I am curious as more room may be needed.Safe,fire proof or non,or home made or wood or other.What and reasoning behind choice.
I am doing something soon and was curious as to what other folks have.

My father always had a custom built wood cabinet,I have used the cheap metal one from walmart(as at the time money was an issue),and a friend had a big safe from winchester that recently went through a fire and even though fire proof,guns and papers inside were damaged and at first winchester said they would stand behind their product and they maybe but way behind,so far they haven't been seen or heard from yet.

So that said what do you choose and why?

As I understand it, "fireproof" safes are only rated at a certain number of hours at certain temperatures. A serious house fire, I suspect would exceed these ratings. The real question is: what are you trying to protect against? A decent safe, properly mounted to a concrete floor would protect against all but the most serious thieves given the time necessary to defeat the safe or get it out of there. Fire proof is fairly obvious but see what I said above and read the "fine print"! A good home alarm system, and perhaps fire protection, would certainly help. Also good insurance! Living in Florida my firearms insurance does not cover loss from flooding. Papers should be kept in a safe deposit box at a bank.
Peter.

I have a Liberty Timber-Ridge 6' tall wide-body 60 gun safe with 3 shelves ( I added one ) for my many handguns, which is a great compromise of cost and features...and it weighs like 1000lbs empty. I have it bolted to a concrete floor to make it even more difficult to move. I bought it at GM on sale for $1200, regular price was $1700. I wish I would have kept my other 35 gun Liberty TR w/ 2 shelves. Oh well. BTW, having it on a concrete floor is a plus since the concrete acts like a huge heat-sink to absorb the heat from the flames, thus giving more time before contents are damaged.

Cotton

Go to the Sturdy Safe website, and look at the info they have. Especially look at their fire "proof" info.
Their products are first rate, and they are great to deal with.

www.sturdysafe.com

Link does not work for me.

Turk

Sorry, I miss typed, try it now.

I picked up a military surplus stainless steel utility locker with a class II combo-lock on it. I took out the lower shelves and put rifle racks in the lower portion of it. The doors have peg-board on them with hooks for handguns. I keep a big desicant pack on one of the shelves to keep the humidity down. I've heard that a low watt lightbulb left on will work also.

I think I need to move up to a vault.
My thoughts for a home made one are pour concrete walls and floor, and get a slab of prestressed to put a roof on it. Then put a vault door in.
Another idea was to put up sheet metal walls with fiberglass insulation sandwiched inbetween. This would probably be much easier to put into an existing room.