I thought that I would pass on some information that I learned this weekend with the forum. On Saturday my brother and I drove to Chesterfield, SC. Located in the small town of Chesterfield is Griffin Enterprises. Mike Griffin has been in all aspects of the safe business for 40 years. If you want to know someone who not only knows safes but knows their weaknesses, how to overcome those weaknesses, how to defeat most of the methods of getting into a safe and how to build a better safe from the ground up for a really good price he is the person to talk to. He has hundreds of safes in his warehouse. Every type of safe imaginable he most probably has in his warehouse. He fixes, upgrades and restores all types of safes. He has older safes, safes that have been broke into, safes that have been in fires and he buys pretty much any type of safe.
He spent over a hour with us going over all of the different types of safes, the right safe for different purposes and how people broke into those safes with real examples of it. I knew a good bit about safes from experience and research but I still got a real education talking to Mike. I am sure many of you have heard of Griffin safes and probably about Mike himself. I have known about him for many years but I had just never made the trip.
I was looking for a large high end commercial safe to put the more expensive items from my collection into it. Most “gun safes” are a deterrent. Even some of the more “expensive” gun safes are ridiculously easy to break into. Don’t think that there aren’t plenty of unscrupulous criminals out there that know exactly how to exploit a normal safes weakness. Even some of the commercial safes have been proven to have weaknesses. No matter how strong the body of your safe is it only takes one weakness to open it.
This is where Mike comes in because he can take almost any real safe and make it more secure but he can only do so much to a overall inferior safe.
I ended up buying a large Commercial Diebold Cashguard safe from him. He is going to cut all of the imterior safes out of it, build an adjustable gun safe interior, refinish the safe and install advance security features including a upgraded electric security lock. Mike’s crew will bring the safe to you and install it for you. I ened up with a safe that has two hardened 1/2" steel plates sandwiched together for the entire body and the safe door is a total of 1 1/2" of hardened steel. The safe is completely pry proof and with the upgraded sacurity features and lock the only way in without the combination is a blow torch and cut a hole in it. Even with a torch the process isn’t going to be fast or easy.
One tip that Mike gave my brother and I was to buy a relatively cheap Sentry fireproof document safe and keep your valuable and important paperwork in it inside of your safe. When your safe heats up the first thing to start burning inside any safe is any paper that is inside. Second never store a weapon in a safe without at least a cheap gun sock on it. When a house burns and a safe heats up you will get corrosive gas inside your safe. If you don’t have anything to keep the gas from getting to the metal your guns will quickly start to rust. It will take time to get to the safe if your have a house fire. Then you will most likely have to have a locksmith then open the safe for you. All of that will take days. Your firearm will start to rust within a few hours if you didn’t have anything protecting them inside of the safe. I really learned a lot talking to Mike. The trip was worth the education alone.
I have two good videos to watch to get a good start on understanding safes. The first is Mike himself talking about some of the stuff that he showed us. The second is how hard it is even for a professional locksmith with professional tools to into the safe that I just bought. Also my safe will have a different locking system that has redundant fail safes so even if it is tampered with it will stay locked. The Diebold CashGuard TL-30 safe is what I got. It is 72" tall- 40" wide- 31" deep.
… and then be on his back for 2-3 days asking himself why he did it.
