Using an antique safe

grenorm28

Hello all, new to forum and had a question regarding the usage of antique safes for storing valuables. I have an antique fire safe of unknown make. It is in excellent condition, yale combination lock has been inspected by safe technician prior to purchase. door is ¼″ steel filled with concrete. Walls are thinner gauge steel, concrete filled, then another layer of sheet steel. Pretty standard fire safe of late 1800’s design. I know these were never designed to be high security safes, and lack features such as hardplate and relocking devices, but I was wondering what some of your opinions may be on how these older safes stack up against many of the gun safes sold today. I definitely would not compare this safe to a b/c or tl15 rated safe, but I feel that is should be comparable in security level to the standard gun safe that most people would purchase today. Just wondering if i’m way off base here, and interested in the opinions of others. Thank you.

Doug MacQueen

Not knowing what you have makes it difficult to compare to the typical modern gun safe. There are many old fire safes with relockers, ones that used hardened steels and ones very heavy in insulation. But then there are ones that don’t, and have very thin doors, with little metal and insulation used. A picture will help here. The “typical” modern gun safe is usually a bit light in the fire protection category whereas the majority of old fire safes have considerably more insulation thickness. The popular opinion in the trade is that old fires are no longer usable. I don’t buy that and far as I know, no one has proven that to be true. May not be quite as good as when made, in some cases, but when compared to a couple ½″ boards of drywall, a 2″-3″ wall of fire insulation sounds better to me. Most old safes were built to withstand large city fires where times and temps were greater, not a single home fire the gun safes are tested for. Doug

Dean Nickel

My main takeaway on this was storing valuables. There were several old safes that I would be FINE with locking up almost anything. We have two on the show floor for about $4000 each and weigh in at about 1700-2000 lb. Now you have to keep in mind they were safes that were sold by our company 70+ years ago with the shop logo at that time so the boss really doesn’t want to sell them but we needed a price if someone asked. Safes like that can have quite a few layers of different metals and the door edge is stepped. They typically have an inner safe door for jewelry. They will not hold against someone that knows safes but against a run of the mill breakin they will hold a good long time and if they are bolted down (ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA FOR ANY SAFE) they are very hard for the criminal to move somewhere that they can work on it at their leisure. I will have to see if I can get some pictures.

So if it was a fire safe it still is a fire safe. If it was a burglar safe then it still is or at least has armor. Some were better than others. Some pictures will help us have an opinion on what your container is.

grenorm28

ok, took a few pics of the safe, sorry i did not post them earlier, not sure what i was thinking. thanks to halflock and doug for the replies.

grenorm28

still hoping to get some opinions based on the pics, hopefully they kinda clear up what type of safe it was designed to be.

Doug MacQueen

It was designed to be a business grade fire safe. These safes give some burglar protection but were built primarily for their fire protection. However, the “typical” modern gun safe,when compared to modern, or for that matter, antique safes that were built primarily to give a high level of burglar protection, you will see that generally speaking, most gun safes actually are not very high in burglar protection, with cheapest ones having very little protection. But they will keep the children out. So the bottom line is your safe is easily better in burglar protection than many of the cheaper gun safes but probably not as good as the better ones. Doug

Dean Nickel

While it isn’t a TL rate safe it is MUCH better than the common box store fire box or low end safe. I wouldn’t trust it with gold and silver but it would do ok for a little while against an attack. Do bolt it down if you do go to use it.

grenorm28

Thank you guys for the responses. I appreciate your input and think I have a better Idea now of what probably should and shouldn’t go in the safe. Just seemed like a shame not to use it since it is in such good condition. thanks again for the advice.

Arcade Al

Doug MacQueen wrote
It was designed to be a business grade fire safe. These safes give some burglar protection but were built primarily for their fire protection. However, the “typical” modern gun safe,when compared to modern, or for that matter, antique safes that were built primarily to give a high level of burglar protection, you will see that generally speaking, most gun safes actually are not very high in burglar protection, with cheapest ones having very little protection. But they will keep the children out. So the bottom line is your safe is easily better in burglar protection than many of the cheaper gun safes but probably not as good as the better ones. Doug

Very sound advice, particularly considering the cheap nature of many British Standard gun safes over here in blightly! And most have absolutely no fire protection as it’s just not necessary for Police approval.

Many good quality old safes are simply incomparable in quality to modern gun safes in the UK, so it’s not really a very helpful comparison to make. Probably better to compare it with a modern commercial safe of a similar nature.

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