How To ? Built in Fire Proof Gun Storage.

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steviegwood

New User
Steven
Would anyone have any ideas on how to make a built in gun storage unit that is fire proof? Any help would be appreciated.
 

Rwe2156

DrBob
Senior User
It would think you have to made of steel with some kind of fire proof liner or insulation. Google it!
 

ehpoole

Administrator
Ethan
The most common insulator for safes is gypsum (the stuff your drywall is made of but with a very low sulfur content) though there are ceramics and aerogels that are far superior still, albeit harder to procure and work with.

There are also woods such as Ipe which have a fire rating comparable to concrete and are suitable for fire rated doors (but durability of glue and fasteners used must also be considered in such an application where temperatures will greatly exceed normal).

That said, there really is no such thing as a "fire proof" safe unless your are building in some means of external cooling (a heat exchanger). All an insulated safe does is delay the heat of a fire from internally reaching the combustion or damage threshold for a safe's contents in the hopes that the fire will be either adequately arrested, or all flammable materials thoroughly consumed, before the insulated fire rating reaches that critical threshold temperature.

If the safe will also contain ammunition then you should also ensure that the fire rating is sufficient to prevent spontaneous ignition of the ammunition for a long enough duration to ensure that the fire is adequately extinguished before that temperature threshold is reached or the safe itself will be destructively breached in the ensuing explosion at which point its fire rating will be reduced to zero. At the same time the safe should ideally fail in such an explosion in such a manner as to not harm, or at least reduce the risk of harm, to any personnel who may be in its vicinity if such failure should occur (in other words it would ideally direct the explosion in a safe direction, such as upwards by means of an engineered failure mode, so as to prevent the entirety of the safe from failing in the explosion and creating an undesirable shrapnel hazard).

There is quite a lot of engineering and testing that goes into the design and construction of fire rated safes so as to ensure that they adequately protect their contents from damaging heat levels for however long is required to arrest the fire. However, the success or failure of even a well engineered safe also depends upon what sorts of flammable materials surround it -- for example, store oil or gasoline in the same vicinity and the ambient temperature in a fire may quickly exceed the safe's design criteria greatly reducing the duration of its protection to just a fraction of its nominal ratings.

Best wishes on your engineering challenge as these can be interesting thought puzzles.
 

CrealBilly

New User
Jeff
Blast a hole in the side of a mountain, stick guns in hole, place huge bolder in front of hole. Guns should store a good long time in there.
 
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