Here is a amazing new video of two fire lined Sturdy Safes after COMPLETE burndown ... incredible results.

Two fire lined Sturdy Safes after COMPLETE burndown (I.e., no water quenching)

That was good performance.

I recall them mentioning that one safe (probably the smaller one due to the plate thickness of the larger) was their older fire lining method that used more high temperature fiber glass and the other uses more ceramic fiber.

Well,I wonder what all the people that always knock Sturdy's fire protection have to say now?

That unless you know a bunch of specifics, that photo doesn't mean squat.  

I can show you photos that look really bad where it really wasn't, and the safes survived.  I can also show you photos that don't look as bad, and the safes suffered total losses.  One of my buddies on another forum opened roughly 50 safes (for free) for victims of the recent wild fires in CA.  He photographed them all.

What would tell a real story would be a laboratory furnace test.  I wonder if that has ever happened?  

Anybody notice anything about what they see and/or hear in the video that give us any clues?

Looks like the safes performed as well as can be expected.

My wife's old boss had a house fire that was pretty much a complete burn down. His safe, a Winchester if memory serves, did not protect his guns at all.

Yes, especially one paid for by a large competitor where they get to place sensors where they wish and cherry pick the data they publish. Frank you are only going to lose respect with a lot of people here if you try to explain away these real world results.

There's a simple solution for that.  Yet..........

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that I, personally, in real life, have seen far more many burned safes, right in front of me, at the site of the fire, and the had the opportunity to see how that fire impacted the safe and its contents than any other single member, or even multiple members of this forum combined.

I'll loose respect for explaining real world results, that I actually have experience with?  Well I suppose I wouldn't really deserve the respect of those types anyway.  Sometimes people believe whatever they wish to believe simply because they feel strongly enough about it.  Reality often has little to do it.

But seriously.  Paper products are an excellent way to protect your valuables from fire.  Just toss your stuff in a cardboard box and you're good to go.  I provide the following photo as evidence, but don't you dare try to "explain away" these "real world results".  If so, you're going to loose all credibility.



I can show you photos of shoe boxes that survived fires with their contents intact.  Would you rather somebody "explain away those real world results", or would you rather believe that cardboard shoe boxes "protect contents during extreme burn downs"?  I believe we all know the answer........

It might be a useful discussion to post some of this info, noting location in the home and etc. As an example; is the safe more likely to survive a fire in a basement, bedroom, living room, etc.

While every home and every fire will be different I would think you've been able to come up with a general list of good vs bad locations?

This is a great point as it applies to the posted video.  Did anybody here catch (either by seeing the images, or listening to the audio) where the safes were located within the home?  Can anybody explain why that particular location can either be the absolute best location in one case, or the absolute worst in another?

And is there any evidence shown in those images that indicate whether this location ended up being the best or the worst?

As usual, no data, no control, no environmental conditions, just “hey look at this one scenario and these volumes of conjecture, see all of these safes work!”

You people are snake oil salesman of the worst possible kind.

I am in this thread to learn so please leave the personal attacks out of the thread.   Thank you.

They're the people that snake oil salesmen make all their money off of.

No lab test data is true but, in this case at least, both safes worked and met the owner's expectations and kept his items from being burned up.

Unfortunately snake oil seems to be the standard lubricant of the industry.

I think you're missing the whole point of doing controlled experiments, it's to get the results that Sturdy has now shown in multiple examples of complete burndowns. Having your gunsafe sitting in a furnace at a constant temperature of 1200F with burners only occasionally coming on to maintain temperature removes IR radiant heat transfer (increases to the 4th power with temperature) from the equation and then ending the test without a cool down period which is where most fire safes fail in legitimate UL fire endurance testing makes for pretty looking curves on a graph and impressive looking numbers to post on a website but doesn't result in the kind of success Sturdy has been showing.

Do you honestly think any manufacturer would post photos of their product failures online?   Of course they're only going to post the success stories, even if the reality is that they weren't as successful as some may believe them to be.

I don't know if it's still up, but Sentry used to have a section of their website dedicated to survivors.  I saw many photos there in a similar vein.  The safe owners were proclaiming Sentry to be the best decision they ever made because they suffered a fire and their safe contents survived.  However, many of those photos were similar to what I see in the above video.  The safe wasn't the only contributing factor to the favorable outcome.

I'm waiting for Rockola to tell me why the paper bag on top of that open flame isn't on fire.  

Don't all the safe companies do this? Open up a Liberty catalog and there are three or four testimonies from owners who had safes protect items in fires or break-ins.

It would be nice to have someone in the industry who could take note of how safes perform in real house fires and post accordingly. But that would probably have to come from the fire department or the home owner. Unlikely a dealer in the business of selling Brand X is going to post negative info on the brands he makes a livelihood selling.

No cool down, I’m sure that’s the reason your ceramic blanket crosses the line at the 8 minute mark.
Fortunately for you, your customer did.

None of that is science, nor does it change the simple fact that this is an ideal burn scenario for an insulator, which is what you sell.

There are a dozen safes that by your own admission would perform better because a controlled experiment has demonstrated it.

Of course they do!  I wouldn't expect otherwise.  Some even stretch the truth a little further.  Liberty used to post a photo that they no longer do, probably due to my calling them out in it on public forms repetitively.  I have it saved somewhere.  It shows a competitor's safe that came out of fire testing, the door was opened, and the interior was ablaze.  People who didn't know what they were looking at were surely impressed.  But I pointed out the little plastic stickers that were on the edge of the door.  Not only were they still there, but they were readable!  How could that be?  How could the safe be so hot it was on fire, but at the same time the little plastic stickers weren't damaged?  Things that make a person wonder.........

You're looking at him.  

TSG has seen several of his safes after real fires.  I have seen numerous brands.  Those I haven't seen in person I've been able to see in photos taken by those I know in the industry.

Neither of which would likely know what they were talking about.  A fire marshal, or those tasked with investigating fires would have a much better idea where the fire started, how and when it moved, and at what temperatures.

Most gun safe dealers haven't the first clue when it comes to safes.  Most are not safe techs, and only a small percentage of them are locksmiths.  When something I sell breaks those I sell it for call me to repair it.  When something the guy up the street sells breaks  those he sells it for call me to repair it.  The gun safe business is an odd beast.

That would be due to the heat vaporization of water Frank. How long do you think water would be there at 1200F+ ... not long and nor would the bag.

What are you talking about I don't work for Sturdy you must realize that right?

The only safes that would have performed better than what Sturdy has done are UL fire rated 150F or better yet 125F media safes because
they also have to keep humidity levels low as well as heat.

8 minutes? You must be referring to that ridiculous comparison study AMSEC sponsored to market their product as superior to their competitors.
Please post that graph if you have it because it would really be funny for everyone to see at this point.

Would you please post some photos or first-hand accounts of these various safes?  Where were they placed in the home or business?  Did the structure burn to the ground or was the fire extinguished or otherwise controlled by the fire department?

Which brands, if any, do really well in home fires and which do not based on what you've seen?

It said they were in the garage.

Where in the garage? It looks like they were maybe against an outer wall to me.

@ 0:22 does it seem that some of the door coating (paint?) on especially the smaller one survived but the dials did not.

I think the steel structures laying over the safes like spaghetti really show the extreme heat of the fire.

That wasn't my point, but I do appreciate your admission that moisture can play an important role in preventing things from burning.  Take the contents of a safe for example.  

I have in the past as I have encountered them.  Even in a large metro area I only see 2 or 3 burned safes a year, and most of those are commercial.

I referenced an acquaintance earlier in this thread that had opened many after the wild fires that just went through California.  That type of fire really is a worst case scenario.  Very high heat, and very long burn times.  I believe most suffered some loss, but some did perform better than others.  Surprisingly, some gypsum lined safes even performed well.

Yet the safes don't look like spaghetti due to the "high heat".  Something isn't right.  The "steel structures" you referring to corrugated metal roof?  The same pieces that are sticking straight up in the air, very un-spaghetti like from the second photo?  Looks like a metal roof that had the trusses burned out from beneath them, and gently laid upon the safes.

Like I said.....some people see things they believe are really impressive, but knowing what one is looking at brings us back to reality.

All pertinent observations relative to the lack of real heat.  Garages are the worst place to be when automobiles or similar are present.  Very high heat.  But in an empty garage?  What is there to burn?  Some 2x4s and plywood?  Not nearly as much heat as you would get inside of a house.

Outside wall limits exposure.  Concrete floor limits exposure and prevents fall through.  This safe had just about everything working in its favor.

It's difficult to tell in the photos whether that is paint or not.  Sometimes things stored on top of a safe will burn and run down the safe mimicking a glossy paint surface.

Look closely at the first image taken before the debris was cleared.  The dial, part of a dial, or dial ring may certainly be present in that photo.  There is something round there.  They are clearly gone in the second photo after the debris had been cleared.  Did a locksmith remove the dials as part of the opening process?  Were the debris-free photos taken before or after the safes were already opened?  If the dials were there and removed, that tells us that the heat never got over the 725 degree mark.

Maybe, maybe not. It looks like it was maybe a garage door, or some type of thin gage metal siding either of which would contort with little heat.

I think this was possibly the best case scenario for a gun safe in house fire being on an exterior wall with few in the way of combustibles.

Worst case would be if the whole burning house fell on top of it and burned for 4 hours.

Without much more detail we can really only speculate how hot it got and for how long.

Bottom line is this dudes house burned down and his guns and other stuff was preserved so the safes did their job, and did it well it looks like.

So he got his money's worth and Sturdy replaced them so this story has a happy ending.

Clearly I just need to fill my safe with water to really protect it.

Opening could be problematic along with the required refill after getting into it.

Depending on who makes your safe, this may already be the case and you don't realize it.

Here are another couple of "tests" where safes are burned in fires.





Neither is scientific I suppose and I give more credit to the Ft Knox "burn" since the time interval appears to be longer. But it appears the safes did well in both instances.

LOL.
Those "steel structures" is the tin roofing...

The temperature difference between the foor and the ceiling in a burning room is hundreds of degrees, and can be even as much as a thousand degrees. As a firefighter for 22+ years, I have been inside rooms where the temperature at the ceiling was well over 1,200* and on the floor was probably just under 220*. If the safes were in a garage with high ceilings, even in a full open burn, the floor probably never got above 200*. I have seen wooden furniture inside houses that were burned down, still intact and still had painted surfaces.

I was also an assistant fire inspector, have been trained in arson detection and post fire investigation. If you look at the pictures, there is very little debris around the safes, even in the first picture with the roof still hanging over the safes. There was probably very little material around the safes before the fire. Which meant very little open flame impinging on the safe itself near the bottom. If the only burning structures near the safes were the wall behind it, you are not talking about very much fire load in the immediate area. Depending on the type of doors and windows, the construction and duration before they self vented, those safes may, or may not, have have been in a high heat environment for very long before the temperature dropped. The fact the tin roof isn't really that distorted, demonstrates there wasn't an open roaring fire underneath it for very long. It looks like the house probably self vnted pretty quick which meant a fast burn without much containment of pressure and heat. If the safes were in the garage, and there was not much stuff around them, its not surprising they survived as well as they did. In all probablility, the temperature would not have been much above 300-500 degrees for very long.

Of course by "Tin" you still realize that it is steel right? Thin gauge (24ga?) or otherwise it has fully relaxed under it's own weight which isn't going to happen without being in excess of 1000F but if you still don't buy that 0:31 appears to show Ibeams laying in the pile that are distorted as well.

So as an assistant fire inspector it appears that you have missed that both dials on the safes have melted away. Since the dials are for S&G combination locks, they are likely made of the alloy Zamak. Zamak is an aluminum zinc alloy and has a minimum melting point of 725F to 925F depending on aluminum content. So in order to melt the dials away since there is quite a bit of metal used in the dials, a temperature of in excessive of the minimum melting point of Zamak has to be maintained for an extended period of time. Even to the most casual observer, clearly your conclusion that the temperature was not much above 300-500F is way off the mark.

It's funny how Sturdy "Haters" are rushing in to discredit what has happened here and it doesn't surprise me. Sturdy is a 'disruptor' in the industry and therefore they must be crushed before the public figures out what they are doing is better.

For a small family owned company with relatively few customers now to have multiple examples of safes that have done so well in complete burn downs, they have become a threat to what others are doing and all the investment in design and equipment they have made. If all the big guys are so much better where are all the great examples to prove what you are doing is better?

I'm not discrediting anything.  Those safes survived a fire with their contents intact.  What I am saying is that what you see in that video isn't nearly as impressive as you're attempting to lead people to believe.

But.....IT'S A CONSPIRACY!

Complete burndown without any water to cool the heat then having to self cool without letting the bulk of the contents get damaged, not going to happen in any other gun safe in the industry. I've saved a bunch of photos you have posted of safes that supposedly 'survived' the fire and those looked in most cases like a big gooey mess so if you have anymore to share that look better than this case please share to the forum.

This would be a good time to post that Photoshop-ed Sturdy safe on top of the space shuttle which would represent how they are 'launching' themselves above the industry ... just a thought.

A fire that didn't get very hot in a location that didn't contain much to burn.  Very impressive.

Happens to most of them.  I see all sorts of "impressive" photos posted by various gun manufacturers that show how great their safes performed in "extreme" fires.  But what we see with them is the same thing we see in this video.  A fire, yes.  A bad fire, no.

If the safes were in the middle of that house, burned into the basement, were dug out, and then looked like that....then I may be impressed.  In an empty garage?  Not so much.

You must be new to the Sturdy safe fire threads,

I have never seen a single one that was not a giant shinola-show. Sturdy fire performance are the most contentious threads in the safe forum.

For the record, I do not own a Sturdy but I do like Sturdy Safe products.

I didn’t think that I was THAT to new to much on this site but it would appear that I am mistaken.....   I will sit quietly on the sidelines and glean what I can.

2Hut8

As a group we all seem to agree that Sturdy makes a good box. Probably as good as or better than most anything else as far as durability.

Fire protection is another matter, as you can see.

Can you address the point he made about fire load? The area in the basement has feet of debris in it and the area in front of the safe has a couple inches. In the area away from the house (say near the safes), the steel roofing appears to be much more intact (straight) than that laying in the basement or on the garage floor adjacent to the house.

Did the contents of the larger safe have better survivability than the smaller unit due to the fact it had more air space inside?

Did they perform better because they were side by side, almost touching rather than being further separated? The paint looks to be almost intact on the one side of both of the safes.

Trust BGene, he knows what he speaks of.

On one hand you have a guy that truly works with and understands safes and works hard to contribute as much unbiased opinion to these threads as anyone (minus TSG).

Then we have the guy that may make insulation that is very similar to the insulation that may be used in the Sturdy safes that always claims he has no vested interest but is always available to freely offer his input about Sturdy Safes.

In this one we have a professional fireman/investigator that came in and talked about the science of fire, the characteristics of how fire works, fire load and other facts and most likely wonders WTF did I get involved?

Welcome to a "Sturdy Safe Thread". Sit back and enjoy the show!

You posted this:
Now, here is that statement adjusted to fit reality
Cherry picked 'burn downs' that offer no useful metrics or data for an objective analysis. Remember how much you hate those, Rocky?

They have become a threat to their customers who believe their claims without any proof offered, and volumes (read:Science, Physics, and empirical data) to the contrary.

In the TSG thread where all of the physics of fire mitigation are discussed in minutia ad nauseum, and more importantly, here:
Attached File

Apples to apples, empirical data.

I particularly liked the Sportsman's Steel video posted above. Put some real fire load in that test room to burn and close it up so it doesn't vent the heat out the door. While the flames may have showed 2400 degrees on their heat gun, the paint didn't even get burnt off the front of the safe. I don't know about anyone else but that guy gives me the willies and all I can think of is "snake oil salesman".

And of course you do realize the roof was most likely 4-12 feet above the safes right? Heat rises...
As I said before, I have been inside rooms with temps at the 10’ ceiling height well over 1,000 degrees, while crawling on the floor. The roof being bent in the fashion shown means nothing in regards to  what the temp at the level of the safes was.

And I saw the dials missing on the safes, but without seeing the debris, can you be sure they “melted”? Sustained heat in the area of 800-900 degrees would have probably distorted the steel plate in the safes to some extent.
The more likely answer is the dials were probably in the debris on the floor in some state other than “melted away”.

But as Frank said, people will see what they want to see and believe what they want to believe.

Eventually Sturdy is going to have to testing done if they want their business to grow.  You can only claim "small family" company for so long.  There is a price to pay for conducting business in any market.  I for one hope that their insulation type and safe design perform as advertised.    The risk to my collection is significantly skewed toward fire over theft.

They probably already have and failed or know it will fail and choose not to. There’s nothing in it for them. Why expose themselves?

I've seen this graph before but haven't seen the info on which line is which.  Do we know which other brands were tested?  Is the "3-inch Ceramic Blanket" a Sturdy?

My takeaway from this is that pretty much all the safe companies are either testing in a format they know they can pass or they're slanting the data.  Either way the end result is the same.

Those who paid for the test know.  It's not uncommon to not mention competition by name in these cases.  I'm assuming there are legal implications.  You see it all of the time in other product lines when "Brand X" is mentioned in ads.  There are only a few companies using the ceramic as safe insulation.

What do gun safe manufacturers know about safes?  Very few (if any) of these companies were born from security professionals.  How do you know how to build fire resistant safes if you have never worked on safes that have been burned in fires?  How do you know how to build a burglary resistant safe if you have never worked on, or broken into a safe?

All hat, no cattle.

They get away with it because there are so few instances of loss in relation to the number they build.  If every house with a typical gun safe burned down, and 90% of the safes failed, then there would be an uproar.  But when only 5 or 6 of their customers experience a loss in a year, it's easy to sweep under the rug.

Well I'm going to be speculating because I don't know the details and nor does he but here's my WAG. The presence of the safes against the sidewalls of the garage shielded the walls somewhat from the heat intensity so when the roof collapsed the wall by the safes was still strong enough to remain standing to support the metal roofing creating the bend at the top of the sections. Although the metal roofing is fairly thin, it still is cold rolled steel with usually a tensile strength of at least 50,000 psi. The steel alloy used for that application has an anneal (re-cystallization of the metal i.e., when the metal gets really soft) temperature of between 550C to 700C (1022F - 1290F.) Based on how much the metal has sagged at the safe level and also taken the shape of the surfaces they fell upon in other portions of the video, it looks like most of the metal exceeded the anneal point.

In many cases, more debris usually suggests less intense heat because the combustibles aren't fully consumed and I'm not saying that this is the case here because certainly the home looks fully consumed to me from the video. Thankfully no one was hurt of course and I hope I don't offend the owner of this home if he should read my remarks.

I do think that plays a big part based on a passive design. Firelock is a company that makes large vaults of a similar design to Sturdy and their fire rating increases with increased volume. I also know Sturdy had a design change that puts more ceramic fiber in the safes than their earlier design and I think the smaller is the earlier and larger is the later.

Yes most definitely, it took a side away from both safes' direct exposure.

After I posted that Sportsman video I got to poking around on their website. It looks like they are using some type of concrete liner as a fire protector.

Wow, I can't believe you actually took my bait and posted the graph but thank you. So based on this "3rd Party independent study" by a reputable lab the same Sturdy safe design that largely protected their contents through a 4 hour fire would have exceeded 350F in 8.5 minutes and been over 1000F in not much time after. This is what "Snake Oil" salesman looks like in the safe industry.