Found someone selling their Liberty Colonial safe locally.  It's the one with the 1" or whatever bars for the doors.  All the new ones have the tabs.  Which is better?  The used safe is half the price of a new safe if that matters.

As far as gun safes go, virtually no difference.  Save the money.

i have a colonial with the tabs. i honestly think there isn't toooooo much of a difference from the round bars. i know there are some videos on people showing that the round bars can break off but most are going to go threw the side.  

if you can get a safe for cheap i would get it.

I see the flat bolt here only on safes, which were be designed for ATMs. I was told, that their advantage is that they allow designing thinner doors and are therefore more space efficient.

I passed on the deal bc every quote I got to move that safe from the seller to me was $750+. I'm only 30 mins away from the seller.

One of the places sells Tracker safe. Buying a safe from them, delivery is half the price. Going go check out their safe in a couple days. Seems nice.


I noticed the bar version has a lower fire protection. 60 vs 75

FWIW, engineer here, and one with a good bit of experience around high stress plastic deformation, ie, what happens when you pry a safe door and bend the rods or tabs. When I was safe shopping, I looked at Liberty's claims and did the strength calcs myself. They are right, those tabs are a LOT stronger than round bars, it's not really close at all. My safe is backed into a closet with concrete walls on two sides and a lot of wood on the other side, so a frontal pry attack is the most likely attack it will face. Given that, I went with Liberty from Tractor Supply. I'm pretty pleased with it.

I was at the Liberty dealer forum where they actually attached a machine and showed how many additional pounds of pressure the flat bars can handle compared to box store safes. It is quite significant but what's even more important is if it has 2-way, 3-way or 4-way boltwork and how thick of steel the door has. Stealth Premier series for example has a 1/4" steel plate door with 4-way boltwork. At that steel thickness, no one is going to be able to pry that open if it has round bolts or flat locking bars. On a 14 gauge steel safe, the flat locking bars will be significantly better at providing pry resistance. I would recommend checking out this list for the safes you are considering: https://www.expertsafereviews.com/top-3-best-gun-safes-under-2000/

At 14 gauge, there is no need to pry. Just chop it with an axe or use a power tool to cut it. You'll be inside it in a few minutes.