How Your Performance Safe Is Rated
Before moving into the area of safe strength, you should know that there are two kinds of safe ratings which help you distinguish between burglary safes, fire safes, and burglary fire safes, and those are Construction Ratings and Test Performance Ratings. A safe that went through both areas of testing is considered to be performance rated. If you're looking for a particularly strong safe with the door and interior made up of thick metal plates, the best place to start is to look at the ratings provided by the Underwriters Laboratories. A UL-listed safe is the most reliable because only companies that have earned it could include it on their branded product after it meets construction specifications and independent testing by the UL team.
How reliable is it? Well, the testing procedure involves attempted break-ins and controlled fires to see how well the safe holds up. If the safe exceeds a checklist of characteristics for a certain rank, it effectively earns that rank. Gun safes, for instance, are labeled as Residential Security Containers (RSC) by the UL team if they pass the series of tests. The checklist to qualify a safe as an RSC is broken up into two categories of testing that meet construction and performance requirements, including all that you see in the table below.
| Construction Requirements | Performance Requirements |
|
Mechanical Tool-Resistance: A combination or key lock that should withstand infiltration by common tools. Steel Thickness: The steel thickness of the door and body should be at least 12 gauges. |
Timed Resistance: The safe undergoes continuous prying, drilling, hammering, and slamming for five minutes by UL technicians using hammers, wrenches, chisels, screwdrivers, and pry bars. Positioning: The unit is held in one position as resistance testing takes place. Nothing Untouched: All parts of the unit are subject to go through the same test as many times as required. |
Metal Thickness
All safes belong to two classes of construction that are meant to indicate the thickness threshold of the metal. The classes are B-Classification and C-Classification, and both deliver good protection relatively speaking yet they differ in their metal thicknesses.
B-Class safes have doors that are less than one inch thick and bodies less than half of an inch thick. C-Class safes, on the other hand, have doors that are thicker than an inch and bodies thicker than half of an inch. So, they are stronger, harder to penetrate and more robust.
Gun safes, in particular, need to have a metal thickness of at least three-eighths of an inch to protect your firearm. The strength of your gun safe relies heavily on the thickness of its steel plate. In the industry, the thickness of a metal is given a number of gauges for purposes of accuracy. Twenty-three examples are shown in the table below. The further down you go, the thinner the metal gets.
| Number of Gauges | Metal Thickness (in.) |
| 0000000 | 1/2 |
| 00000 | 7/16 |
| 000 | 3/8 |
| 0 | 5/16 |
| 1 | 9/32 |
| 3 | 1/4 |
| 5 | 7/32 |
| 7 | 3/16 |
| 9 | 5/32 |
| 11 | 1/8 |
| 12 | 7/64 |
| 13 | 3/32 |
| 14 | 5/64 |
| 15 | 9/128 |
| 16 | 1/16 |
Gun safes that can't be infiltrated by common mechanical tools have steel plates that are 11 gauges or less in thickness.
UL Listed Burglary Resistant Safes
Based on the safe's final performance, it will fall under one of ten categories, four of which are relevant to burglary-resistance: UL RSC, UL TL-15, UL TL-30, and UL TL-30x6, and each signifies a certain set of traits.
UL RSC Safes
Short for Residential Security Containers, RSC safes give good but limited protection against mechanical and electrical tools.
Construction Requirements:
- Must have a group II combination lock or type 1 electronic lock, as listed by UL.
- The door should be made up of three-sixteenth of an inch of steel.
- Body walls should have a metal thickness of twelve gauges.
Performance Requirements:
The door to the safe should withstand a combined total of five minutes of constant prying, drilling, chiseling, and hammering by the UL team.
UL TL-15 Best Protection Safes
These safes are a cut above UL RSC safes since they provide more support and can take a beating for much longer.
Construction Requirements:
- Must have a combination lock of group 1R, 1, 2M or type 1 electronic lock, as listed by UL.
- Should weigh 750 lbs. or be attached to another object - such as the inside of another safe - to keep it situated and supported.
- Body walls should be at least 1 inch thick and be able to withstand a tension of fifty-thousand P.S.I.
- To make room for electrical conductors, a hole of 1/4 inches or less should be made without exposing the locking mechanism or the door.
Performance Requirements:
The door to the safe should withstand a combined total of fifteen minutes of constant prying, drilling, chiseling, picking, and drilling by pressurizing devices and electronic or common hand tools.
UL TL-30 Superior Protection Safes
This class of safes provides everything that UL TL-15 classes do only with more resistance.
Construction Requirements:
- Must have a combination lock of group 1R, 1, 2M or type 1 electronic lock, as listed by UL.
- Should weigh 750 lbs. or be attached to another object - such as the inside of another safe - to keep it situated and supported.
- Body walls should be at least 1 inch thick and be able to withstand a tension of fifty-thousand P.S.I.
- To make room for electrical conductors, a hole of 1/4 inches or less should be made without exposing the locking mechanism or the door.
Performance Requirements:
The door to the safe should withstand a combined total of thirty minutes of constant prying, drilling, chiseling, picking, abrasive cutting, and drilling by pressurizing devices, power saws, and electronic or common hand tools.
UL TL-30x6 Extreme Protection Safes
This class of safes provides everything that UL TL-30 classes do only with more resistance for all sides of the unit.
Construction Requirements:
- Must have a combination lock of group 1R, 1, 2M or type 1 electronic lock, as listed by UL.
- Should weigh 750 lbs. or be attached to another object - such as the inside of another safe - to keep it situated and supported.
- Body walls should be at least 1 inch thick and be able to withstand a tension of fifty-thousand P.S.I.
- To make room for electrical conductors, a hole of 1/4 inches or less should be made without exposing the locking mechanism or the door.
Performance Requirements:
All six sides to the safe should withstand a combined total of thirty minutes of constant prying, drilling, chiseling, picking, abrasive cutting, and drilling by pressurizing devices, power saws, and electronic or common hand tools.
