a tour of his facility they just moved to this new location i'm in deerfield beach florida the c stands for kurt he is his wife elizabeth ce safe deerfield beach florida and this is their premier showroom kurt has got to be he is he is the most knowledgeable person in the united states on safe and there's a lot more to gun safes than you might think so let's go inside and take a tour kurt it's always a pleasure to come to your facility thank you so much for giving us a tour of this new facility you're at how long have you been here now well since july 1st we're still doing a lot of major workings on it okay well let's take a look congratulations you've been here about seven months i was at your other facility and uh you were just moving then you've come a long way and well how long you've been in business since 1989 since 1989 well there's a lot more to saves than people realize correct there is there is the safe industry has changed dramatically in the last 12 years and basically what what it's done is it's lightened up the metal while concealing what they've been doing and the consumers really get confused when they come into the store after calling on the internet because they don't know what a composite door is they don't know what what plate edge means and so what they're doing is they're surviving something completely different than what they think they're buying and so one of the purposes of our business is to educate because we specialize we like to educate make sure that every one of our customers understands what they're buying there's a big difference between a fort knox safe like this and the imports as you walk on down here okay about 12 years ago roughly that time period the manufacturers decided to to bring their safes into mass merchant stores which really greatly increase the visibility of the saves the problem is is that most mass merchants are not in the safe business they're not in the security business so price is real big with them price points is a term that you'll hear all the time and what happened is is that as they did this the qualities of the safe had to go down to meet these price points and eventually most of the american production uh is is out of country right now primarily in china with a little bit in mexico and so what happens is that customers need to understand what what the different types of safes are for example when you look at a when you look at a safe like this and you look at this and you say wow that that's a pretty thin door this is 3 8 inch steel this is not a thin door this is an excellent door but what happens is that they see on the internet and they hear terms called composite and you'll look at this and this composite door right here has less than one third of the steel of the first uh plate steel that you saw and this is one of the things that all the times when the customers are coming in what we like to do is we like to take them to this safe and what i'd like you to do is move this safe back and forth for me all right so when you move this safe back and forth what you're going to find is the safe feels a certain weight to it then we take them around the corner to a fort knox safe and what they do the same thing but it's advertised as the same door an inch and three quarter inch composite and the customers go in there and say well this door feels like three or four times as heavy well it's because it is three or four times as heavy so you've asked the wrong question the right question is how much steel is in this massive door and the next thing is if you hear manufacturers talking about this area as being security this isn't security at all this is just a frame to hide moving parts that's all it is and so when you hear about this massive seven inch door this massive seven inch door or three inch door or five inch door might have less than an eighth of an inch of steel commonly referred to as 12 gauge there is a reason and and customers need to understand that there is a reason why safes cost different amounts of money is because what has gone into them and where they're made and how the welding is done you don't want a spot welded safe you want to say that it's a continuous weld and there's a reason for that i'm not going to go on video as to a reason for that because i don't like giving people ideas of how you can short circuit a safe i want to point out for you something if i can today it's a safe that rhino safe company out in idaho uh has made for us for for our company and so what happens is i i don't like selling imports i want to sell american products let me take a look on the inside and so what we did is we co-developed an american-made safe in here that is that is near the import pricing except far better this quote unquote skinny door of a quarter inch is has two times the metal of the rhino safe called big horn it's an imported safe and you look at this door it has less than one half the steel of their quarter inch plate door right here what's the difference in price the difference in price of that safe is going to be anywhere from 599 to 699 and you'd be able to pick up this safe for 12.49 what you have is double the steel in the door you have a heavier body you have a continuous weld frame you have you have your inside piece right here and your frame reinforced so when your four-way bolt work goes around the door what you have is you have a secure locking mechanism and you have the holes in the corner one of my pet peeves of having quote unquote import safes is what they like to do is they like to put two holes in the center and negate the fact that you can bolt the safe down properly having two holes in the middle of the floor doesn't do anything for bolt down and remember something they're going to attack us say four different ways that i have found in my 19 years of doing this which the first thing they want to do is they want to steal the safe so if you buy a safe and don't bolt it down that's like buying an alarm without putting it on big mistake the second thing they try to do is they try to pry it and i'm going to take you through these doors and show you the messier part of uh of my building here that we have not developed yet in the back here i have two businesses this is the smaller of the two and i want to show you a safer what happens when they try to attack way number two way number two is this is a quarter inch plate door that what happened is is that i figured that they worked on this for one to two hours probably with three people they bent quarter inch steel they never got into this safe this is one of the reasons why i like to see my customers start at a quarter inch plate door with four-way bolt work this worked it saved the customer over 150 thousand dollars uh that was in this safe it was bolted it never moved so we made them start prying from an upward position as opposed to on the floor the third way that they attack the safe and which what is my obsession is the cutting of a non-torch cutting tool this is an 11 gauge body on a safe and so we're very concerned in our business about the cutting and at least making customers aware that saves can be penetrated and remember that when they do a security uh their what they call their rsc rating and in english to you that's a residential security container when they do that test it's for the door only and not for the body so the body on most safes is one half to one third of what the door is in actual metal content until recently with imports sometimes the door or is the same as what the body is that is unfortunate from your standpoint the fourth way that they'll attempt to get into a safe is is it was excuse me is with torches and that's relatively rare and can these be negated yes you can but if you want to try to stop the cutting if you want to try to stop the torching one of the things that you're going to have to do is want to invest in a safe not buy a safe invest in a safe and get extra metals and stainless steel and anti-heat materials that will dissipate the the heat and won't allow a hole to be burned into it so you can custom make a safe with fort knox for instance that's why i purchased all my safes from either all four knocks can we talk about fort knox for a moment yeah fort knox's is is our is is the backbone of our business and what it allows us to do is it allows us to take a basic safe and and add metal to it and so when you get a safe that is a door like this you don't know what the steel is fort knox will tell you in the brochure and i want all manufacturers to begin telling people what the actual metal content is in the door you have two pieces of metal in this safe that is a 10 gauge and a quarter and in english 10 gauge means a little over an eighth of an inch and then a quarter inch plate on the back this is the part that's going to stop people not this behind here outside of the bolts this is a frame there's no metal in here to stop this is just to hide moving parts so i can take this door with fort knox that is 10 gauge and a quarter and make it 10 gauge but make the back piece 3 8 and make another piece 3 8 almost an inch of steel if that's what you want what about the side walls and in the body the body has one piece of metal this is three part steel to one part steel one piece of 10 gauge we can make this body a quarter inch on the outside and five pieces of 10 gauge on the inside almost an inch of steel and so what happens is and one of those pieces of steel if you want can be stainless steel that's your anti-heat for torch protection so what are we trying to do when we're trying to stop cutters we're stopping cutters by adding steel steel is going to stop and make people come in with a certain quality of tool that they don't normally do and so the idea behind this is a safe basically you need to remember sometimes when you're buying an item a security item you're condensing all your portable wealth into a single location into a steel box and it is amazing how many people don't understand what what the makeup is of that steel box we're learning now they haven't got a clue the first door i showed you there the big horn had less than one third of the steel that is in this that is in this safe but they're advertised identically and so you need to learn to ask the right questions and one of the suggestions i would make for you is i'm a free market person so i don't care if you buy a safe at a mass merchant but you need to understand that mass merchant purposes is price points not to sell you security when you get specialists like myself we start from the exact opposite mentality that says we want security first and we want to try to get the best price we can for you car what if one of the viewers lives stay in oregon or california or illinois or new hampshire how could you sell them a safe we can sell a safe in it with uh with many of the vendors that i carry in in certain locations we have florida for the most part with most of our vendors in the south americas and i have a network of other vendors that we would refer you to and i have to ask permission from uh you know from from the manufacturers if i can sell in certain areas but we'll be glad i will be glad to provide you with whatever information that you would want you know as far as is trying to help you find a a professional vendor we specialize in this the people that i work with in our summit co-op group specialize in this and so you're more apt to find a much better safe at one of these specialty stores than you want a mass merchant so you can give them some information over the telephone and you can give them advice as to where to go in their local zip code yes we can now let me show you one other safe before we close here on this we'll show you the grfunder safe people have heard about these on the website this is an inch and a half of solid steel this isn't a composite door so unlike the doors that you were seeing before composite this is an inch and a half of solid steel with one inch in the body grfunder has a has a remarkable name you know to it they make only one or two safes a day there's only one reason why people will not buy a group under safe and that's price of the safe what does that cost this is 11 000 oh my gosh for the unit there's only one reason we find that customers won't buy the fort knox safe what do they cost because yeah because of the price like a safe like this would run you roughly thirty seven hundred dollars plus options you know to the safe so remember when you're looking at a safe like this in a fort knox safe and a safe in this size that might cost two thousand dollars there's a reason for it it's how they're made you know the one thing if i can impress you based on my 21 years of police work and 19 years doing this look at a safe as an investment if someone puts three rifles in front of you low medium and high and you pick the medium and high all the time don't look at three saves low medium and high and say do you have anything cheaper if you want to get good results well let's talk about the economy right now some people are out of work some type money's tight if you're on a low budget what is the best save for the money let's take a look at that browning right there for instance this is our alley up here that you can be looking at the brown brownie medallion series this is one of their midline uh areas where you would be you know you would be spending roughly twenty three twenty four hundred dollars for you can look at the superior which we consider to be an excellent safe in this price range that you would be looking at spending between 16.99 and 19.99 for i mean anything's better than nothing if you can't afford a three four thousand dollar safe of course this is a three eight inch plate it's a it's an excellent buy the fort knox safe in this area which we consider the best in this range is 23.99 plus you know plus options to it but for about a thousand dollars let's come on back over here the thousand dollar safe that we're going to be looking for in the uh in the sizes you're either going to have to go with an import or with this new rhino series that we come in with different with different sizes to it i'm trying not to turn my back on walking over here so please don't consider me to be rude when you get something like this at 12 49 or you get a smaller sister size of this this is a 60 by 30 by 21 plus the handle if you got the smaller sister which is 56 by 27 by 18 plus the handle you can get that for 9.99 all right with a quarter inch door four-way bolt work 11 gauge body can't beat it we consider it to be the best value uh you know that you're going to find anywhere we challenge you to look to see if you can get this type of metal now that you know that this type of metal right here on their american one right here is more than twice as much metal as their imported version same company what about that winchester safe i say about six hundred dollars well the winchester safe you can pick up here for you know for 449 499 you don't want to say very light 14 gauge door uh this i would i would suggest that you would uh buy this safe for you know kids in the house and this is not meant for serious storage if you're going to be putting twenty thirty thousand dollars in the save uh you're gonna have to sit down there and bite your lip and spend a little bit more money the door is very light on this safe all safes have pur uh have purposes there is a purpose for a 500 save there is a purpose for a 10 000 save make sure you measure what you're going to put inside with what you're going to spend what about fire i see these stickers on here certified levels of one two three how does that mean you're going to find in the gun safe industry there's no one single company that is going to test as safe as there is with underwriter laboratory you know which dominates the non-gun safe industry so basically what you're going to find is different companies with different temperatures you'll get anything from 20 minute or 30 minute or hour or 90 minute and so you want to look at the labels that you're going to see on the safe this one has a 20 minute label on it this one would have an hour label on it both import saves okay and okay and you would go on safes like the american-made safes that would go anywhere from a 50 minute on a rhino to an hour on the browning to 90 minute in the superior brand that you see over here to 90 minute into fort knox now remember something about fire liners there are two numbers that go with a fire liner number one is is how long number two is is what temperature that they tested it at so if you want to make a fire test seem longer you can do a two and a half hour test at 1200 degrees well that's going to be the same as the temperature of 90 minutes at 1680. all right so there's two numbers you look at both front and back you know one honestly interesting all right so now you learn like a safe like this which doesn't look like very very much has now 200 percent more steel than the than the average safes that have a composite inch to inch and three quarter door this has a 90 minute fire rating at 1500 degrees and a light medium level of safe really excellent value what about these dehumidifiers i use them in all my safes and you turn me on to those years ago and they do work i have zero rust issues they're inexpensive the purpose of a demand fire very simply is to heat up the air and what it does is it rotates the air in the safe itself and it and it keeps little moisture bits of staying on your gun and starting the rust process when you plug it into a wall it is a no maintenance item and so we recommend the dehumidifier over and over dry uh if you have a wall outlet because there's no maintenance to it all you have to do is touch it every time you go in the save if it feels warm to you it doesn't warm up hot enough to burn your hand you feel that you know it's working whereas with the never dry by the way don't put damper it in your safe it's an acid and so what happens if it ever spills is going to eat anything it comes in contact with it get something that is a non-acid like can ever dry here and what happens is is that you put this in the safe it's antagonistic to water it absorbs the water and but at some point you're gonna have to check it every five days to say six weeks to see what the water content is on the inside you take it out plug it in the wall overnight you're right back in business again what about lighting we have found in in doing this for 19 years one of the things that you find is that customers who buy electronic locks like their space more than dials and yes i know all the internet stuff about how electronics break down for example with fort knox they give you a lifetime warranty on the electronics find out what the warranty is you will use the safe more with an electronic clock and with lights once you buy lights you're never going to go without lights again there's no flashlight on the on the shoulder routine so if you go in and you buy a safe a quality safe and you buy with electronic lock that you can get in in two seconds excuse me as a as opposed to 30 seconds to a minute and a half you will use the safe more if you if you buy lights which now you can easily see they come on when you're in there you can distinguish everything from colors of jewelry to you know your guns you can clearly see everything you won't go without lights again so you got electronic right here yes the the purpose of the digital is just very simple it's just within a very short period of time is that you're going to be able to get into the safe you hit six numbers in the pound sign and you're you're in your safe as opposed to the dial where you're gonna do four to the left and three to the right and two to the left and right until stop now we know all about the emp you know concerns that customers have and i want to if you have a moment let me let me show you an anti-emp new locking device this is uh exclusive at this time to fort knox i am going to turn my back to you as i walk to the back here beautiful they have a new they have a new redundant lock feature on on a safe cool and the redundant lock is is that you can use the digital lock on the uh safe and all you use the dial for is to pull the bolt up if you ever had a problem fort knox lifetime warranties or digital law but if you ever had a problem with the digital lock people are afraid it's always going to happen on a weekend or a holiday i'm not going to be able to get a hold of anybody it turns into a fiasco well now on the redundant lock feature the dial will will bypass the digital lock you may use it one time in two years or ten years but you'll never have the capability if there's an emp blast you got your dial there okay it's a slight upgrading cost where the normal electronic clock will run you 150 you're going to pay 325 dollars you know for a new redundant lock but virtually it ensures that you can use a digital lock all the time and if you ever have a problem which is relatively rare catastrophic failure you can go to your handy dandy dial that's your non-emp dial and you can you can open up your safe what about children if you had a put a gun next to your bedside what do you recommend what kind of safe i'm really big on personal protection boxes and i want to emphasize to the customers as a person who trained in the police department is that the same electronic locks that i sell in the big safes and 90 to 95 percent of my customers are buying electronic clocks they're totally inappropriate for a personal protection box an electronic glock is designed to get you in in two to three seconds the personal protection boxes are designed to get you in in a second now if you have a stress situation where you need to get in one of the things that's going to happen to you is you know you're going to get scared when you say holy smokes and that's probably not the words you're going to use this is the real deal and so what happens is all of a sudden you get your adrenaline dump and your hands shaking that if you press the electronic locks too fast and you keep on doing them what you're going to do is literally lock yourself out it's a recipe to get yourself killed biometrics are very haphazard in in in usage only work about 60 70 percent of the time they're very fussy the inexpensive models a key forget you trying to find a key in getting in the only lock in my opinion and we all have our own opinions this is mike i've got about 10 of these i love these things this is the perfect lock on the safe quite simply your your control you're in in a matter of a second so what's that real quick because that's a generic if you make if you make okay now if you made a mistake on a simplex lock and you press the wrong buttons it doesn't work voila you turn to the left you now have cleared your bad code and you can do that as many times as you make a mistake take a deep breath usa here you are two and four one we're back in our lock again now this is the only lock that i recommend to go on these saves further the only heavy duty box made on the market today is by my buds at fort knox who now have added from their one to do a couple more and they're doing three big versions of this over christmas time they took the smaller version in the bigger version of this i got them coming tomorrow by the way and so what happens is that you have now for the customer that wants something for a vehicle cool you have something that right now will house three or four guns ammo all kinds of stuff you put it in the vehicle you can put it at home bolt it all up i just can't tell you how much i love these boxes and now they got their first of their single long gun versions of the unit now this one is designed to lay flat on the floor okay or to be put in the vehicle for transport you just you know you just we send them to an auto body place that through bolt into the car so you can put this under your bed yep absolutely now in the future they're going to make a model that's going to open up to the side so they've just made five different models this has been a long time project of ours i'm very big on these boxes i don't like the import stuff because to be quite frank with you the metal linen doesn't do anything i don't feel comfortable leaving a kid with an import safe you know in a room alone i just don't these ones excellent meddling my last question kurt is the delivery process i was always so impressed with how you deliver these things a bigger fort knox safe for instance what is your process on delivering them well i pay my guys very well to do a job and basically what it comes down to is is that you know we specialize in this we got a quarter million dollars worth of trucks we pay our guys good money to deliver with good benefits to come in your house do it right you have to bring three different types of metals you know two places you have to build ramps you have to put blankets on the floor with titanium aluminum plates that are very expensive they're very secretive and so we have no markings on our truck if you're in a security business one of the things that hurts me is to remember that i'm in a security business i would love to drive my truck around town and and say another safe sold by ce saves it's worth tens of thousands of dollars instead of since since we've been in business we don't have any markings on the truck they say ce incorporated you know on the truck they have to be marked by dlt standards in our state but there's nothing that says safe on it we think that if you're in a security business you should be really quiet about what you do and so you don't want me parked in front of your house saying safe's all over the truck going in if i was adt an alarm company you wouldn't care okay but coming in and having a truck parked and seeing safes it just shows that you don't understand your business and so one of the things that we try to do in this business in a market that has been flooded with with inexpensive what i consider to be many poorly made safes out there we try to emphasize the better and we try to emphasize doing it right and sometimes a small thing can turn into a big thing kurt thank you so much i want to reiterate your website is below and if anyone from the united states calls you you'll school them on the telephone you'll direct them to a vendor in their zip code and you do deliver throughout the whole state of florida personally yours yourself the shop correct yes and then we'll assist the customer any way that we can you know as far as there are certain areas we can sell to and there's certain areas i have to make a referral to you uh for the our website our new website uh address is cesafes with an s on the end dot com and our email site is cesaffes gmail.com very simple to find thank you so much i'm proud to be here i enjoyed my time thank you thank you

Channel: C.E. Safes

Views: 821,859

Keywords: how to choose a safe, the truth about safes, Gun Safes Videos, Gun Safes Education

Id: GHAyRO566sU

Length: 27min 27sec (1647 seconds)

Published: Sat Jun 29 2013