Been there, done that - That's why I came here...

The answer I got was:
"Unless there is a + - on the drawings, I am not sure.  To be safe, I would go with the factory recommendation."

I am just looking to find out if the door frame is adjustable for height / width, and if there is a maximum opening size.

I want it to be a great fit, but am a bit nervous of having my guys make the opening to their exact minimum size, and after the concrete dries finding out that it's a hair too tight, etc...

There is usually more to installing this type of stuff, even beyond what the instructions tell you.  Things you only know by doing it a hundred times.  Things that make it easier.  Pitfalls that make things much more difficult.  If your dealer does not know what he's selling, I'd return it, and buy from somebody who does.

The minimum opening represents the smallest opening that you need to get the unit in the wall. There is a flange front-and-back that overlaps the wall face. In the front, the overlap is way more than 1 inch on an edge. I don't have the data handy, but if your opening is 79.5-80.5 high x 35.5-36.5 wide, you should have no issues. I will see that this important data is included in the future literature releases and website pages. Sorry for the inconvenience. This is the kind of feedback that makes us better.

I'm sure Frank would agree that too tight is bad. You need a little room to shim and set the swing on the door so it's sweet and smooth. I would personally target an opening around 1/2" larger then the minimum requirement for best results. Maybe Frank has better recommendations. He installs them, I don't.

Thanks TSG!!!

If the opening is larger than the minimum listed, is the frame adjustable for height and width, or is it fixed and therefore anything larger than the minimum opening would cause a gap between the frame and the concrete?

It sounds like the frame is a fixed size with a lip / flange, and that lip / flange would cover door trim / gaps.

I just want to get the frame as close to the concrete as possible so I think I'll go with 1/4" wider and taller than the minimums...

If you are giving feedback, there are no pictures of the in swing vault doors that I could find, and one of the dealer pages mentioned that the in swing vault doors did not have the 1 1/2" deadbolts - I really wanted to see what the locking mech looked like on that type...

Thanks again for the fast reply and the helpful info!

Frames and flanges are fixed width.

I just stumbled onto this thread, and I am as fascinated as everyone else by the expert information.


And now I have a few questions:

1. Regarding the basic "BF" model, why bother putting a 1/2" plate door on a RSC rated container with 11 gauge walls that can be hacked/Sawzalled with relative ease? I realize it's all in marketing, but what is the purpose, when the entire safe can scarcely support the door when open? Why pay the extra manufacturing, shipping, and installation costs?

2. What is with the 11 bolts? Why not put at least one bolt on the bottom? I know the safe is supposed to be anchored, protecting the bottom from prying, but what the hell?

3. And why such big bolts?

It just seems like you could build a less expensive safe that is just as secure by using a thinner door plate and thinner bolts, while using more of them (on all 4 sides).

I like the fire protection on the safe, and I am even starting to believe that Amsec e-locks really might be the best way to go (although I'm very interested to know what kind of capacitors are used...I would love to see solid Japanese caps from Sanyo or Panasonic).

TSG is clearly aware that weight is a value detractor to many gun safe consumers (if greater than so many pounds), so why exacerbate the issue with a 1/2" plate steel door and unnecessarily huge bolts on an RSC??

Different strokes for different folks I suppose. The 1/2 inch plate on the door is one of the reasons I purchased a BF, certainly didn't view it as a negative.  Remember the BF is dual wall construction, with a poured fill, that will add some ridgitity to the walls. If you're concerned with the thickness, they offer a 4ga inner liner as an option.  I got the 4ga liner, when you add that to the 11ga outer skin and the 1/2 in plate in the door, you essentially have a B rate gun safe with poured insulation. That's pretty stout compared to most gun safes on the market aside from Graffunder, which cost considerably more. Better security is going to add weight, no way around it. Go look at the weight on a Graffunder B rate, it's even heavier.

I definitely think even the standard BF rates better than most any other RSC, but some aspects are just overkill, especially when you consider the "underkill" of the bolt coverage in the door...not everyone has the luxury of anchoring, which some renters discussed earlier in the thread. As with anything else, folks will have their gripes.

I really do wanna know what kind of caps their locks have, though...with the right kind, they actually might last forever.

The problem is when those gripes are based on "knowledge" based on marketing, and not on how these things work in real life.  

Bolt coverage is important when you have a thin, flexible door.  When you get to a door that can not be bent easily, the number of bolts around the door isn't nearly as important.   There is a lot more that goes into this as well, but the moral of the story is that the number or size of the bolts doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the security of the safe.

Fair enough, so kill the superfluous top bolt, and save us some money. I just think some minor changes could be made to make a great safe that much more competitive and cost effective.

When I was shopping, I saw a number of TL30 safes that had no top or bottom bolts at all, just a the sides. They weren't the fancy gun safe plated chrome either. You could see on the bolt itself they were machined from bar stock, not cast.  It was an ISM, if I remember correctly.

They are competitive as is for what you get. You can't compare them to a $1000 safe made in China.  Mine was $3,700 for the 66x36 with the 4 ga liner. That's considerably less than what Ft. Knox cost with comparable steel, and poured insulation vs fire board. It's A LOT less than a Graffunder. The quote I got on a 60x30 Graffunder B Rate was almost $7,000.

If you don't need the heavier door, etc, look at the Fort Knox M2. They are a good value for the money,no frills,, and offer a lifetime warrany on the electronic lock as well. AMSEC also has several lines below the BF as well.

I'm just saying that they are losing market share to companies like Liberty for no good reasons. The main ones being 1. Marketing, and 2. Price.


They could build a lighter, more consumer-attractive BF for less money and pass the savings on to us, and it would work just as well in a burglary or fire.

They could also detail what makes them so good without giving anything away...i.e. lock components and so forth. That crap sells motherboards, and it would sell e-locks, too.

They do build lighter models, but they're not the BF series.  Under gun safes there's HF, BF, NF, FV, and TF.  And there's a flyer that compares their general build features here: http://amsec.s3.amazonaws.com/literature/2015_GS_Comparison.pdf

I find gun safes by all companies are very confusing to compare because there's so many differences.  Outer metal thickness, inner metal thickness, fill material and thickness, door vs body thickness of each layer, fire protection technologies, locks types, bolt type/size/placement.  It seems to me the industry needs to create something between RSC and TL-15, maybe change the RSC test so they keep going until they open it and list that number in addition, like RSC-10 if it took 10 minutes.  This would hopefully help sort the quality of RSCs out for the consumer.

It already exists.  And if you're dealing with a local safe and vault professional, you can learn about all of those options.  The real safe industry has been around a lot longer than the gun safe industry has.  Outside of the paint jobs, and the interiors, nobody is reinventing the wheel here.  In fact, I can't think of one single security "advancement" in use by a gun safe manufacturer that has not been previously in use by a real safe manufacturer.

Frank has it right here. The 1/2" thick door has a distinct advantage when facing pry attacks. The successful pry attack is not just about bending the body, but the door too. The pan or laminated sheet metal door constructions of competing products are easy to bend with a big pry bar and wedges. That thick plate gives very little, and that is half of the battle in pry resistance. A successful Pry attack require separating the door and body, and the more each component yields to the attack, the faster the safe is compromised. Prying is a "walking" process where you start at one corner and progressively inch your way down the door edge. Most gunsafe bodies are fairly stout in the corner, but it's the easiest point to bend the door. If the door won't bend, the job gets exponentially more difficult.

The double wall construction design of the BF just happens to have an overlapping boxed section where the locking bolts engage the frame around the door, which is the other part of the equation to resiting pry attack. The filled body also adds some to the structural integrity, all coming together to make the frontal attack resistance probably the best in the industry. The fact remains that even though it seems obvious that side/back body attack would be the method of choice in a burglary, most attacks are still focused on the door. Dumb criminals, but good reason to make the frontal barrier better.

Most high security safes only have 3-5 horizontal bolts, and no vertical bolts. All those big phallic bolts on gunsafes are eye candy, and don't really add any security value. Bolt count is just there to impress the uninformed buyer, nothing more. Remember, they are all driven by a common carriage bar or drive gear system, so when one bolt goes, they all go.

Not that 99% of the consumers really care, I checked the BOMs... the caps on the ESL locks are a mix of TDK and Panasonic. We learned a long time ago that cheap caps will cost you in the long run. Caps are generally used in signal filters, and when a cap goes bad, signals fail, and lockouts happen. For a few pennies more, we save a lot on expensive warranty calls (and reputation).

"Not that 99% of the consumers really care"...

If any of them bought a computer around 2004-2006, they would care. Advertise your shit, and it'll sell.

Or, just keep doing what you're doing.

Most electronic lock owners have a hard enough time figuring out where the batteries go.  Specifics on the electronics would make zero difference to 99.99% of those shopping for electronic locks.

Yea, it's like advertising that the steel we use has been hot rolled 17 passes in 23.28 minutes in a factory built on a land fill, quenched 4 times in spring water, annealed at 1721.28ºF with cow-dung fuel, then cold rolled twice with American made tungsten rollers driven by a 3-phase GE motor using power from a wind farm. It's all uber-details that fills pages with words that most people don't have the patience or attention span to read. Unfortunately, effective advertising today is about saying as much as you can with a few words. A couple people may find it exciting and compelling... but just a couple.

Modern advertising drives me freaking nuts. Especially pickup commercials. They say so many things that don't have any meaning but compel people to buy the product.

Good example is one of the pickup brands (ford of chevy, don't recall which) had a commercial demonstrating that the bolts that hold the bed on were strong enough to lift the entire pickup in the air using a cable and clevis.

First of all, when has that ever been a problem?

I imagine that most bolts will do that if the clevis is narrow enough. it's pretty damn hard to shear a bolt that is held captive on both sides of the shear point.

The bed sheet metal will tear far sooner than the bolt will break.

Don't even get me started on all the claims of using "rolled steel".

Seems like advertising 101. Take a common, industry accepted practice for the last 5 decades and tell some idiot that they should buy your product because of it.

We see that a lot with gun safe manufacturers.  Many of them have no background in this business, and "come up" with great ideas that were being used 100 years ago.  Another thing that we see is the renaming of certain "technology" to set them apart from the competition.  

For example:  "Most gun safe companies use regular gypsum board for insulation, but not us.  We use Pyrobarrier 5000"  This assumes you don't realize that their Pyrobarrier 5000 is the same gypsum board the others are using.  

I can see why you are a bit jaded. I see it a lot in my industry also. The company we are a dealer for released a cow brush last year that rubs the cows when they bump it. They market it as new technology. One of my customers saw it and said "oh yeah, my dad had delaval cow brushes when he milked in Holland in the 50s".

Andrew, sent PM several days ago. I have some new logos that are much darker color for you. PM me so I can send them out.

TSG,

What side anchors will a BF6636 accept?  I have one on order and I am in the process of buying everything for when it arrives. Will 1/2" anchors fit, or do they require 3/8"?

Thanks!

Edit: I ordered the 4ga liner also, not sure if that changes the dimension of the anchor hole or not.

FWIW I used four 5/8" wedge anchors on my BF6030 with 4 gauge liner with no issues.  The socket to tighten the nut just fit in the hole with no room to spare but it tightened just fine. Used four- a little overkill but you only do it once.  You have a really nice safe on the way......

Decisions Decisions Decisions


NF6036 or BF6636 (for about a $1.5k more)
35 cu ft vs 36 cu ft
I know the BF is better, and I like the taller safe, just trying to justify the price.

The used safe market is hot, and buying a more affordable safe now, then selling and buying up later when funds allow it is a good path. Safes on Craig's List and EBay sell real fast. My son sold his smaller imported safe in one day, and nearly got full retail value for it. The phone was ringing off the hook. It's not hard to take this in steps when you can sell so easily. Just a thought...

I want to build a container to store ammo in. My main concern is theft. Are there any plans/drawings that might help me or at least give me an idea of how to build a secure container?

I'd like to build something around 5 foot long, 4 foot wide, and about 4 foot tall. Something like a steel cage or metal cabinet. I would want to bolt it to the floor if possible.

I would buy a container if I could find one cheap enough..

Any ideas?

I would start a new thread on that topic, but just my .02, build it out of 2 x 4's with 3/4 plywood, with rebar, or maybe a iron gas pipe frame sandwiched between two layers of the ply, fire rated drywall, expanded metal, just thinking how I might approach it. Again, you should start a new thread for better views & feedback.

Thanks. I'll try starting a thread..

thinking of buying a rfx or cfx 70x36x20  tl30x6 safe,my question is at 4500lb empty

1) if I don't get the bolt down option how difficult is it to drill thru later if I want to bolt it down?

2)how top heavy are these safes do they need to be bolted down?do they get at all tippy with the door swinging open?

3)if I do go with the bolt down option is there 1 bolt down point or 4 ?what size holes are standard? where are they located?

4)is it necessary to bolt something down that weighs this much?


I have most any tool necessary to drill the holes,i was thinking 4-1/2" or bigger stainless quick bolts 8"back from each corner to avoid a sawzall attack should hold it down nicely

The UL requirement for bolt-down on TL rated safes of all levels is 750lbs. Anything less, and the manufacturer is compelled to provide anchor provisions.

Drilling thru the barrier is not real easy. The baffled concrete-steel layering makes large holes very difficult. If you stick with 1/2" bolt size, and use the right combination of HSS and Masonry bits as you work thru the barrier, you can do it yourself. Take your time, a technique will become apparent.

With a safe this heavy, all you really need to do is prevent tip-over and tilting. One well secured anchor int eh center is adequate unless your local burglar has some extraordinary tools in hand. More is always better, and four 1/2" anchors inset from the inner walls 2x2 is as tough as they get. The foundation is going with the safe if it's done well.

The truth is that any safe can be moved, even at 4500. I could roll that safe anywhere I want with a 6ft Johnson Bar and five/six 1" round bars without any help. I installed my 2500lb AMVault in my home all by myself, from lift-gate truck bed to it's home the living room, no help, with a 5-6 inch lift over a sliding door threshold and 30 ft of carpet. The reality is that not many people know how to make that happen, and it rarely does. Crooks tend to be stupid. Smart, professional safe crackers won't be moving it, they will try opening it. Bring it on!

thanks for the info tsg,

i'm accustomed to moving big heavy items at work so the Johnson bar is no problem.i have access to everything you described so I'm going to jus order it without holes and take care of it myself.i'll be drilling 4 -5/8 holes set back from the corners is there anything I should try to miss?
I was planning on setting them back 6-8 inches so a thief could not get a sawzall blade to them very easily I see you say 2x2 but that puts them within reach of a pretty standard blade.if for only that reason I'd like to be back at least 6x6 from each corner.

and one last question what lock would you get if you were ordering one today,i'm not much of a electric lock fan but I am looking for decades of use and I am hoping to never have to have it drilled open.

thanks
pete

It is nice to see someone buying a real safe, personally, I would have the factory do the bolt holes.

I respectfully but totally disagree. You have SEVENTY-SIX pages of people wanting to know more about your products here! Why is that?? Why don't you get this information out there?

Anyone that did their internet homework while shopping for an AR in the late 90s read about Bushmaster's "chrome lined barrels" and "mil spec" this and "NATO" that...NO ONE else at the time was advertising such detailed specs about their rifles, and consumers didn't know what they were missing until someone got smart about advertising the product. It made (the original) Bushmaster a fortune, and it raised the bar for everyone else who was in the industry or looking to enter it. Say what you want about Bushmaster relative to Colt, et al now, but no one was doing close to what they were doing back then, and as I recall they captured somewhere between 30% - 50% of the market share at the time. I bought a Liberty safe before I read this thread, and I regret it. Y'all could be doing so much better.

Did you happen to visit any brick and mortar safe and vault businesses prior to making your purchase, or did you just take Glenn Beck's word for it?  You can learn just about everything you've read in this thread from the guys that run those types of places.  

I'm with you, when key technical specs are not given, I am not a happy customer. But, your example is for a "primary" feature that plays strongly in the buying decision of most potential buyers. A rifle barrel has relatively few things you can "showcase", and clearly the lining finish would be one of those features.

I'm not saying I don't agree with you, more info is better, always. But, where do you draw the line between TMI and practical advertising data. For a lock, there are volumes of details that describe every level of assembly, down to the smallest component. How does anyone figure out what some customer's particular Need-to-Know issue might be? If I just published everything, it would represent probably 30-50 pages of data. Moreover, anyone could copy the product or benefit from the extensive R&D that brought us to the successful product we sell today.

You wanted to know about the brand name of capacitors used on our lock PC Boards, and you complained that this was not published. That is a very deep detail that nobody has ever asked before. I answered, because I wanted to be accommodating, but that's what I do here. I have to ask, did you make your decision to buy your last (insert brand)  automobile because you were able to verify that they used (insert brand) capacitors on the automotive computer boards in that vehicle? I think most people would agree that 's a ridiculous metric to measure vehicle quality.

I am simply saying that massive companies that sell billions of dollars worth of products every year have spent untold million$ on figuring out how to appeal to the consumers in this nation. The results are not secret. Simple, basic, brief and focused advertising is the path. Too much information is never read my most, and confuses the consumer.

"Did you happen to visit any brick and mortar safe and vault businesses prior to making your purchase, or did you just take Glenn Beck's word for it? You can learn just about everything you've read in this thread from the guys that run those types of places."

I can't believe you just "Beck'ed" me :)   I looked at examples of both in person before ordering. I just couldn't justify the extra expense for the Amsec at the time...but, like I said, I regret that now. The guys that run any kind of place will almost always extol the virtues of the more expensive options if they own the place or make a commission. But one of the oldest locksmiths in town sells Amsec exclusively. After I'd already ordered my Liberty, I went in to have some keys made and asked about the Amsec e-locks, and he said he's never had a complaint about them. He could have been fibbing a little, but now I kinda doubt it...he does carry both manual and electronic versions, though, in case someone has a preference.




"I have to ask, did you make your decision to buy your last (insert brand) automobile because you were able to verify that they used (insert brand) capacitors on the automotive computer boards in that vehicle? I think most people would agree that 's a ridiculous metric to measure vehicle quality."

No, of course not. But there are probably one or two caps in your entire lock. And if they fail, the lock fails, and you have to get your safe drilled. Whatever y'all use, it sounds like they are reliable. But if you could say "We are the only e-lock maker in the world that uses premium solid Japanese capacitors" (or whatever they are), I think a lot of people would start wondering what the competition is using, why they can't make the same claim, and why some have so much higher failure rates. Also, if you can continue to make honest claims about your superior materials, it assures prospective customers that they're not just blindly buying into your prior success and reputation and that you haven't secretly begun using cheaper components to pad your margins.

Awhile back I found this review concerning a failure of one of Liberty's newer S&G "D-Drive" e-locks, and I have enough experience with crappy capacitors to tell you that I'd never buy a lock with one of these caps (btw I went with the manual dial on the Liberty):

http://www.the-minuteman.org/2014/04/19/liberty-safes-review-like/

There are also a lot of other gems hidden at that link.

For example, consider who the manufacturer is going to send out to open your safe.  Is that person the lowest bidder, with little to no experience, who needs to "phone a friend" for information, and needs assistance from the customer to get the safe open.  One who takes three hours to drill a 1/4" hole.

One who replaces the lock with the least expensive, entry level offering, instead of the nicer version that routinely comes on that model of safe.  One who puts a mismatched dial on the safe, so that half of it is brass, and half is stainless?  

Yet another good example of why you should buy your safe from somebody who can properly service it after the fact.

I'm sure whomever you buy from is kinda restricted to the help that's available in your area. I don't think anyone keeps a team of experts on hand to fly all over the country for every service call, so let's cut the propaganda. The good thing about the local locksmith that sells Amsec is, he claims to know exactly where to drill the hole. If that's based on experience, I'm guessing he's seen at least one lock fail. If it's based on technical data, I think anyone might struggle with their first xyz safe cracking...especially if they have to get through a ball bearing plate, as in this case. That's exactly why I wouldn't go for that option, because 99% of the time, on an RSC, your locksmith is the only person that will have to worry about it. Anyone else would just destroy your 11 gauge RSC with some power tools and be done with it.

Not propaganda.  Reality.

And that's my point.  These companies do not have a team of experts (some don't have any experts at all), or will they fly all over the country for a service call.  So, the moral of the story, is that if you feel that quality future service may be a possibility, you should be dealing with somebody capable of supplying that.




I wouldn't know the first thing about rekeying the ignition switch in a car.  That's what locksmiths do.  I only work on safes.  Attempting to rekey an auto ignition would likely end up with a mess.  Same is often the case when a locksmith tries to open a safe.  Jacks of many trades, masters of none, and all of that.

Some times you're in a remote area, and this is your only option.  Sometimes its' the least expensive option, and so that's what the manufacturers send intentionally.  Just something to keep in mind.

Sorry, I was editing my post while you were posting ^

It shouldn't affect your response, though. I think I speak for many when I say we appreciate your expert input here. But I also think I represent other consumers like me that wish Amsec would publish and distribute more info than they have, and take minor steps to make their superior RSCs more cost competitive.

They are already several thousand dollars less than their closest comparison, at least as far as the BF safes go.  If anything, they should be charging more.

Then cut your crazy ass heavy door thickness in half, nix the supposedly ineffectual vertical bolts, and save us some money already.

Your next closest cost competitor for RSCs is Liberty, and they're eating your lunch.

They already do.  The NF series.






I don't believe AMSEC is trying to be the king of the RSC manufacturers.  They're a real safe company.  RSCs are just a small portion of their overall business.

Then why are they spending so much time here selling RSCs? You're not helping.

If I made the best e-lock in the world, I would be an e-lock company that makes RSCs, not the other way around.

I'm pretty sure he's here the same reason I am.  To add another angle, from a professional viewpoint, that isn't always available to your typical consumer.  I'm a gun guy.  He's a gun guy.  I can't speak for him, but I'm just "giving back" for all of the other helpful information other members share on a variety of topics that I find useful.




AMSEC is not an e-lock company, nor an RSC company.  They build a huge variety of products, mostly focused on the commercial side of the industry.

So not knowing anything else, who would you rather have build your gun safe?  Some guy that figured there was a market, and started building them in his garage as a hobby?  Or somebody that has a background in the industry, especially with high security products?

A BF series isn't a competitor for anything Liberty makes. Very different method of construction and materials.  1/2 inch plate on the door isn't a "crazy ass" thickness, hell it's the minimum thickness for a B-rate door which is the lowest you can get in a real safe.  To get a 1/2 inch plate on a Graffunder you are looking at $6k minimum for a 60x30 unit.  Fort Knox has an RSC that's $10k.  The BF isn't overpriced, at all.

You seem angry over the price point, we get it, get over it and look at maximizing what you can get at a lower price point then.  As Frank pointed out, AMSEC isn't a gun safe company, they are a real safe company that also happens to make gun safes.

LOL! You mad bro?

Why do you keep trying to give your crappy advice to a company that has been successfully building and selling REAL safes for 60+ years? You made a terrible suggestion to add a bunch of technical information that almost nobody cares about and he already told you why they don't: Marketing 101 Bro! Less is more, this has been studied and proven for decades.

Pardon my french, but Liberty ain't eating sh*t compared to an Amsec BF or TL rated safe. Sheet metal boxes with drywall and fancy paint, that's all they know how to make.

And TSG is not "spending so much time here selling RSCs". He's answering people's questions about ALL kinds of safes including RSCs. He's provided more research and testing based information then any other safe manufacture has....ever.  Look it up, search the internets, find me one thread or website where a manufacturer provides as much or more information about safe construction, testing, science  etc...