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Posted: 11/23/2010 4:19:00 PM EDT
| So I just purchased a home and now I need a safe to keep my collection safe. I want something that is gonna be tough for a thief to get into as well as fire protected. I haven't fully narrowed down the size I want, right now i want to know what manufactures you recommend. I've seen good reviews of Sturdy safes are these good for the money? Is there something better out there for the money? |
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Quoted:
So I just purchased a home and now I need a safe to keep my collection safe. I want something that is gonna be tough for a thief to get into as well as fire protected. I haven't fully narrowed down the size I want, right now i want to know what manufactures you recommend. I've seen good reviews of Sturdy safes are these good for the money? Is there something better out there for the money? As far as bang for the buck goes, sturdy has them all beat. Allot of people seem to be picking up 'scratch and dent' units from them for an even better price with little to no discernible cosmetic flaws |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
So I just purchased a home and now I need a safe to keep my collection safe. I want something that is gonna be tough for a thief to get into as well as fire protected. I haven't fully narrowed down the size I want, right now i want to know what manufactures you recommend. I've seen good reviews of Sturdy safes are these good for the money? Is there something better out there for the money? As far as bang for the buck goes, sturdy has them all beat Allot of people seem to be picking up 'scratch and dent' units from them for an even better price with little to no discernible cosmetic flaws True statement |
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I agree with the others here, for the money there is nobody even close to Sturdy. The tight tolerances, design, customer service, choice of materials; everything about Sturdy Safe exudes quality. They are one of the best companies I've dealt with and I look forward to future purchases from them.
Here's some of what I love about their safes and what makes them such a great deal for the money IMO (I'm stealing from my threads on another site because I'm lazy): Tight Tolerances, and I mean tight. With my safe I can only fit a couple sheets of paper in the gap between the door and the body as in this photo (the opening edge of the door has been rounded by design so I can just fit a dime in the gap). When you see all those videos from other gun safe companies when they're jamming in pry bars and you see the door flexing showing that a door gap is present to allow a pry bar to get started, this couldn't happen with a Sturdy Safe door. http://i758.photobucket.com/albums/xx223/bryankm_bucket/DSCN0531.jpg Deep recessed door: Should someone get so far as to get a pry bar inserted in between the door and the body (a really big IF), all forces applied by the pry bar will only be directed into the door and not at opening the door; this is why a recessed door is so important. If a door is flush with the body, it becomes possible to work a pry bar under the edge of the door so that forces are actually working to open the door. http://i758.photobucket.com/albums/xx223/bryankm_bucket/Safe/DSCN0542_2.jpg Heavy door frame supporting the door gives the door extremely strong structural rigidity. The frame is made up of L-shaped angle that's made of 3/16" structural steel it has a deep 3" webbing with wide flanges. There is a U-shaped channel that is also made of 3/16" steel which houses the active bolt linkage, bolt actuators, re-locker and hard plate, as can be seen the U-channel also fully supports and guides the active bolts at all times which allows the door to be "abused" in ways not recommended by some other manufacturers (like AMSEC  ). Also, look at the length of the welds used to attached the frame to the plate in this photo (no stitch welds here); this is one strong door design no doubt:
http://i758.photobucket.com/albums/xx223/bryankm_bucket/Safe/IMG_2042.jpg This photo that Keigan posted really shows why Sturdy Safe's doors are so strong. Much like an I-beam, the L-shaped angle attached to the plate door gives extremely strong resistance to flexing which allows it perform like a plate door of much much thicker steel: 
The shelves on Sturdy Safes can hold a lot. On my safe (with the interior option #3) each shelf can hold 150LBS. The top shelf on my safe is holding 30 boxes of 12ga shells and 20 boxes of 20ga. http://i758.photobucket.com/albums/xx223/bryankm_bucket/DSCN0279.jpg Of course, I love seeing Terry attacking his own safes on his website. These are no cheesy tests here as seen on a few other gun safe manufacturers websites, these are real tests of the Sturdy Safe's door strength. The first video shows a Sturdy Safe that has a notch pre-cut into the door to allow a 5 foot pry bar to get started, two of the four active bolts are cut and about 400LBS of weight put on the end of the pry bar and still the door doesn't open wide enough for something to be removed from the safe. Sturdy Safe Pry Bar Video with 2 of 4 actives bolts cut The next video shows a fork truck that is rated for 10,000LBS providing tension on the door at about the worst possible place and the safe is minimally effected in that the door seat is slightly bent. The door seat is created by a few of the 12 bends in the steel uni body which indicates that the safe will fail in a very graceful manner which means it will take a tension much much greater than can be created by the fork truck: Sturdy Safe Fork Truck Video with over 10,000LBS of tension to try to open the door This is a video that Sturdy Safe made when a certain safe expert said he could pry open a Sturdy Safe. Unfortunately they damaged that nice Pry Bar we saw earlier but they showed that a person could not possibly generate enough force with a pry bar over a wide enough range that would allow them to open one of their safes' doors (edit: At the end of the video, Terry is talking about the 'frame hook' and explaining how effective it is for locking up the door; look at the frame itself however and imagine having to bend that in order to pry open the safe door.) Sturdy Safe's Myth Buster's Video: "Can You Generate Enough Force with a Pry Bar to Open a Sturdy Safe Door?"' I had done some calculations previously comparing a AMSEC BF series safe's Drylight insulation against a fire lined Sturdy Safe to show the amount of heat transfer between the two designs. Based on a best case scenario for the AMSEC BF, it looked to me that the fire lined Sturdy Safe is still 2.5 times better than a AMSEC BF for fire protection. Anyway, as BrettGrieve's said and I agree, there is nobody close to Sturdy Safe for best bang for the buck in gun safes. |
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