I asked a friend of mine to do a product review for his Stack On gun safe. He has the 16 gun version.
First off, let me say that I really do like my safe, but I am also very picky and so if I make a negative statement, it is just because I want everything the way I want it! My Stack-On gun safe comes in a green color that really doesn’t match with anything. Black would have been nicer, but hey, in my basement workroom, who cares! I bought the 16 gun version not because I figured that I would own 16 gun some day, but I wanted to have room for other items in my safe including valuables and documents (such as birth certificates, passports and such).
If I had to purchase it again, I would find the Stack On gun safes that hold 22 guns as they have a much different shelf configuration where you can have a top to bottom set of shelves (I think 4 in all). These take up half the safe leaving the other half for my long guns. This would have been perfect for storing my valuables and documents plus some ammo and a few handguns. My current safe only has one shelf that spans the entire upper part of the safe. This holds mostly valuables and docs, my ammo can’t live in the safe and then I had to purchase some additional pistol racks for the safe to hold my handguns. Not a big deal and frankly I like having the handguns on the door so they can be access easily and they are not laying on top of each other.
As I mentioned, I have the safe in my basement. I installed the safe in the corner of my basement with one side of it pushed hard up against the concrete wall. This should prevent anyone from rocking it back and forth to break the two 4″ concrete bolts that I put in the bottom. Stack on safes come with a reinforced bottom plate to make them extra resistant against someone using a pry bar and pulling the bolts right out through the bottom of the safe. I have also thought about building a new wood shelf right beside the safe using some extra lumber and over engineering it with bolts so that you would almost need to spend more time trying to pull this shelf apart than you would trying to open the safe!
I noticed that after I put my four long guns in this rifle safe, that the base area, where the butts of the guns sit, gets crowded. With just 4 in there, I could see that it may be difficult to put a total of 16 guns in this safe. The back of the safe allows you to rest 8 against it and then 4 on each side. With just 4 in the safe now, I am not sure how you could add 4 more on the side. Consider this if you are really going to fill one of these gun safes.
The security of a Stack On safe is more than enough for what I need. The 5 live action bolts are very tough and the door is extremely heavy. The fire protection feature of the safe was actually more important that the security. I was worried that in a fire, my valuables and important documents would be destroyed. The guns can be replaced, but in a zombie wasteland where my house burned down, I would love to get to my guns also!! A fireproof safe is a necessity in my book (even if you don’t believe in zombies).
While I would have preferred a sexy biometrics safe, it just wasn’t in my budget. I opted for the old fashion combination lock for this beast and then used the extra money for a small biometric pistol safe that I keep under my bed with my favorite Glock 22. The combination is actually very smooth, but somewhat forgiving (not as sloppy at the gym lockers in high school, but I rarely have to retry the combination because I missed a number by one hash mark).
All in all, this was a good investment considering I purchased it for around $500 from a local store, so this was not a cheap gun safe. I also looked at the SentrySafe unit with an electronic lock and feel like they are similar units, but my local shop didn’t carry that size in stock (and it was the same money as the Stack-On Safe) so opted for the quick purchase and took it home.
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