Homemade Gun Cabinet

H

Howdy Doody

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Well, I'm looking for ideas here. I want to build a gun cabinet on the cheap. I'm thinking of spending in the vicinity of $100.00 on materials. I'd rather make a simple cabinet out of wood, just for the fun of it. Something that will hold about 6 long guns, and a hand gun or two. I'm not in any way a carpenter of any sort, I made my living with nuts and bolts.

Just the wife and I in the house, no kids or grandkids to worry about. One of the long guns will be the HD gun. So I'm thinking no door on the cabinet. Also thinking of running a steel cable with padlock on the remaining long guns. I've recently been to a few local gunshops, and I think I can build one at least as good as some of the racks they use for used long guns.

Any ideas? Or better yet pictures of homemade low buck cabinets?
 
I don't know how low buck it was but my uncle made one for me.The wood you see is solid oak.What you don't see is you typical pine 1 by stuff.Back is plywood.It hold 8 long guns with 2 small cabinets and three drawers in bottom.Double locking doors with glass.
 
Running a cable through the guns isn't going to do a thing to prevent theft.
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Of course it will help prevent theft. However, it will not stop determined thieves if they are prepared and have a few minutes. Still, a cable is better than nothing at all. Let's keep things in perspective.
 
I don't know why but I had never considered a build it yourself gun cabinet. My husband and father just built a bunch of bookshelves so I know they can figure it out. Ours will have to be a bit more secure though since we have little ones in the house.
 
"Running a cable through the guns isn't going to do a thing to prevent theft."

I realize that. As I said we have no kids, my concern is other folks. We have many friends over from different clubs, and groups, etc. There is no concern these folks would try to steal anything, but would prevent them from picking them up, and possibly getting hurt. Cheap insurance if you ask me. I also have a spare tire in the car, A fire extinguisher in the kitchen, and full coverage insurance on the house and cars. I hope none of them are ever used. ;)

on edit: I'm not planning on any doors, hence the cable and padlock.
 
Here's a couple ideas:
Instead of a cable, you could have a board hinged and padlocked in front of the long guns. If you had divider boards or pegs between each gun, they would be locked in place.

This won't keep dust off the guns, so you may want to consider a lockable glass door instead. If you want easy access, you could have a fake lock plate with a hidden release around the back or on top.

I would probably use stained birch or oak plywood and matching hardwood for the face frame and trim. It would be hard to do for $100 using nice wood. MDF would be a low cost alternative; it doesn't warp like cheap plywood but you would have to paint it.
 
When I went to a flatscreen, the old 32" cabinet was obsolete. I'm removing the interior shelves and rebacking it with good plywood, stained to match, puttying the old screw holes, etc., and adding brackets and such. Should hold 20-25 guns, and cost is minimal. I seem to see similar cabinets at yard sales and shops for about $100, often beautiful wood and cabinetry work. I rely on an alarm system for the house, and just have a drawer lock on the cabinet.

Most of the guns are in the safe, just a few in the cabinet, and that's in a locked room. If you want to show a few off, fine, but a safe is what you really need to spend your money on if you don't have one yet.
 
Your options

The only thing you’ll gain by doing it yourself is that you’ll likely use real wood all around instead of glued on wood-like paper over particle board and a real plywood back instead of thick cardboard dyed brown to not obviously look like cardboard. Well, I suppose if it’s sold as a gun cabinet it won’t have a cardboard back.

As soon as you start buying birch plywood and good hinges and good latches and nice molding to make the corners look pretty and putting it together with good screws and counter-sinking the screws so you can cover the heads with wooden plugs and taking a few days with the walnut stain you’ll end up with a great cabinet and a chunk of change out of the pocket.

But it will be nice! You can show it off to your guests (as you stand there with one hand carefully casually covering the glitch at the upper left-hand corner) saying, “I made this myself”.

OR, you might scout the yard sales and especially estate sales for cabinets or furniture which can be readily adapted to be a gun cabinet, or even a real gun cabinet.

When all of the aforementioned fails you can then go buy a gun cabinet and show it off to your guests (as you stand there with one hand carefully casually covering the scrape on the side you made as you brought it into the house) saying, “I could have built one myself but didn’t have the time”.
 
:D ClayinTx :D You crack me up! As it happens, I *did* find a nice old gun cabinet in an antique shop. Bought it for the modest sum of $112.00! Holds 8 longuns behind a nice lockable glass door. That sets on top of two loackable shelves underneath to hold a sizable amount of various ammo.

Heck I couldn't have bought the material for $100.00! And I sure couldn't have built it so pretty either. It has a sorta warm golden glow to the wood.

It sure isn't a gun safe, but it does let me organize things a little better.
 
The cheapest do-it-yourself cabinet you can make that will still do a good job is an under-bed rolling cabinet. Essentially, it will be a big box with rollers and a hinged lid that rolls under the bed.
 
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Just sit down and draw a plan. I decided to make an ammo cabinet so I had somewhere to put all my stockpile and make it look nice with old war materials and make it look "neat". I could easily have not put the shelves in and made a back rack for long guns. Very simple just go to a furniture store and take mental notes and start drawing and playing.
 
I'd like to see someone make a "unique" gun cabinet. All the ones I see tend to look the same - wood framed glass doors on top; 1970's looking cabinet on the bottom - looks like something from Ethan Allen in the 1970's.

I've been toying with the idea of making the frame for one out of semi-finished logs (think log-cabin interior type surface) with a large sliding glass panel in front and glass panels on the sides using security glass. I know, overkill in some areas and weak in other areas. Plus, I don't have the tools, the skills or the knowledge to do this right....but, I wish I did.
 
My Dream

I would like to have a gun rack along one entire wall of my study. The bottom would be mostly open shelves, for books, ammo, etc and the top would hold the long guns.

Right now I am determined to pay off all my debt so I have been drawing the pictures/plans and hopefully in several months I will be able to build it.

I also thought about the cable and lock. I realize not everything can be made fool-proof, but we try to keep the fools away. I am very rarely away from the house for more than a few hours a day, at most.
 
Gun cabinet/locker

Hi all, First post but long time reader. I went a different route, my wife was worried about the grandkids and bought a 14 gun metal locker from a local sporting good store for us for christmas. After looking at it we watched the local newspaper and found two used metal wardrobes for $25 each they had 2 sliding doors, and they each had a shelf in the top but lacked any other shelving. I spent 1 day in the wood shop making shelves for one side of the cabinet and small racks for long guns on the other side. I reinforced the metal doors with 3/4 plywood for strength and attachment points for 2 small padlocks. They hold 14 guns and much more ammo as they were about twice the size of the store bought gun locker. They are not fire proof or burgler proof but I will know when someone has been in it. I probably have $75 max in each one incling the hardware.
 
Some sort of rack to hold the guns with a decent sized cable locking them in should be enough.
If some ones going to go through the effort to try break into your gun cabinet wood isn't going to pose much of a barrier.

Other wise it would take much to make a large cabinet out of Ply wood, or MDF.

It just depends on how nice you want it to look.
 
Had one in my antique shop a while back made from cherry with a tambour door like a rolltop desk.

There were 4 locking doors on the base and the upper section was 5' tall with room for 24 guns. The door was heavy but worked well. Had two locks on the bottom of the door.

When the door was raised, it went in a section behind the guns out of sight.
Still not secure as a safe but was a great looking piece of functional furniture.

BTW, Hello, I'm new here.:cool:
 
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