Gun Safe Storage Solutions - Getting More Space in Your Safe!

Gun Safe Storage - Rifle Rods and Handgun Hangers Review

Ask any hunter or shooter out there, and it’s likely that the first complaint that they have about their gun safe is that it’s too small!  Rifle rods and handgun hangers have been out for quite some time, but the more I mention it to people; the more I realize that most don’t know about them and the additional gun safe storage space they can get when using them. Whoever decides how many rifles can fit in a safe must have a whole herd of single shot .22 rifles, because you will never fit the number of long guns in the safe that the manufacturer tells you that will fit, short of stacking them in like cord-wood and damaging them in the process.  The people who come up with these numbers must have never heard of accessories like rifle scopes, magazines, pistol grips, or other things that can eat away at your gun safe storage space very quickly. Hang your handguns and save valuable shelf space! When I purchased my safe, it seemed quite large…until I started to fill it.  Everyone has the scoped rifles, AR-15's, tactical shotguns and other aforementioned accessories that gobble up space.  With the provided dividers that are usually shipped with a safe, I found that you are lucky to even fill every other slot before slings, scopes, pistol grips, and other hardware start to interfere with each other.  If you DO get most of the slots filled, you pretty much have to be a Houdini to get a scoped rifle sporting a sling in the very back out of the safe without much clanging and banging. Rifle Rods and Handgun Hangers Rifle rods and handgun hangers made by Gun Storage Solutions are one of those ‘duh’ products that are so easy you can’t help but wonder how you didn’t think it.  Being a simple idea with no complex manufacturing means you can outfit your safe with many of these items for less than $100 and likely double the amount of gun safe storage space available to you. Rifle Rods incorporate a hook and loop end large enough to stabilize most any long gun. Rifle rods are 16” long and work on every long gun .22 caliber and up (special rods for .17 caliber are available).  The rods are nylon, which means they won’t damage rifling and they won’t soak up moisture or gun oils.  Each set of rods come with a section of Velcro fabric that you staple to the underside of your top shelf, allowing the hook and loop pad on the end of the rod to stick to it, holding your long gun in a vertical position.  I have used these for more than three years now and haven’t noticed any ‘fuzzing’ or decreased holding strength of the Velcro fabric at all. The supplied velcro pad simply staples to the underside of your top shelf. The rods enable me to store the rifles in a neat little row, meaning I only have to remove a maximum of two rifles to access any firearm in my safe.  In the small middle section of the safe, I maximized my gun safe storage and now have the ability to store 15 long-guns just in this space.  The only problem now is that because of the added ability to store more stuff, I'm now the go to guy for my other family members overflow pieces...its a rough life. 10 long guns are stored in this space with room for 5 more! So where do you put your handguns?  If you are doing it like I was, you had them on shelves propped up behind the rifles or laid down on valuable shelf space and likely, you couldn’t store your handguns neatly together.  The handgun hangers are just that, simply a rod to hang your handgun on.  Just like the rifle rods, these vinyl-coated hangers accept calibers as small as .22 and also incorporate a vinyl cap at the end for added protection (cap must be removed for .22 caliber usage). Rubber cap must be removed for .22 caliber usage. Most any make and model of pistol can be used on the hangers The only issue I had with the handgun hangers was when I tried to hang a Glock that had a red dot sight machined into the slide.  The hanger did not leave enough clearance and ‘binds’ on the top of the red dot.  I still hang the pistol on the hanger; it just requires two hands, one to keep the hanger on the shelf, and the other to remove the pistol. Handgun hanger binding on red dot sight. Regarding how large of a handgun you can hang, I have a 6" Smith and Wesson .44 that I've hung and also a long barreled Ruger MK-III hunter.  When delving into the 'foot long, five pound' category of wheel guns (Smith and Wesson 500 for example), you may run into issues of length and heft that might not work with a hanger, but I'm not certain. You may run into door closure problems with a pistol sporting an overall length much bigger than this Ruger For anyone fighting tight spaces and might be looking for a gun safe storage solution to free up some room, you owe it to yourself to check these out!  Find the rifle rods and handgun hangers linked right here.  Are you using these yourself?  What has been your experience?  Let us know on our Facebook page or in the comments below.