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Posted: 1/1/2016 4:27:21 AM EDT
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Ok so my original post was lock, which I guess I can understand. So I'll ask again a little more clear headed and calm and hope for a better response.
About 2 months ago I bought 2 new BF6030 safes. One for myself and one for my younger brother. After having mine for about a month I thought it was strange that the walls of the safe didn't seem solid. I can press the walls by hand and see/feel them compress. If I knock on the walls it sounds hollow. Both sides, the top, and bottom seem the same. Not like you would think steel against concrete//"drylock" would sound. After examining mine and comparing it with the other I bought at my brothers house I came to the conclusions that it was missing the fire protection. At least a good portion of it. I contact the dealer who says they have seen this once before in their 20 years of selling the brand and the previous safe with this defect was replaced under warranty no questions asked and mine should be as well. After several (20+) emails back and forth from dealer and manufacturer nothing is being done. Dealer says there is a problem but AMSEC says nothing to worry about this is normal. Well here is their actual email respond, poor grammar and all; "I had gone our manager on this one here is his answer The BF has the “DryLight” foam concrete. It is possible that the foam began setting before all of the air escaped. This would not affect the fire rating." I was not happy with this reply and went back to the dealer and examined all their safes on display. None of which shown the characteristics my safe did. So I took some videos of the squishy walls and decided it would be good to know what it weighed. Thinking if it weighed very much less then the 1036 pounds it should then there is in fact a problem. After getting a hold of a hoist and scale I get it rigged and lifted to find it only weighs about 760 pounds. Basically 275 less then it should. |
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I feel this should be covered under the workmanship part of the warranty but AMSEC doesn't see this as being a problem. Has anyone ever seen this before? Or have any suggestions to have them see this from my point of view where I don't feel my property is properly secure in this "safe"? Someone said in my previous post that it sounds like a call out post. Well I guess when the manufacturer doesn't want to admit that their workers are mostly human (I'm sure some of their welding is likely done by robots) and mistakes do happen then yeah I am calling them out. Now I'm stuck with overpriced metal box! I am upset as I spent several thousand dollars on this safe and several hundred more having it delivered only to come to the conclusions that there's a problem and they don't stand behind their product. Here are 3 short videos of the safe in question; http://youtu.be/FfSwQaf6sRQ http://youtu.be/jmyKLdohTb0 -- not a very good video http://youtu.be/4-nIpWsS3QU --- sorry about crappy music, just trying to block out background conversation. TLDR; BF6030 most likely defective that amsec doesn't want to deal with. Weighs over 275 less then specs say. Only a few months old. How to get warranty service or has anyone seen this before? Thanks |
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Maybe Frank or TSG will jump in with their take, but my opinion is that is nothing to get too worked up about. The outside steel thickness on the BF safe is around 1/8". Over a 30" span like that, it is not unusual to get some flexing on the steel. 1/8" steel is nothing to sneeze at, but it is not thick steel. It will flex over a span of that size. There is obviously a small air gap between the back safe wall and the dry light insulation..the steel is just bowed out a bit in the center is what it looks like, or maybe the drylight shrunk a little as it dried. I think Amsec's answer seems reasonable to me.
This looks mostly cosmetic to me and should not affect the function or fire security of the safe. I wouldn't sweat it if I were in your shoes. I can understand frustration at spending a lot of money, but of the things to worry about on a safe this would not be on my list at all. ---Aaron |
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Quoted:
This thread and the other one (not yours) are very discouraging to me. I may just have to buy from that other company. Nothing on my Amsec BF moves even a fraction of an inch. Me thinks there is something else going on here. Even the interior steel wall is rock solid. Zero flexing. And I just tested it so that's why I edited this post. |
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It is not uncommon for filled safes to have some amount of void. In the case of the BF series, the material used for insulation expands, and may not do so entirely evenly. Thinner steel also may flex and bow every time the safe is moved.
That said, all of the walls shouldn't sound hollow, and the weight discrepancy seems odd. Has your dealer come out to personally inspect it? |
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Quoted: It is not uncommon for filled safes to have some amount of void. In the case of the BF series, the material used for insulation expands, and may not do so entirely evenly. Thinner steel also may flex and bow every time the safe is moved. That said, all of the walls shouldn't sound hollow, and the weight discrepancy seems odd. Has your dealer come out to personally inspect it? Quoted: It is not uncommon for filled safes to have some amount of void. In the case of the BF series, the material used for insulation expands, and may not do so entirely evenly. Thinner steel also may flex and bow every time the safe is moved. That said, all of the walls shouldn't sound hollow, and the weight discrepancy seems odd. Has your dealer come out to personally inspect it? TheSafeGuy just posted in the Amsec thread that it doesn't expand. Quoted: "FYI, the concrete based fill does not expand, it contracts. It never expands" |
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I just pushed on my 6th tall Sturdy safe (3627-6) with 3/8" door, 4ga body and 3/16 plate reinforcement on the sides and roof (making the side and roof thickness to 7/16"). Try as i might there is no flexing anywhere. Pretty sure it weighed every bit of the 1325lbs they told me also.
I looked at Amsec but the customer service and them ignoring issues seemed to common. |
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Okay, I'll chime in here. Sorry that I didn't see the other thread before it was locked.
This is a problem that we have faced with filled safes since we started making composite safes in the late 80's. Bottom line, before we get into specifics, is that all of the cementatious mix designs we use do not expand after the initial mix reaction, and they in fact suffer a measurable shrink. This shrink is the problem that we struggle with, because after pouring a filled safe, the fill contracts and pulls away from the walls. That results in a hollow sounding response to the knocking on the steel shell. Almost every filled safe suffers some degree of this effect. Some factors make some safes sound more solid than others. This is due to the uncontrolled shape of the steel shell. In some safes, the shell will have a natural concave shape of the steel walls. The head pressure of the fill pushes the walls outward, as you would expect. As the cementatious panels contract from drying, the natural inward bow of the walls follow the fill contraction and remain in contact, presenting a nice solid response to the knock on the panel. However, in some cases the natural shape of the steel is an outward convex shape. As the fill contracts, it pulls away from the shell and there is an air gap left. That gap is left, and resulting in a hollow response to the knock. We try very hard to anticipate this in manufacturing, and bend the metal with the concave effect so we avoid the hollow result. However, this is an extremely small and variable property of the raw steel sheets as they are supplied from the mills, and we don't always get that right. There is no easy way to judge which way the "bow" of the steel sheet goes. Concrete based fill materials behave in a very predictable manner. The mixing and setting of concrete is a chemical process. That process works on a molecular level as the cement hydrates and transforms in an exothermic reaction that uses the water molecules to transform the compounds into new compounds that bind and bond the aggregates in the mix. You can google this and read more if you like, but the chemistry is not important to the point. The formation of a cementatious mix is well understood. There is very little, if any expansion of the mix after the initial hydration. After the initial mixing operation, the concrete immediately begins a drying process where the water that is not consumed in the reaction is released by evaporation. The exothermic (generation of heat) nature of the reaction drive the evaporation in the early moments of the process. The drying process is always one of shrinking, not expanding. That is why you always wet the surface of your freshly laid concrete driveways or sidewalks, so you slow the shrinking and allow the slower reacting strong physical bonds to develop and prevent cracking. So, with all of that, you can see how one safe may sound solid and another may sound hollow and tinny. It does not mean the safe is devoid of fill. It is normal, and expected. Unfortunately, it's not always the way we want it, but it's not something we have complete control over either. In the case of the proprietary BF Safe fill material we call "DryLite", the aggregate fillers are very fine, and the mix is highly fluid when poured. There are venting holes throughout the construction to evacuate any air that may be trapped. So, filling a BF is like filling a glass of water. There are no holes or cavities in the fill volume. The perception that a hollow response to knocking means there is unfilled cavities is never true. The walls are definitely filled with the prescribed thickness of insulating materials in every safe. Now, a bit of trivia to help you relax a bit more. The air-gap that persists on these convex walled, hollow sounding safes is actually a benefit when exposed to fire. That air gap acts as an added thermal barrier, forcing the heat transfer to make a jump thru a convection barrier. In fact, when a safe is exposed to high temperatures, the thermal expansion of the steel causes the walls to bulge out, enhancing this barrier effect. So, don't let that hollow sound bother you. The safe is fine, it's normal, and it will perform perfectly if exposed to a fire. |
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Quoted:
We reverse engineered that fill, and although I'm not an engineer, it certainly looked like it expanded to me. We poured test cylinders about half full, and it often overflowed the top. Quoted:
TheSafeGuy just posted in the Amsec thread that it doesn't expand.
We reverse engineered that fill, and although I'm not an engineer, it certainly looked like it expanded to me. We poured test cylinders about half full, and it often overflowed the top. The fill material you made is nothing like the fills we use. I would estimate that none of our mixes expand during reaction more than 1% to 3% by volume. There is only one fill that reacts the way you describe that I know, and that's based on an Aluminum powder component that reacts in the alkaline environment and generates dangerous gasses that create a porous bubble matrix in the barrier material. This is used almost exclusively in the far east in fire safes, and often referred to as "Dry Fill", because the residual water content and the hygroscopic properties are very low. You will find this fill in most imported fire safes from Asia. This not the material we make in the US. |
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Quoted:
That leads us to the ~260lbs of missing weight relative to the specs? Perhaps you can expand on your thoughts there. I didn't see that the weight deficit was ever confirmed, and clearly that issue was questionable based on the debate that closed the thread. There is a variable weight on the safes, and the published weights include all packaging and pallets. They have to be published that way to avoid shipping overweight products and facing fines. It's not uncommon to see weights vary as much as 5% on large safes. In addition, I was concerned about the accuracy of the measurements. A Hoist scale is typically not very accurate. They see a lot of shock loads and abuse, so they are rarely calibrated to represent any degree of certified measure. I have seen our hoist scales measure hundreds of pounds off. I am assuming the weight was a side issue that was dropped, since the method of measure was admittedly crude. We weigh safes quite regularly, and they are typically pretty damn close to the published numbers. Weights are deliberately over-stated by a few pounds to avoid shipping fines, but we are talking about a 10-15 lb margin, not over 250 lbs. If you have a safe that is short by 25%, and you can confirm that as a fact, we will engage in figuring out why. Something is fishy here. There is no way a fully equipped safe with all of it's packing and interior present would be that light... I'm sure I could incite further investigation if this problem continues to be a point of contention. We would probably ask a local dealer or safe tech to come out and weigh the safe and packaging without any bias one way or the other. If something is really wrong, we will definitely stand behind the product. |
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I just pushed on my 6th tall Sturdy safe (3627-6) with 3/8" door, 4ga body and 3/16 plate reinforcement on the sides and roof (making the side and roof thickness to 7/16"). Try as i might there is no flexing anywhere... The BF Outer Shell is 11 Gauge steel, which is quite a bit more flexible compared to 4 gauge steel. The 4 gauge is roughly twice the steel thickness. Nuff said..... |
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The BF Outer Shell is 11 Gauge steel, which is quite a bit more flexible compared to 4 gauge steel. The 4 gauge is roughly twice the steel thickness. Nuff said..... Quoted:
Quoted:
I just pushed on my 6th tall Sturdy safe (3627-6) with 3/8" door, 4ga body and 3/16 plate reinforcement on the sides and roof (making the side and roof thickness to 7/16"). Try as i might there is no flexing anywhere... The BF Outer Shell is 11 Gauge steel, which is quite a bit more flexible compared to 4 gauge steel. The 4 gauge is roughly twice the steel thickness. Nuff said..... Yes you just reiterated why I bought the Sturdy. It doesn't look or feel like a tin can like most RSC's. Hell my Cannon American Eagle (an older economy Cannon) didn't flex like in the video. That had to be the softest steel possible for it to do that. I have a thin sheet metal office cabinet that flexes about the same. I wouldn't lock my guns up in it.... Even if it had a little concrete inside. |
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Has your dealer come out to personally inspect it? Quoted:
Has your dealer come out to personally inspect it? No, the dealer hasn't looked at it in person at but I have asked them. Quoted:
In addition, I was concerned about the accuracy of the measurements. A Hoist scale is typically not very accurate. They see a lot of shock loads and abuse, so they are rarely calibrated to represent any degree of certified measure. I have seen our hoist scales measure hundreds of pounds off. I am assuming the weight was a side issue that was dropped, since the method of measure was admittedly crude. We weigh safes quite regularly, and they are typically pretty damn close to the published numbers. Weights are deliberately over-stated by a few pounds to avoid shipping fines, but we are talking about a 10-15 lb margin, not over 250 lbs. If you have a safe that is short by 25%, and you can confirm that as a fact, we will engage in figuring out why. Something is fishy here. There is no way a fully equipped safe with all of it's packing and interior present would be that light... I'm sure I could incite further investigation if this problem continues to be a point of contention. We would probably ask a local dealer or safe tech to come out and weigh the safe and packaging without any bias one way or the other. If something is really wrong, we will definitely stand behind the product.[/span] The scale used was new so it hasn't seen any form of sock. The chain hoist lifted it incredibly slow so the safe wasn't bouncing up and down while it was lifted. As far as the scale being calibrated the only controlled test I was able to do with it was weigh myself and it was accurate with my bathroom scale. It wasn't weighed with the pallet or box it came in but all interior shelving was in. |
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Yes you just reiterated why I bought the Sturdy. It doesn't look or feel like a tin can like most RSC's. Hell my Cannon American Eagle (an older economy Cannon) didn't flex like in the video. That had to be the softest steel possible for it to do that. I have a thin sheet metal office cabinet that flexes about the same. I wouldn't lock my guns up in it.... Even if it had a little concrete inside. Quoted:
Quoted:
Quoted:
I just pushed on my 6th tall Sturdy safe (3627-6) with 3/8" door, 4ga body and 3/16 plate reinforcement on the sides and roof (making the side and roof thickness to 7/16"). Try as i might there is no flexing anywhere... The BF Outer Shell is 11 Gauge steel, which is quite a bit more flexible compared to 4 gauge steel. The 4 gauge is roughly twice the steel thickness. Nuff said..... Yes you just reiterated why I bought the Sturdy. It doesn't look or feel like a tin can like most RSC's. Hell my Cannon American Eagle (an older economy Cannon) didn't flex like in the video. That had to be the softest steel possible for it to do that. I have a thin sheet metal office cabinet that flexes about the same. I wouldn't lock my guns up in it.... Even if it had a little concrete inside. I am able to flex the inside walls even more then what's show in the video since it's an even thinner sheet. |
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I am able to flex the inside walls even more then what's show in the video since it's an even thinner sheet. Of the two complaints on the AMSEC BF posted recently here your complaint is the one that sounds like a manufacturing defect. You shouldn't be able to flex any of the walls if the concrete (Drylite) is adequately cured and occupies all the space within the wall cavities nor should you have to weigh your safe to prove your case. If the walls are flexing then the gun safe wasn't manufactured correctly and that's based on AMSEC's own marketing material. |
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You were pushing on that safe pretty damn hard but I have a liberty fat boy Jr. With 11ga walls and it doesn't flex at all. Now that could be because I think the
Fire insulation is different in mine than in yours. Still though I don't know. You pay that much for a safe there shouldn't be any doubt about if what the company says It's capable of actually being true. JMO Glad I bought a Liberty. |
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