A threat that is commonly overlooked by most people who buy or already own safes is moisture. Unlike a fire or burglary, moisture will, overtime, deteriorate and or even destroy personal valuables. By the time you realize that you have a moisture problem, the damage has already been done. To prevent this from happening, there are devices that are placed in the safe called dehumidifiers.

Dehumidifiers are an essential accessory to a safe that helps protect your valuables such as guns, jewelry, and other precious metals from rust, corrosion, and pitting. They limit the amount of moisture within a certain area. There are a few different types of dehumidifiers designed for safes.

The first is a type of heating element. They are most commonly known as “Dri-Rods” or “Goldenrods”.  They function by using electricity to heat up the rod. They sit at the bottom of your safe and as heat radiates off the rod, it circulates the air throughout the safe preventing condensation from forming. This type of dehumidifier requires virtually no maintenance as it continually runs off of a very small amount of electricity.

Another type of dehumidifier is a desiccant type of dehumidifier.  Desiccant or Silica beads absorb the moisture in a given area. With these dehumidifiers, the desiccant needs to be dried out after prolonged use. In order to dry it out, it needs to sit in an oven for about twelve hours at 250°. After which time, it can go back into the safe.

An Eva-dry dehumidifier is a new an improved version of a desiccant dehumidifier. Eva-Drys contain water glass technology crystals. These crystals have a much higher absorption rate than traditional desiccant products.  These crystals are encased within the unit. There is an indicator on the front that lets you know if the Eva-Dry needs to be recharged. To recharge the Eva-Dry, simply flip out its plug and plug it into a wall outlet for 8-12 hours. The Eva-Dry has a life span for about 10 years.

For climates with higher humidity, it is a good idea to use any of the three units together. These items are available at a minimal cost and can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars worth of damage to your firearms and or other valuables.

Are you worried that one of your employees is coming after business hours to the store?  Do you have a feeling that the housekeeper isn’t always showing up when she says she is?  You trust your pool man, but you want to have control over when he can come to your house?

The answer to these questions is the new Logic system by Medeco high security locks.  The logic system gives you the ability to have control over whom and when someone can come into your business, home, and office.  Plus the ability to have an audit trail, so you know exactly who and when someone has come through the door.

The Logic system works with digital keys and digital cylinders.  Logic electromechanical cylinders offer convenience and security through digital masterkeying.  Using technology that combines digital encoding and physical components, Logic electromechanical cylinders function like standard mechanical cylinders with the added advantage that all rekeying is done electronically.  Keys can be instantly and easily deactivated or reprogrammed with different access permissions or schedules.

You have the ability to program schedules into the cylinders or keys.  Example is if you don’t want your housekeeper to have access to your home or business at night, you can program the key so it only lets her in during the day.  The Logic electromechanical cylinders provide comprehensive audit trails reports showing authorized access, attempted access, and access and expiration schedules.  The audit trail can be obtained from either the key or the cylinder.

Medeco is the industry leader in high security locks and keys.  With factory controlled key cutting and highly encrypted digital codes, Logic electromechanical cylinders offer superior protection against unauthorized key copying and electronic attacks.  If you give a key to the pool man and you fire him, all you have to do is take the key out of the system and he will no longer have access.   

While at the Shot show, I was attracted to a new product line by Sentry. They have worked with Maxtor (a major hard drive brand) and designed an external hard drive that provides protection against water and fire damage. They have also come out with three other units all designed to store media such as hard drives, flash drives, mp3 players, CDs, and DVDs.

A cool feature with these products is their USB connectivity. This allows the external hard drive to operate even while it’s sitting inside the safe.

In case of flood or fire, this is an ideal solution for businesses to protect important information. The computer might be gone but your files are safe. This is really a revolutionary product in the safe industry and I expect other companies to follow suit with similar products.

Shot Show 2008 was a lot of fun and a lot of work.  Very excited about the new products our manufactures have come out with for this year.

To start, the talk of the show was Amsec coming out with a new Two-Tone paint job on their BF and RF series Gun Safes that looks very good.  The safe has a matte black body and a gloss black door.  They also introduced a new light kit that goes behind the center divider in the gun rack.  The big news out of Amsec though, is that they are no longer going to carry the BF-6040 size, instead came out with a new size BF-6636 (65.25”h x 36”w x 26”d 1249lbs.)

Cannon has news of its own; they have come out with a new light kit that goes in the door.  It is going to be standard on the cannon series and traditional series gun safes.  A projected date for the light kit to be available is around May of 2008.  They also came out with two new gloss colors, charcoal grey and champagne.

Fort Knox didn’t come out with any new sizes, but surprised everyone with their new colors.  Back by popular demand is Mercedes silver very good look with silver detail.  The new premium colors are; Desert Rose, Champagne, Fusion Orange, Sage Green, Viper Yellow, and Flame Red.  They also introduced new graphics, the new Elite trim and Performance trim.

Gun Vault has come out with a new bio GV-1000b to go with the bio GV-2000b.  The new size is going to be available May 2008.  They also have a new size for their Gun Safes, GV-5926 (59”h x 26”w x 23”d).  This new size comes in a bio version or key pad.

All in all it was a very good show, lots of new products and new innovation that has all of us at Dean Security Safe Co. very excited for 2008.