How to find a quality Safe

Safes are major investments for your household or business. It’s important to understand what the true necessity of a safe is; it’s to keep your property secure. If you’re just looking for a lockable box to store random items in, a safe might not be as good as a bet as a keepsake or jewelry box. Safes are meant to be completely secure on a professional level – so when looking at your options, price shouldn’t be the only determinant. Safes are inherently the best method of keeping your property secure; in this blog post I’ll go over what distinguishes a quality or superior safe from models that you should avoid. Here’s some helpful tips that the average consumer should know when deciding what model of safe to purchase.

Educate Yourself

The majority of safe companies don’t fill their advertisements with detailed descriptions of the specifics of their safe’s construction and security levels. So, as a civilian consumer, you will be most at advantage if you know the proper questions to ask, and the proper criteria to look for. When you buy blind or without having done any research, you might end up purchasing an item that is less than satisfactory.

Look at Welding

The best constructed safes are made with a continuous weld. This basically entails the fusion of two separate metal pieces; spot welds, which are quite common, are much weaker than continuous welds, as they only use smaller points to bind the metal together – which can be easily broken into with sledgehammers, drills, torches, or specific tools meant for breakins. Continuous welding technique provides a solid piece of metal, hence the use of the word “continuous.” All in all, it makes for a much much more secure safe.

Inspect the Steel Content

The majority of most safe’s metal content is contained in it’s door, with it’s body being made of half to a third of as much solid metal. It’s important to also educate yourself about the gauge level of the door’s metal content – 12 is the absolute lowest gauge level that the US Department of Justice allows a safe to be classified with. As the number of the gauge decreases, the steel’s strength increases – and additional layers of steel will help disperse any heat away during torch attacks, as well as providing additional material strengths. Composite doors, although thick, do not necessarily have a high steel content.

Warranty

Companies that give their safe lifetime warranties are usually a great bet, because it’s indicative that their products are constructed in a durable fashion. However, warranties vary wildly between companies, and depending on the internal components of the locks. Many companies that sell electronic locks are actually selling products assembled from separate components made by different manufacturers – each part might have a separate warranty. Products made in the United States, where there is a higher level of manufacturing regulation, is always a good bet as it almost always delivers products with a higher standard. One caveat though; many products said to be “Made in the USA” are actually assembled in China.

Bolt Work

The bolt work of the safe takes up the majority of the door, and depending on how it is assembled, it can provide serious protection against even the most advanced and complicated attacks. If the bolt work is messed with in a way that links the bolts together, sticking them can open the safe – make sure that the steel of the bolts extends very far into the doorframe; the farther they extend, the more secure the door – this rule can be applied bolt thickness as well. For additional protection, invest in lock bolts that rotate, as they will move when someone tries to cut them in.