Just curious if anyone has ever made their own gun safe? After shopping around and realizing a decent safe for myself would cost $600-$1000 I thought about making one. Any tutorials or links that have ideas on how to make one? Fire resistant would be good but since it is home made just theft resistant will work for now, although I am sure there are ways to make them fire resistant too.
You can find a discussion about this on The Firearms Forum http://www.thefirearmsforum.com/showthread.php?t=49376
Sounds interesting, in €urope we have to have a certain standard of safe which can only be guaranteed by a manufacturer, as a pre-requisite to getting your permission to purchase and own firearms and ammunition. I know that this doesn't apply to the rest of the world, but thought it worth while mentioning here. Tony
I was trying to build one, then I took the plans to a welder, as I don't have the bigger mig welder to handle this type of job.... He figured it out, told me the costs, and when I came tooo....I decided that was a bit more than I wanted to invest, for now! It was cheaper to buy a ready made one, and put up with having it stolen from my home. They have had a lot of the store types pulled out of homes, filled with firearms, and never seen of again. I did consider gutting out an old water heater and putting it in a closet with the pipes filled with water, and sealed up and Then have a top you can remove and under a false lid, attached to pipes, have the actual storage in there. Just a thought. Bill
I made one for a friend out of 3/8 plate. I welded it solid and then put on 2 Shlage dead bolt locks. If I had to do it again, I'd bolt it together using tamper proof bolts. Then it could be moved in pieces.
That's similar to what I was thinking about doing, did it end up being cheaper than buying one. Could you make something like that fire resistant? Maybe some sort of fire resistant insulation but I don't know if that would lesses the heat in the box enough. I know nothing is going to be theft proof but anything is better than a soft case sitting in your closet. Something else I would do it make adjustments so I could bolt it to the wall or floor too.
Before I bought my first safe I thought about buying one of these. You can get them from Lowe's and the way your lock recesses into the tool box it would be hard to cut it off. You could also line it with sheet rock for fire protection (which is what most safes use for fire protection) and after all it just looks like a big tool box. http://www.lowes.com/lowes/lkn?action=productDetail&productId=195894-76354-195894&lpage=none <table class="grayborder" border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="782"><tbody><tr><td class="tir" rowspan="2" align="center" valign="top" width="198"> <script id="easy2Script_lowe_19" language="JavaScript" type="text/javascript" src="http://www.lowes.com/lowes2/includes/lowe_19.js"></script></td><td class="tir grayleft_align" valign="top" height="90">Better Built® 48" Steel Job Site Safe Tool Box Item #: 195894 Model: 195894</td></tr><tr><td class="dot_x_1" valign="top"><table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0"><tbody><tr valign="top"><td class="tir grayleft_align" width="208">$279.00 </td></tr></tbody></table></td></tr></tbody></table>