Gun Storage Barrel Direction

SeekHer · Post by **SeekHer** » Thu Sep 10, 2009 9:14 pm

Seeing Denis' new safe brings this to mind...

A poser for all you gun nuts...

When storing your guns in the safe or in a vertical gun rack/stand do you puts your rifles
a) Butt down
b) Butt up

My family is about evenly split between the storage methods...

The same for the wall mounted, horizontal gun racks; some store them with the trigger down and humped up and others store them as normally seen with trigger up...

The barrel down argument is that any oils will not settle and "harden" in the action...Elmer Keith stored his guns that way...

Aglifter · Post by **Aglifter** » Thu Sep 10, 2009 9:34 pm

When you next clean a rifle, set it barrel down, on a stack of newspaper -- I think you'd be surprised how much "stuff" comes out.

Post by **randy** » Thu Sep 10, 2009 10:50 pm

Mine are stored barrel up simply because I don't like the idea of them standing on their muzzles and the gun locker I have does not have provisions (or room) to suspend the long guns above the floor.

blackeagle603 · Post by **blackeagle603** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 12:27 am

When it was still normal and safe to hang long guns on a wall rack I'd hang them bottomside up to keep the oil out of the stock. Figured that out at a young age hanging around the neighbor gunsmith's shop and seeing all the stock work he got repairing old dark oilsoaked wrists that had failed.

FelixEstrella · Post by **FelixEstrella** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 5:12 am

Alternating barrel up and barrel down -- allows for better packing density and hence more guns in the safe.

arctictom · Post by **arctictom** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 5:21 am

I have 5 gun safes ( 2 are for hand guns and don't count ) and 'play with' clean my firearms regularly not really an issue. I just like bbl up.

Post by **Denis** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 9:02 am

I vote for magic brownies.

With my old - too small - gun safe, I had to go with Felix' alternating up/down method just to get the guns in.

I am aware of the oil-running-down problem, so I store a freshly-cleaned gun barrel-down for a few days, with the muzzle resting on a bit of rag. If I have been over-zealous with my cleaning products, it leaves a slight oily ring.

What bothers me about permanent muzzle-down storage is that the guns just don't seem very stable. Keeping them properly upright requires some straps or bracing or such.

I'm sure I'll have fun figuring out how to set up the innards of the new safe.

mekender · Post by **mekender** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 10:07 am

I voted for magic brownies too.

At the moment, my rifles are stored in two places. 1) Two of them are stored in a hard sided, locking gun case that is padlocked and laying under the bed. 2) Others are stored barrel up in my closet with trigger locks on them.

I will have a safe by the end of the month so this method will change a bit obviously. I do really well to clean off oil from my internals so I dont think it will be a problem to store them barrel up.

Precision · Post by **Precision** » Fri Sep 11, 2009 1:40 pm

mine are stored barrel up.

I do a pretty good job of getting out excess oil/gunk when I clean them and the are quite unstable if put in upside down. However, if I acquire a few more long guns, I will be adopting the up/down method of stacking the least used long guns.

There are worse problems.

Drone 7 of lots more · Sat Sep 12, 2009 2:07 am

In my days as an armorer, the rifle racks were muzzle up, the MG's were stacked in the lockers muzzle up, the pistols were muzzle down due to the design of the M1911 rack and everything else was stacked in a WFGAS configuration. Of course it was all issued out on a regular basis and as a result cleaned on a regular basis so YMMV. And while normally a nice, happy go lucky corporal type in other situations, on turn in day I became... ASSHOLE INCARNATE, as it should be on turn in day.

Some folk learned to appreciate this come AGI time when I requested 0, that's ZERO, people from the first sergeant for weapons cleaning detail, they were clean enough already. This was back when AGI's still had teeth, not the candy-assed records reviews they became when I retired. Managed to receive the only ARCOM awarded in the division that year (2AD) for my NFN inspections in all areas. (The S2 absolutely sh1t br1cks when I turned down courtesy inspections from his office a month out, he was also the guy that wrote the award rec)

:jacked: okay, sue me.

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