The best way to store your guns?!

     We opened Sandy Run Arms & Ammo back in 2022, with the storefront not opening until October 2023.  Our ammuntion manufacturing department opened in April 2023 and now we make an assortment of ammunition, 9mm, 5.56, .300 blackout, and we have the .308 in testing as we speak.  Hopefully the .308 will be completed by the beginning of the summer.  But in order to make ammunition for all these calibers we had to come up with a way to test the different types of ammunition we make.  So we started to gain a lot of "shop" guns.  We quickly realized that leaning them on the walls or laying around on the tables in the vault was not the best practice.  Not to mention how difficult it became to keep up with the inventory.  They are in and out almost daily so accountablity was the final straw in deciding to find a solution for this. 

     The two finalists were companies, Hold Up Displays, and Gallow Tech.  Hold up Displays sells metal wall slats, but what ties this company together is the accessories they sell to hang and organize your inventory on, I'll touch on this later.  On the other end, Gallow Tech sells some wall slats but their big items seem to be ventilated metal storage lockers.  These look just like the ones we had at my old unit so naturally I wanted to go with those.  But when you run a business, it is not that easy, especially when you see the price on some of these things.  On the Gallow Tech locker we were looking at, it could hold 12 rifles vertical, 3 rifles horizontal, 8 handguns, included a lock system ($150 add), and was 84H x 42W x 15D.  This setup was going to run around  $2,900.00.  Now, this unit was 100% modular, so you can move things around to your liking.  On the other hand was Hold Up Display (metal slatwall).  This setup was going to be 8' tall and over 16' long, and includes 12 long gun storage racks, 2 horizontal hooks for long guns, 4 pistol holders, and 3 magazine holders (holds multiple mags of pistols or long guns).  Total for this setup was going to run aroun $3,400.00.  

     We opted for the Hold Up Display's model for a few reasons.  The main reason was the ability to effeciently expand the storage without investing a lot more money into it.  With 128 ft² of storage available to use for future expansion, it was an easy decision for us.  It is a bigger up front cost, but will be much cheaper as we move forward and need to add to our inventory here for "shop guns".  We didn't think we needed a locker inside a vault as well.  With solid poured and reinforced concrete walls and a roof, you would need a pound of Cemtex to get through.  Also, the footprint of the Gallow Tech was a bit larger than what we wanted.  Our gun vault is big but it fills up quick when you start stacking stuff against the walls.  I like the ability to move around easily on the inside without feeling crowded.  Plus on their website you can custom order the height and length for whatever size wall you have.  Their interactive custom wall builder app is very helpful, you get to see your wall in real time and add all the attachments wherever you want, total freedom of design at you fingertips.  

     The entire display arrived in 5 boxes, 4 were the slatwalls, the 5th box was the attachments/accessories.  I will say that they arrived within a week so make sure to have your game plan before you order.  The quality on everything was top tier.  Great finish and durable, which is great considering what we are about to hang on these.  We layed everythig out and that is when we realized we had a problem...all the slats were the same length.  This means there would be no interlocking sections and there will be a continuous 8' seam from top to bottom.  There were supposed to be 2' sections we install every other row.  This creates and interlocking look and design to the whole system and bonds the rows together.  A phone call and a few e-mails later, they got the parts to us to finish in a timely manner.  

     This wall was going to go in a vault with concrete walls, so the wood screws they supply would not work for this install.  We opted with 1" x 1/4" tapcon fasteners.  a full 8 hours later and we had the wall up and ready.  We had to use an SDS hammerdrill bit for this operation which created a lot of dust so have a plan to address that as well.  We ended up breaking one of the hammerdrill bits drilling through the metal wall into the concrete, so we ended up having to pre-drill the metal slats, then place them on the wall, then hammerdrill into the concrete through the pre-drilled holes, then run the Tapcon's in.  Could be a lot more work than you planned on, but if we can do it so can you.  

     Overall i think we were very pleased.  The finish on the slatwall was great, but it does scratch very easy, and when you get close you can see all the little scratches.  Thankfully, Hold Up Displays sends you screw covers that you can slide in to fill the slots to cover the heads of the fasteners.  We are excited to add more to this wall and see how it turns out.  Let us know what you think...would you go slat wall or locker style?  Until next time, stay safe and keep shooting.