Alllen Bundy
Member
How do you store and/or transport your firearms when you aren't carrying?
I use a couple of small steel Snap Safe brand lockboxes for my Sig P365X and extra magazines. To keep everything in place and organized I made dividers from 0.060" ABS plastic sheet for my pistol storage box and also for a second box for storing my loaded magazines. I adjusted the thickness of the foam padding to accommodate items of different thicknesses. I used some 3M foam adhesive to glue multiple layers of foam together where necessary.
The ABS sheet was easy to score with a utility knife and then bend until it snapped off the sheet. I used a heat gun to soften the plastic to make the bends. I used Oatey ABS plastic cement to glue the ABS together. This was the first time that I've worked with ABS like this. There was a lot of trial and error and I made a number of mistakes and design changes before I finished. But ABS is very forgiving. If you make a mistake, use a bit of ABS cement to fix it. I used a mixture of acetone and methyl ethyl ketone to wipe over marred areas to make it look nice again. I applied several coats of ABS cement to make gentle radiuses at the connection points of the ABS for better strength. Each box also has an ABS barrier to prevent the locking tab from rubbing against the contents.
I carefully placed the foam padding so that I could either store the P365X in battery, or insert the safety flag in the chamber. I also adjusted the position to that it will also accommodate the longer P365XL slide. I cut a slot into the foam to hold the chamber flag when not in use. I also cut a couple of additional slots to hold 9mm rounds to use if I want to load a round in the chamber before inserting a magazine loaded to capacity.
The magazine loader is a Makershot that has the front and rear lips shaved off for more compact storage.
If I had lain the magazines flat on their sides I could only have stored 2 additional magazines in the pistol box. So I chose to stand the magazines up on edge so the box could hold 3 additional magazines. Likewise, with the magazine storage box, with the magazines laid flat on their sides, I could only store 6 magazines. But by standing the magazines on their edge I can store 10 magazines and still have room for a magazine loader. I would have preferred to have an additional ABS divider between each magazine, but there wasn't quite enough room inside the lock boxes to accommodate them.
I had to modify the rear of the floorplates of the MagGuts 14 round spring kits so that the magazines would stand up on their edge. I sanded down the front lip of the floorplates because they fit my hand better that way.
Stock MagGuts Floor Plate:
Modified MagGuts Floor Plate:
I ride a bicycle for 95% of my transportation. These boxes are set up with a slot in the side to hold a locking cable. The cable does afford some theft protection, but I plan to do some modification to my bike bags to make the storage more secure.
I often need to transport my pistol and ammunition and these boxes are small enough to carry on my bicycle and not take up too much room in my bike bags. When I go the gun range, the lockboxes fit into my range bag that fits into a bicycle bag. And yes, I bicycle to gun ranges, sometimes as much as 20 miles away.
I use a couple of small steel Snap Safe brand lockboxes for my Sig P365X and extra magazines. To keep everything in place and organized I made dividers from 0.060" ABS plastic sheet for my pistol storage box and also for a second box for storing my loaded magazines. I adjusted the thickness of the foam padding to accommodate items of different thicknesses. I used some 3M foam adhesive to glue multiple layers of foam together where necessary.
The ABS sheet was easy to score with a utility knife and then bend until it snapped off the sheet. I used a heat gun to soften the plastic to make the bends. I used Oatey ABS plastic cement to glue the ABS together. This was the first time that I've worked with ABS like this. There was a lot of trial and error and I made a number of mistakes and design changes before I finished. But ABS is very forgiving. If you make a mistake, use a bit of ABS cement to fix it. I used a mixture of acetone and methyl ethyl ketone to wipe over marred areas to make it look nice again. I applied several coats of ABS cement to make gentle radiuses at the connection points of the ABS for better strength. Each box also has an ABS barrier to prevent the locking tab from rubbing against the contents.
I carefully placed the foam padding so that I could either store the P365X in battery, or insert the safety flag in the chamber. I also adjusted the position to that it will also accommodate the longer P365XL slide. I cut a slot into the foam to hold the chamber flag when not in use. I also cut a couple of additional slots to hold 9mm rounds to use if I want to load a round in the chamber before inserting a magazine loaded to capacity.
The magazine loader is a Makershot that has the front and rear lips shaved off for more compact storage.
If I had lain the magazines flat on their sides I could only have stored 2 additional magazines in the pistol box. So I chose to stand the magazines up on edge so the box could hold 3 additional magazines. Likewise, with the magazine storage box, with the magazines laid flat on their sides, I could only store 6 magazines. But by standing the magazines on their edge I can store 10 magazines and still have room for a magazine loader. I would have preferred to have an additional ABS divider between each magazine, but there wasn't quite enough room inside the lock boxes to accommodate them.
I had to modify the rear of the floorplates of the MagGuts 14 round spring kits so that the magazines would stand up on their edge. I sanded down the front lip of the floorplates because they fit my hand better that way.
Stock MagGuts Floor Plate:
Modified MagGuts Floor Plate:
I ride a bicycle for 95% of my transportation. These boxes are set up with a slot in the side to hold a locking cable. The cable does afford some theft protection, but I plan to do some modification to my bike bags to make the storage more secure.
I often need to transport my pistol and ammunition and these boxes are small enough to carry on my bicycle and not take up too much room in my bike bags. When I go the gun range, the lockboxes fit into my range bag that fits into a bicycle bag. And yes, I bicycle to gun ranges, sometimes as much as 20 miles away.
