Gun Safe Lessons

[Darrell]

A guy details his problems with an expensive Liberty safe, with a digital lock. If nothing else, KISS--go for a mechanical lock!

Liberty Safes, A Review Like No Other…

Posted by Barron

So those that are friends with me on Facebook may be familiar with a recent predicament that had unbelievable timing, and not in the good way. I have a series of lessons that many of you can learn from as well as a detailed experience of the warranty system behind Liberty Safes and S&G locks.

First let me detail what I had and what happened. Here is my safe pre-issues.
(pic)
That is a 50 CF Liberty Presidential safe. It has an S&G Titan Direct Drive lock. I could go into details now about the different security mechanisms but I will get to that a bit later. The way the direct drive works is you punch in the code, a solenoid fires, at which point you can rotate the outer dial unlocking the bolt.

As my wife and I were packing up the house for the first weekend of the big move and she discovered a few items she needed to put in the safe. She went out to the safe and then came and found me a couple of minutes later, “I think I forgot the combo she said.” Interesting, I’ll go and try. I walk out to the safe, punch in the code, no click, nothing, 5 seconds later it beeps as if it relocked. Odd, try it again, same thing. Try leaning on the door, doing everything in the list of stuff to do to get the safe open on their website. No joy, further I know it’s the right code because I punch in a wrong one as a test, I get immediate feedback.

So, we are on a time-table and we figure we’ll call Liberty next week and schedule an appointment with a locksmith and drive back out for it. Well folks, here’s a customer service fail and a lesson for you all if you ever find yourself needing to call Liberty.

First Lesson:

Don’t try to start a support chain by email. I sent an email to their support contact and NEVER heard back. We turned around and called 24 hours later.

Second Lesson:

Have your safe’s serial number on hand. It is on the packet of information that comes with the safe as well as is on the inside of the door. Do NOT count on registering your safe to save you. I figured they could look my safe up as I had registered it, they could not. Pissed barely begins to describe my attitude as I had to drive 5.5 hours back to the redoubt in the wheat field, hoping I could find the packet of safe info with the serial number on it. Did I mention I was in the middle of moving and had packed up a decent chunk of my office? Luckily I had not moved that box yet and was able to find it. I called Liberty and everything quickly went along changing my attitude from pissed off to mildly annoyed. It was Thursday and the locksmith will be out on Saturday.

Getting into the safe:
(pic)
The lock smith arrives Saturday morning and takes one look at the safe and says, “Well shit! That’s not the lock they told me was on there.” We take the dial off and try a new one. We bang on the door with a mallet trying to make sure nothing is stuck. Alas, my thoughts were correct. We get to drill my safe and they gave him the wrong lock type.

This has numerous impacts on things like drill points and design of operation. He calls a buddy of his and gets the info he needs and we set to work.

So behind this steel door are numerous traps and issues that can cause problems for people trying to break into a safe. What kind of traps? Ball bearings are the most notorious of the bunch. What do they do to drill bits I hear you ask?

You can read the rest (and see the pics!) here:

http://www.the-minuteman.org/2014/04/19 ... view-like/

[Aesop]

There is nothing wrong with S&G manual dial locks. They're smarter than amateur crooks and teenagers (which is pretty close to the same thing), which is all they need to be. The pros can crack anything, given tools and enough time.

But I wouldn't take a safe that depends on a power supply to open and lock if you gave it to me for free.
This story is why.

Now make it worse. Suppose he needed to get something out of a gun safe right away, and now he can't.
When a dead battery or a bad circuit instantly turns your home security device into a block of worthless steel, you've just been robbed while owning a safe, by owning a safe, which is about as fun as being rogered with your pants on.
And potentially fatal, at the most annoying time.

[TheIrishman]

I wouldn't take a safe that depends on a power supply to open and lock if you gave it to me for free.
This story is why...Suppose he needed to get something out of a gun safe right away, and now he can't.
When a dead battery or a bad circuit instantly turns your home security device into a block of worthless steel, you've just been robbed while owning a safe

My gun safe has an electronic lock. It is far easier to open under stress than any combo lock I have ever tried. That includes my old high school locker.

Of course, as soon as I walk in the door I'm carrying a pistol in under a minute and have a loaded AR in arms reach(NJ...Can't carry outside of home).In my personal experience, E-Locks fail when it's inconvenient, but manuals fail for few reasons.

[308Mike]

Some VERY GOOD information in that story!! As much as I like the CONVENIENCE of our electronic lock (at one time, I was storing valuables for other family members in our safe - they had keys to our house and each person had an individual combo assigned to them, which was deleted when they removed their items and or no longer warranted access to our house and the safe - such as divorce). Over time, all my other family members got their own safes, so now it's only myself and my wife who need access. Based on what I read and after talking to a good locksmith (who has FOUR gun safes in his house and NONE of them have electronic locks), I priced out the conversion from going from an electronic lock to a manual dial, and it came out this way:

Parts = $165
Labor = $220

He also told me that in the early model electronic locks (which they - S&G - still use), there are NO serviceable parts for the locksmith to replace - even if they are getting worn out AND made of plastic! The locksmith can perform no more maintenance on an electronic lock than you can. They're limited to cleaning contacts, ensuring good connection of the plugs (perhaps even adding a small piece of tape to help hold a plug in if the door is being opened and closed roughly), AND replacing the batteries. THAT'S IT!!!

I'm NOT paying for a service call to maintain my electronic lock at $$$$ per hour to do the same thing I can do in 10 minutes!!!

We've had our S&G electronic lock since we got our safe. We've been quite happy with it - ESPECIALLY when we needed multiple combos to the safe. I've never been happy with the knowledge that S&G's BEST electronic locks weren't shielded from EMP, and had that little bit floating around in the back of my mind (starting several years ago), and now this latest incident - just helps confirm what I've been wanting to do (even though I can get into my locked safe in less than 5 seconds with the electronic lock - and less than 10 seconds if I screw up the combo), by changing over to a manual dial lock.

Eventually, when we have more money (and more guns), we'll get a MUCH larger safe to replace the one we have (bolted to the concrete slab inside a closet). We know we'll eventually wind up filling that safe too (probably - depends on how much time we can spend on the road before we move to the road permanently). Since we're damned good friend with our neighbors, and they'd know when we were out of town, if they heard any grinding or unusual sounds coming from our house, they come over FULLY ARMED with AR's and multiple handguns to check on the source of the unusual noise coming from our temporarily vacant house. God help anyone they find inside that doesn't have appropriate uniform clothing, a badge, CURRENT ID, active police radio on the correct freq, (AFTER calling 911 to get a patrol response too). If they have NONE of these items, they're likely to use his backhoe in my yard (while neither of us are home and would have NO knowledge of what happened) - the lower lot since we live on a steep hill with a flattened portion near the bottom.

We'd come home, greet our neighbors, get caught up and NO ONE would mention the fresh-turned dirt at the bottom of the lower lot!!

SEMPER FI!!