Ok guys, trying to help a really close friend out here. He recently in the last 6 months got his own house, & he has many firearms & wants to get a safe & has been looking at many. I told him I would post here to get some opinions from people that know stuff.

He wants something with good theft protection obviously. Though more than that he wants the best fire rated safe. He lives next door to a cop, so chances of his house getting broken into are minimal when there is a marked cop car 5 feet from his house more than 50% of the time.

He told me that looking through fire ratings on safes that most are rated for only like 1200-1300F or something & he said that an average house fire exceeds that. I know manuf BS there way through ratings all the time, so this surprises me none.

Now, the best one he's looked at so far is a "Sturdy Safe". I checked it out with him yesterday & thought it looks really good.

They have multiple videos on there website showing them trying to break into it with a prybar, trying to break the handle via force, & even a video of one standing after a house fire. After looking on there website they don't use a standard fire rating or anything really, just a video showing one standing after a house fire with contents inside.

Though my friend is concerned with that video. He thinks it could be faked or at least doctored to some degree. What are the chances of stuff like documents surviving without combustion from heat through a full house fire? The other thing I brought up is what about heat damage to firearms? I know that heat can warp or cause damage to guns very easily.

I will link him to this thread, opinions welcome.

Sturdy makes a good safe and if you do a search you will see prior to around 2012, Arfcom, was Sturdy, Sturdy, Sturdy, in the Safe forum, lots of owners and fanboys here. The company is good to deal with (Terry and his daughter/forgot her name). The nice thing is the steel, 4 or 5 or 7 gauge bodies plus you can get extra steel welded in for extra protection. The fire protection effectiveness was probably the most contentious thing when discussing Sturdy. I am sure some of the fan boys will be here soon.  I was about to buy a Sturdy myself and then went to a TL.

ETA, at least 87 threads, the first three that come up,

one

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I bought a Sturdy vault door about a year ago.   It is heavy steel, solid construction and the door fits tight within the frame.  There is no way that anyone would be able to wedge a crowbar between the door and the frame.  I think it's a very good value for the $$.

Bought one last summer.  Fast to reply to emails, pick up phone, etc.  Absolutely zero problems.

Sturdy is a good safe.

If you want fire protection, buy a safe that has been certified by UL to meet a given rating.  Anything else is just guesswork and speculation.

So, a "base model" sturdy comes with zero fire protection, correct?

Yeah, it has to be added in extra.

I purchased a Study safe last year.  Fire resistance is an often discussed issue.  I decided to fore go the  fire lining and put the money into heavier steel (4 gauge body with additional 7 gauge  welded in).  Part of the decision is proximity to the fire station and whether you have a monitored alarm.  We are about a mile away and have a simpliSafe system in the building.  I think the steel will provide at least a short window of fire protection and I put my more valuable pistols in a fireproof case in the safe.  One nice benefit of no fire lining is more room in the safe.

Has Sturdy fire resistance ever been tested by an actual testing laboratory?

I just spent $4,350.00 on one, I'll let you know when I get it in, which should be in another 3 weeks.

Negative.  Which is why anecdotal evidence, guesswork, and space shuttle analogies get bandied about around here as conclusive proof of performance.

Exactly. This is why me and my friend are a little sketched out on there fire protection & he had concerns. No lab tests, no ratings, nata. They have a youtube vid of a guy "claming" his house burnt down, here are the charred remains except my perfect sturdy safe with paper documents inside.

Not just firearms surviving, but all documents perfect after a full house fire that burnt the entire frame to the ground. My friend said he read something like documents are only good to 300-400Funtil they catch fire. Whatever it was, it's much less than what safes are rated for heat wise. I.e. if they got as hot as rated documents would burn inside. no?

It just really seemed sketch. You sell safes worth thousands, but can't donate 1 for lab testing for certification to prove it's legit, fire rating wise?

No.  The "standard", such as it is, for lab fire testing is that the interior of the safe doesn't exceed 350 degrees F.  Paper burns at about 450 degrees F (you may remember Ray Bradbury's classic novel Farenheit 451, the title being a reference to the temperature at which paper burns).  So, as long as the outside environment doesn't exceed the time/temperature at which the safe was tested, papers inside the safe should survive.

I have no dog in this fight--I don't work for any safe company, I'm not related to anyone working for any safe company, I don't even own a safe at this point (which I hope to rectify shortly).  But there are a few factors that make me not trust Sturdy's fire lining:

1.  They're unable or unwilling to have it lab tested.  I understand that lab testing is very expensive, but if you're going to claim X degree of fire protection you need to be able to back it up.  The most charitable interpretation is that they can't afford the cost of lab testing; a less charitable interpretation is that they know lab testing would show it doesn't work.

2.  They try to discount the importance of lab testing.  It's absolutely true that what I really care about is how the safe performs when my house burns down, not in a lab.  However, lab testing is the only way I know of to get objective, repeatable, and comparable test data.  The fact that safe X protected its contents well when the house it was in burned down, and safe Y didn't protect its contents when the (different) house it was in burned down, doesn't tell me anything about the effectiveness of the fire protection in either safe--there are too many unknown and uncontrollable differences between the two house fires to be able to draw any meaningful conclusions from this fact.

3.  Nobody else uses Sturdy's material, or anything like it, for fire protection in safes or security containers of comparable size.  Sturdy may be some smart folks, but I can't believe they're that much smarter than everybody else in the industry put together.  If their material worked, it'd be a huge win.  Traditional fire protection relies on gypsum or a cement material, both of which work by releasing large amounts of water vapor.  As water evaporates, it absorbs a huge amount of heat (this is why it takes so long to boil water), which keeps the temperature down.  Of course, that also saturates the interior of the safe with superheated steam, which isn't a great environment for anything in there.  Sturdy's material is passive insulation--it doesn't work by releasing water vapor.  If it were effective at keeping the temperature down, the benefit would be obvious.  Even if it is considerably more expensive, someone else would be using it.

I wouldn't go as far as MrFisher and say that only safes that are UL tested are worthwhile, but I would want one tested by an independent lab under known conditions.  For me, that will probably be an Amsec BF.

I would rather get a better insurance policy than to worry about the safe surviving a fire.

That is a strategy to be sure. If your firearms or documents are irreplaceable, then fire protection becomes relevant.

Bottom line with Sturdy is: If you need an inexpensive steel RSC that will keep honest people honest, then you might want to buy a Sturdy. That said, there may be cheaper RSC's out there for the money that will technically speaking perform the same. if you want real Fire Protection or (TR)TL-15/30(x6) protection then you may want to look elsewhere. If you don't understand what is meant by any of the terms in bold then you may as well buy a stack-on cabinet, since you clearly don't care enough about your valuables to understand what you are buying. You'll at least save some money, then.

Well insurance is fine and I might say necessary.
However,it will not replace a rifle or pistol that has not been produced in the last forty years and finding that special clean one again might not even be possible.
That insurance company will give you a sum of money they may think is adequate for your loss.
So my tip is to buy a safe that is highly touted for it's fire protection and not one with some material that has not been proven in tests on safes.

I ended up narrowing it down to Sturdy and Amsec BF series and that is a pretty typical pair of safes that very often get compared.

BF has what most would consider to be "industry proven" fire protection and it's better than what most gun safes have as they use a concrete like mixture that is injected into the interior of the safe between the outer skin and the inner liner.  This is what has been proven to work in safes for many many years and is what higher end safes with very good UL ratings use.

It's worth noting that BF series (and similar safes) will release steam when the outside temperature gets hot enough to start causing the fire mixture to heat up.  This release of steam keeps the interior of the safe relatively cool compared to exterior temperatures... however this means that the interior of the safe can get as hot as 350F and things inside might get a bit wet.  For this reason you'd be advised to put any high value guns in gun socks or cases and put any critical documents in either a small separate water/fire document safe or even in some separate laminated folders or something similar.

Note Sturdy fire protection is a complete unknown as it is not based on anything being used in the safe industry and other than some anecdotal cases of people reporting that Sturdy held up in fires it appears that the fire protection is a big "if".

So, if fire protection is important to your friend then personally I would advise going with something else like Amsec BF, Fort Knox, etc.

For me personally I wasn't super concerned with fire protection as the fire station is 5 minutes from my house and I live in the suburbs, but for a variety of reasons (dealer network, quality of electronic lock, etc) I ultimately went with a BF6030 safe which will be delivered tomorrow.

While the materials used in the fire protection lining, contain moisture, that would be converted to steam, to help control internal temps, to say items inside the safe may become wet is a bit of a stretch.

First the moisture is already in the safe, and everything in the safe will be hot, when it converts to steam.  It will not condense out of the air until the temp comes back down.  A more likely source for wet items in a safe after a fire is water being added to the unit, in the process of putting the fire out.  When the exterior of that safe is at 650+/- and a fire host gets pointed at, you will really test the welds, and the gasket seals on the door.

In addition to the thermal energy needed to convert moisture (water) to steam, there is an added benefit.  When water converts from Liquid to Vapor, is expands in volume 1400 time.  This provide a positive pressure inside the safe.  This then forces some air to be pushed from the safe, through either the gasket seal at the door, or perhaps around the anchor bolts.  In this process you have a mix of the air and steam that will be forced out, and the steam being produced will be 212 degrees, and the air already in the safe may be over that, the combine temp of the gas forced out will be above 212, being replaces with steam at 212.  This of course will be short lived, as the total volume of water in the walls, and descant in the safe is going to be very small, perhaps only a few ounces.

I'm considering fire lining the sturdy myself.

Be "been there, done that" with regard to a house fire and a safe.

It has made me somewhat skeptical to the common "an RSC will not survive a fire."  I may have just gotten extremely lucky, but my cheap, sheetrock fireproofed Field and Stream allowed everything inside to tcompletely survive my house fire.

I'm also debating a handful of smaller safes compared to 1 mega safe.

A couple smaller safes, paired with a good alarm, shouldn't allow a smash and grab type to stick around very long.

This is a great post, and it sums up the debate nicely.

For the record, I don't want to say that only UL listed safes are worthwhile- just that only UL listed safes have objective evidence of their performance under standardized conditions, which speaks volumes more than anecdotal evidence.  A non-UL safe MAY be awesome, but there's just no way to know that for sure until it's tested under fair, consistent conditions.  These conditions are exactly what the UL test seeks to establish.  I am not aware of any other standardized safe testing protocols currently in use.

That said, passive fire protection MAY be reasonably effective under certain conditions, and I've done some recent transient thermal modeling that suggests this may be the case.

As I understand it, no gun safes currently on the market are UL rated for fire--the 1850 deg F test temperature is apparently higher than any of them will withstand.  In the gun safe industry, 1200 F seems to be a de facto standard.  If the testing follows the same temperature curve (ramped up to test temp over 8 minutes, IIRC, then maintained there for the specified time), the results should be reasonably comparable.

What most people don't realize is that UL safe ratings (except the RSC "rating" in my opinion) are testing for the absolute, most extreme, worst case scenarios.  They go above and beyond normal conditions to ensure that the safe will perform well in actual real world events.

Gun safes tend to be geared towards average conditions.  When it comes to testing, some are actually tested in an oven, and others are using some math to extrapolate how the safe should perform.  However, this testing, and this math, is all over the board with gun safe manufacturers.  So the truth is that while many will offer some protection, most will not perform as advertised.  And lucky for you the consumer, the manufacturers all have a legal out.  They can essentially claim whatever they want, and in the event you actually experience a loss, you'll be hard pressed to hold them responsible in any way.   It's a hard lesson to learn, but people learn it every day.

You're demonstrating a lack of understanding of how the various contents of a safe would interact in a house fire. The gypsum (that contains water as part of it's molecular structure) is located on the outside wall of the safe (the first to heat up. Therefore at 100% RH near the wall where the moisture is being driven out of the gypsum the AH (absolute humidity) is much higher than the the possible AH in the center of the safe, where the "goods" are located at a cooler temperature. As that hot steam is driven inwards towards the guns, papers, etc it will most definitely condense back to liquid form. This can be a double-edge sword. Not only do you get condensation on all the cooler items (metals will be the worst) but as the moisture condenses it gives up heat energy to the item it is condensing on, therefore heating up the contents more quickly. The moisture, by it's very nature, the same nature that makes it such a wonderful product for fire-proofing things, is acting against you by CARRYING heat energy from the outer wall of the safe, towards the contents, then depositing it there. Granted, the "depositing" stops around boiling point or 212 F, but that is ~150 degree closer to the temperature it needs to be ruin the contents.

Of course, as the safe continues to heat up, and the contents themselves heat up that moisture may re-evaporate once again. That depends on the how hot the safe gets and how much total moisture is in the safe.

IIRC, gypsum board is ~40% water by weight, so there is a LOT more than a couple ounces of moisture in there. There is plenty of moisture to condense out onto all your fine firearms.


You're certainly right, but the steam inside can magnify this effect of "drawing water into the safe" by several magnitudes because as the steam condenses back to liquid it contracts ~1400 times (the same amount it expanded) this acts like a canning jar that just came out of a pressure canner, pulling very close to a perfect vacuum on your safe and drawing water in through every void possible. This effect would be much less if the inside of the safe was only air.

The thing I can't understand is why safe manufacturers like Amsec don't manufacture their safes to vent that moisture OUT of the safe rather than "INTO" the safe... but then I'm not a safe professional so I may just be overlooking some reason this can't be done.

Protecting safes from fire goes back to the early 1800's.  Although there have been changes and improvements in the materials used, the basic function remains the same.  The reason AMSEC and every other real safe manufacturer out there builds them the way they do, is because it's the best way to achieve real fire protection.

Sometimes somebody will come along and claim that they have reinvented the wheel when it comes to fire protection.  The truth of the matter is that the (soon to be) 200 year old technology is the best solution.  You also need to be mindful that keeping heat out of a safe goes beyond the insulation itself.  It's amazing how complicated a simple steel box can be.  

Ah the AMSEC dealer returns to another Sturdy Safe forum.  How awesome it is to see you at every single forum where the words sturdy and safe are located, throwing around your marketing and rah-rah about the awesome AMSEC RSCs.  I mean your opinions are so unbiased, thank you for all the useful marketing, ahem, information about the almighty AMERICAN SECURITY.

I digress, to the OP.  I personally went with a Sturdy Safe NON-fire lined.  I then built my fire protection around the safe and also bought a legitimate small pure fire safe for sensitive documents (bonds, etc..).  Here's the thing, in my opinion of course.  Sturdy Safe is by far the best RSC when it comes to pure steel construction.  There is no debate, I am sorry AMSEC dealer dude, a solid single sheet of 4 gauge steel trumps your 11 (or 10, or 12, who the hell knows because AMSEC doesn't tell us) lining, concrete, lining combo.  However, Sturdy Safe fire lining and rating is not tested.  I wouldn't trust and I didn't, I built my own.

If you are wanting to do something similar to that I would recommend sturdy and get more steel and tolerances while saving money.  If you want to pay someone to do it for you, I would get an AMSEC BF series (beware AMSEC makes cheapy chinese "big box" style safes as well, avoid those).

By the way, there is a group buy going on right now for Sturdy.  I think it is at about 70 or so, just google sturdy safe group buy (it is on another firearms forum).  This is how i purchased mine and ended up at about 18% discount.

A1 has shared plenty of criticism of AMSEC and their dealer network. Come to think of it, AMSEC, Fort Knox, A1, and a few other pros are here. The only folks who seem to never grace us with their knowledge is the Sturdy Safe folks.

I think its intellectually dishonest to pretend that 7G or 10G or 12G etc makes a substantive difference. All gauge sheet metal can be cut through easily with off the shelf budget tools with good blades and some patience. Of course thicker is better, but if you are talking about 5 Minutes vs 8 minutes vs 15 minutes, I think its an irrational discussion. Most people here giving their opinion on this have never cut sheet metal or angle iron and don't have any perspective on how easy it is to cut gauge steel with the right tools.

As to the lining, I suspect it would create alot of challeges using breaching tools to cut the 4/7/10 guage liner from the outside. They'll spend quite a bit of time to get in there and then have to spend more figuring the lining out. On my fort knox I chose the lining over simply having a thick exterior and it has a variety of advantages.

I'm hardly "the AMSEC" dealer.  In fact, I no longer stock AMSEC products locally.  This also isn't "the Sturdy Safe forum", it's the "Safes & Home Security" forum.  You may notice I'm involved in several threads here that don't include the words Sturdy, or AMSEC.  And I'm not throwing around my "marketing" nearly as much as I'm throwing around my 25 years worth of daily experience with safes of all types, from just about every manufacturer out there.





In order to be the best RSC, it would have to be a RSC, which it is not.  The Residential Security Container rating is a UL rating.  Sturdy does not carry any UL ratings.  This isn't a negative, since I'm not a fan of the RSC rating anyway, but terminology is important.




Well AMSEC does offer that 4 gauge, solid sheet liner.  I'm assuming you didn't know that.  But you are right.  There is no debate.  Any "safe" that uses material measured in "gauge" isn't that much of a safe (composite safes excluded).  Real safes are measured in inches or fractions thereof.  4 gauge, 10 gauge, 11 gauge.  All childs play.  Toy safes.
"
But don't let me 25 years worth of daily moving, rigging, drilling open, repairing, restoring, buying, selling, and maintaining safes get in the way of your "facts".  

you aren't unbiased, and you have a bone to pick with sturdy.

for some reason you always let threads on absolutely horrible, crappy safes go unchallenged. horrible chinese imports, junky stack-ons, etc.

but a sturdy thread shows up, you are all over it.

I had concerns about Sturdy since they don't advertise alot.  I spoke to Alyssa, her family owns the company.  I went back and did more research. I found their product to be a hardier safe and I opted for metal upgrades and fire lining.  I couldn't find a safe built as hardy for the money.  I live 5 blocks to the fire station.  If my house were to burun down I could replace the safe contents.  Im more concerned about a break in and someone using a weapon in a crime.  A $500-800 safe from the farm supply can easily be broken in to. My sturdy is 7 gauge door and 5 gauge walls.  Door is very tight and takes a good pull to get open.

Don't hesitate on buying a Sturdy.  I wish i had bought larger and would buy again.

I believe whatever bias you have is making you "see" what you wish to be true.  I have no bone to pick with Sturdy.  In fact, the only issue I have with Sturdy is some of the claims they have made.  I challenge the others just as much.  I'm "all over" those threads as well.  Perhaps you should go read some of those threads.  It may demonstrate how "equal opportunity" I am with the various manufacturers.  As was previously mentioned, this "fan boy/THE AMSEC dealer" has also challenged AMSEC products, and some of the information TSG has given.

Not to mention I have even recommended Sturdy safes before, because there are clearly circumstances where the Sturdy is a great choice.  I suppose that shows what a "bone to pick" I have.

What size did you buy?  

How many firearms [long and hand] does it hold?

What size would buy now that you've had it?  What, if any upgrades?

Thanks

Is this the one that closed on the 20th?

If your friend has concerns about whether the video posted of the Sturdy Safe that went through the fire is faked, ask Sturdy for the contact information of the customer and fire fighters involved; Sturdy has said the folks that witnessed the safe being opened are willing to testify to the authenticity of the event.

Sadly, around here lately nothing seems to bring out the trolls like a Sturdy Safe post. As someone mentioned, post a question about any crappy Chinese made safe and no one says anything but say something about Sturdy and there will be post after post of how terrible they are and how their fire protection won't work etc. etc.

I have two of their safes and both are very well made. If I ever need a third gun safe, it will be a Sturdy.

Well, you'd have to actually read and participate in the non-sturdy threads to know what I'm in there saying.  And I can assure you, I have said plenty about just about every other brand out there, including crappy Chinese made safes.

Maybe trolls and maybe not.
I have pretty good confidence that a Sturdy gun safe would give an owner very good protection in most home burglaries.
They are indeed pretty stout gun safes even in the base model and even better in upgraded mode.
But I honestly have strong doubts about them in fire protection if the house fire is in the same room as the safe for more than a few minutes.
I wish I could be proven wrong in this belief.
But until Sturdy safe company at least puts it up to testing in some sort of scientific way we are at a loss to really know.
However I think there is a strong possibility they have been already tested by the serious competition.
And the competion has not changed their fire protection cladding for a reason.

Can you explain why venting the moisture generated by heating gypsum outside the safe would negatively impact the fire rating? I'm curious what I'm overlooking.

I think Brown makes a fireclad safe. I trust that the big guys know what they are doing and it has security, cost, and manufacturing benefits.

TSG would be better able to answer this question with specifics, since that's what he does.  But there are a few important things.  The moisture does indeed vent itself to some extent through the door opening.  This creates pressure within the safe which helps keep the bad stuff outside of the safe.

The moisture that remains inside the safe recycles itself.  Each time, it's consuming energy that would otherwise heat the safe.

Look, it's Groundhog Day, again.


Maybe that's because
- the crappy Chinese safes aren't pretending to be something they're not, and
- everyone knows they're crappy Chinese safes, and
- sometimes a person's budget and security needs meet at the crappy Chinese safe nexus

Repeatedly, the sensible and rational people who don't believe for a second any of the nonsense about Sturdy's fire lining acknowledge that they're well-built, solid metal boxes superior to crappy Chinese safes.

And then you come along, with your feelings hurt.  Lather, rinse, repeat.

Oh yes, you are the guy with the steady state calculation that "proved" passive insulation won't work ... brilliant!!

And you are the guy that came along with your false equivalencies, hyperbole and conjecture and further "proved" that their passive fire insulation is lightyears beyond anything else out there ... brilliant!!!

For sale: about 5 safes that don't have decent fire lining. Need to buy a sturdy safe with space age materials, ASAP.

I suspect a Ceramic Wonder lined safe was tested in a qualified lab test. It just wasn't tested by the manufacturer.

Air would do the same thing as it's heated without depositing moisture on your firearms.


Recycles as in condenses out and then re-vaporizes? Each time it condenses it has to also release heat, if the outside temp is hotter than the inside time then the only place that heat is being released is inside to safe ... into the contents of the safe. Seems bass-ackwards to me to have something that runs in a continuous loop of "pick up heat energy from hot safe wall, flow into safe, deposit energy, pick up more energy from hot safe wall, flow into safe, deposit energy".

There's a lot more moisture available than air.




Yet it has proven to be the most effective method, time and time again, going all the way back to the 1800's.  

Yes, simple math based on the temperature of the fire, the thermal conductivity of your insulation, and the size of a safe.  Something like minutes to heat a passively insulated safe past 350 deg.

As I recall your "rebuttal" was the claim that the insulation itself was a substantial heat sink that, in addition to preventing the conduction of heat to the interior, somehow absorbed more energy than a concrete fill with its water to steam phase change.

Someone else took solace in the comforting fact that in a real safe, there would be firearms and other valuables inside to absorb the heat, so the temperature wouldn't rise as quickly as in an empty safe.  Yay?

Think it was in the Questions for AMSEC SafeGuy thread.

But hey, "space shuttle" ... right?


As I've said many times before.  Sturdy makes very nice, strong metal boxes that surely outperform box store RSCs.  If I ever need a tough metal box, I would consider one of theirs.  But anyone who counts on their fire protection is just nuts.  No one else - NO ONE - makes fire safes that way.  The math doesn't work.  They won't do independent testing.  It's a gimmick.  Snake oil.  It deserves to be called out every time it's brought up.

As I stated, in the first response,

The fire protection effectiveness was probably the most contentious thing when discussing Sturdy.


ARF did not disappoint

You always take the high road BGENE, cheers!

But it's not as simple as a steady state calculation. If the fire is less than a few hours, a passive fiber insulated safe like Sturdy Safe makes will still be in a transient state and good luck calculating that accurately (NASA has a study available online showing accurate numerical modeling but hey ... you are no rocket scientist )

You have a reference to that study?  I'll read it and we can talk about it.

Is the "amount" even relevant? As long as you have somewhat of a seal on the door the air-expansion alone should be enough to keep smoke and moisture out of the safe. There shouldn't be a need for expanding steam to "drive" that stuff out.


You keep saying that, but it's faulty logic. By that reasoning we would still be riding around in horse drawn carts. Because, well, you know they've always worked well in the past. Come on, you're smarter than that.

Has there even been a side-to-side comparison of a safe that vented the moisture inside vs. one that vented it outside? What were the results?