Originally Posted by
Mauser308
Not what my point was - I was actually serious about building a gunsafe out of polystyrene that meets the requirements. If you've ever seen one of the really large size poly foundation blocks you'll know what I mean. Sods of things to handle (crane job) and I would not be happy if one landed on me... The time taken to cut into one would be ridiculous, as would the amount of room needed to house it.
The point I was making was unless you are getting the ali for free and are prepared to argue the point in the event of further direction being made on minimum accepted materials, I would not be wanting to wear the cost of purchasing materials and throwing my spare time at something like this. I can blaze up an ali box here, but just cannot see any advantage. Ali has a greater thermal coefficient over steel so I would be expecting more moisture issues and greater variance of temp inside the box for another point to be aware of. No real advantage saving weight either, if it's heavy enough you don't actually need to secure it for A-cat so save the hassle and cost of drilling into your house and buying fasteners.
There's various "accepted" means of securing firearms for A-cat which is part of the issue that is ongoing at the moment. I know of a few cases where guns have been removed from cheap racks by unscrewing the trigger guard, but they were marketed as approved and compliant with AO's requirements. That's been the driving force behind the 'improvement of security' idea which in itself is absolutely commendable, but a lot of solutions that were 'approved' under the old system won't be. That is the situation with appproved safes for endorsed security and the lack of clarity at the moment with what is pre-approved and what isn't. You can be sure that when the miniumum accepted standards decision is issued it won't be a chain wrapped around a hot water cylinder, and it would not surprise me to see 'XXmm thickness of mild steel' as per the endorsed requirements.
In that case, your ali box is not looking ideal.