People often praise the extreme protection that a gun safe brings to your firearms. But a noticeable matter arises among the gun owners community: Do gun safes cause rust? If you are unaware of this topic, check out this post to discover!
Do Gun Safes Cause Rust?
In short, YES! However, the pace of rusting in your gun safe depends on the type of materials of its interior and other things. For more details, scroll down.
What Are The Causes Of Rust?
There are some factors leading to rust in your gun safe, including:
Environment: Different places will have significant temperature changes, which considerably affect humidity and moisture. It will be best if you keep the humidity level around 50% all the time. As such, your gun safe is likely to stand rust effectively.
Debris, dirt, and dust: If there is a lot of debris, dirt, and dust appearing in your gun safe, it also results in the higher potential of rust.
Human contact: For those who do not know, sweat, oils, and acids from your human skin are corrosive. Once you touch inside your gun safe, moisture will combine with oxygen to produce oxidation and cause rust on a metal surface.
For those wondering: “Will guns rust in a gun safe?” – we have to say that they will. Rust tends to eat away the metals inside your gun safe, cause discoloration, and then damage to your guns as a result.
Do Gun Safes Cause Rust?
How To Prevent Rusting?
Now you’ve understood the potential causes of gun rusting. We will propose several measurements in this section.
Tracking Temperature and Moisture
This is the simplest way to prevent rust without replacing the interior of their safe. Yet, you have to be diligent enough to track temperature and moisture every single day. Let’s utilize an indoor hygrometer to monitor the temperature and make sure that it stays consistent.
A Hygrometer Is Useful In Tracking The Humidity Level
Once the environment inside the safe is either too hot or too humid, then you have to think of another method to fix this situation.
Covering Your Guns In A Fine Layer Of Wax
For this method, the first and foremost step is to disassemble and clean them all. Don’t forget to remove the grease and sweat inside the firearms. After that, you can coat the firearms in wax carefully to protect them from corrosive agents reaching the steel parts.
Proper Wall Placement
It is extremely essential to put your gun safe in an ideal location to prevent rust effectively. And you should avoid the walls being an exterior part of the building. Have you ever wondered why?
Well, these exterior walls suffer from significant heat changes, affecting your gun safe well. Instead, let’s position the safe back against those interior walls where it maintains a constant temperature well.
Be Wise While Choosing A Place To Put Your Gun Safe
Dehumidifier
Moisture buildup inside can easily lead to rust, so what to put in gun safe to prevent rust? Well, you need to consider equipping your gun safe with a high-quality dehumidifier.
It works well on maintaining the structural integrity inside your gun safe. To be specific, it ensures a consistent environment without moisture by reducing high humidity.
Purchase A Dehumidifier To Keep The Gun Safe From Rust
It is the most effective way that does not take much effort. However, it does need your regular check to determine when there is a risk of developing rust. Moreover, using a silica gel is also as effective as a dehumidifier.
Deep Cleaning
Deep cleaning is always the optimal option to ensure that rust cannot appear in your gun safe. Let’s remove your guns and other valuables and give them and even the interior environment of your gun safe a deep cleaning.
For those guns having new rust around, you can soak the nylon cleaning brushes in a cleaning solution to scrub the rust away. Remember to flush out the excess water afterward.
As oils from the skin might pass through your weapon, you should wear gloves throughout the cleaning process. Do this regularly to keep the rust development under control and have a timely solution.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do Gun Safes Always Need A Dehumidifier?
Not really. Nevertheless, you also need to consider the humidity level in your gun safe before investing in a dehumidifier. To do this, let’s check out three factors: the local climate, the frequency of using the safe, and the location of a gun safe.
Specific conditions will decide on whether to purchase a dehumidifier or not. When you live in a dry climate, this equipment is unnecessary as the humidity is quite low.
On the contrary, a humid environment allows for a high air moisture level, and a dehumidifier is responsible for keeping it constant in the gun safe.
Besides, if you do not use the safe frequently, once a week, for example, there will be no constant airflow circulating in your gun safe. It means that the humidity level will rise when the air is still. And that’s why you need a dehumidifier in this case rather than while not using the safe often.
How Often Should I Clean Gun Safe?
As mentioned above, you had better clean your gun safe frequently, and a one-month period is quite perfect. Before cleaning, remember to check and take all the interior out of your gun safe.
While cleaning, you can take a vacuum to handle until there is no gun powder or debris left. After that, you should check whether the fire seal between the door that blocks moisture has been damaged yet or not.
Clean moisture residue in all the corners and hinges of your gun safe door before closing the door.
The Bottom Line
Has our article on “Do gun safes cause rust?” thoroughly replied to all your concerns yet? We do hope that the answer is yes.
Overall, it is not really tricky to prevent rust buildup in your gun safe is not tricky, but it needs proper cleaning methods and storage. There will never be too late to do this. Good luck!
