Dehumidifier for a gun safe question HELP!!!!

Get the silicone kitty litter
put it in a cardboard box with the top open, when it starts looking opaque instead of crystalline, you can recharge it by putting the box in the oven at about 250 for an hour.

OR you can pay 10 times as much for one that comes in a neat plastic container...

Get an electric rod, install it and for the most part forget about it....Regardless of what type of system you use, I recommend buying a hygrometer to monitor the humidity in your safe. You can get a simple analog one for about 3 bucks or a nice digital one for less than 10 bucks.

When I was in North Carolina I used a 60 watt lightbulb and one container of desiccant. I never had any problems but the desiccant would have to be drained and dryed every10 days or so.

The Goldenrod works for me.

Another voter for the Goldenrod. I live in central Alabama, so I'd say my environment is similar to yours. Not a single problem with rust. I have some rifles that only come out for an annual cleaning/inspection. I would think that if you have firearms that come out for a oiling more often than that itd be even less of a problem.

I lived in S FL and SW FL and used the golden rod without a problem. Safe was on a slab in the garage, not a hint of rust. 1500 lbs is a huge safe, I need a new one!

you do have to be careful with Goldenrods though. A friend had one in his safe and it removed enough moisture from the foreend wood of a Shiloh Sharps that the pewter foreend pulled away from the wood. They can dry wood stocks out too much.

ANY dehumidifier can, the absorbent packs can too, but then they also will release posture if the air becomes very dry.

Shadow 7D said:

Get the silicone kitty litter
put it in a cardboard box with the top open, when it starts looking opaque instead of crystalline, you can recharge it by putting the box in the oven at about 250 for an hour.

OR you can pay 10 times as much for one that comes in a neat plastic container...

Click to expand...

Or, you can go to your local Harley Davidson dealer and get a few of the 2 - 3 lb "pigs" of desiccant that come packed in the motorcycle crates for free. They just toss 'em.

A GoldenRod doesn't actually remove much moisture from the air. It keeps the safe's contents 2 degrees or so above room temperature and the moist air circulating through the door crack is first heated by the GR on the floor drying it a little, then it rises and exits around the door. The moisture won't condense on warm guns.

I can imagine wood drying out if the safe is in a very hot location or in an air conditioned house with little humidity. I don't have those problems.

I bought a digital humidity measuring thingy once. The percentage didn't come down much and I'm running 2 GRods in a large safe in a damp unfinished basement. I tossed the gauge 15 years ago; the guns are fine.

John

www.goldenroddehumidifiers.com/faqs.htm

I use a golden rod, a desiccant container, and wipe the metal down with metalophilic oil about every six months. I also keep a dehumidifier running in the basement from about April through Sept.

When I first got my safe, I opened it up after a week or so and there were beads of water on my guns.

golden rod

I use the golden rod also along with the dehumidifier in the summer. I have the safe in the basement and have the rod on a timer. I only run it about six hours in the evening and have done this for about 7 or 8 years with no problems. I really don't think they need to run 24/7 depending on your location of course.

dw

I live in the balmy gulf coast of Texas so I would say the humidity is pretty much similiar to Florida's.
I use two Eva-Dry 500 dehumidifiers and recharge them by plugging them into a wall receptacle over night.
I try to do this every two weeks as I am in and out of my safe daily.
I wipe down all my firearms every six months with a lightly oiled rag and have never ever had an issue.
Fwiw I pulled them out tonight to recharge them as I have gone a day past the three week mark and the humidity in my safe interior was registering at 62% and it is raining as I type this and has been quite humid outside for the last three days.
Both Eva Dry's were ready to be recharged.

JohnBT said:

I can imagine wood drying out if the safe is in a very hot location or in an air conditioned house with little humidity. I don't have those problems.

Click to expand...

I live in West Central Florida...It gets terrible hot in my garage! I have my safe in the house (slab floor) but still use dessicant packs inside just to be on the safe side.

shouldn't the wood be finished(sealed) on a gun? Wouldn't it absorb moisture in the field as well possibly changing the point of impact?

As a long time hobby wood working nut I'd like to toss in a few things to keep in mind.

First off wood is not a stable material. It reacts to the environment to absorb moisture in wet conditions and swell its dimensions across the grain. Put the wood into dry conditions and it'll give up some of the moisture and shrink across the grain. THis occurs constantly for the life of the wood.

It is nearly impossible to seal out this moisture exchange as even the thickest and most plastic like finish is still somewhat pourous. At best we can slow the process down. But if the wood is kept in a very dry relative humidity environment for long enough it WILL shrink compared to the dimensions it had when first produced.

As mentioned a garage can get VERY hot in the summer. When this happens even in the high humidity of someplace like Florida the relative humidity in that hot garage can fall to lower values. If we put a rifle stock that was made from wood that was formed at a higher long term relative humidity into such an "oven" then the wood will dry and shrink more and you can run into troubles with the wood deforming, shrinking and even splitting.

The USUAL format for this is to see solid wood furniture that was made in a humid coastal climate be taken to a dry desert area where the wood shrinks and distorts as it dries to a very low moisture content. But it can just as easily happen to the wood used on guns kept in a safe which is in a garage if the temperatures are allowed to rise to a much higher than ambient level.

So all in all if someone MUST put their safe in a garage it's only a good idea if the temperature and humidity can be controlled to some reasonable degree. We don't want it to become overly warm and very dry from a relative humidity stand point or the wood on rifles could shrink and distort and possibly even split. Yet we don't want it to be so humid that we get close to the dew point where moisture can condense on surfaces or even support the growth of moulds in the soft carpet liner found in a lot of safes. Just like Goldilocks found with the temperature of the Bear's porridges we need to get it JUST RIGHT.