Steelwater vs Liberty: more steel, or a listing and a dealer

Steelwater and Liberty are the clearest example in this category of two honest companies answering different questions. Liberty is the biggest name in American gun safes, sells through dealers, and its mid and upper lines carry UL Residential Security Container listings. Steelwater sells direct, publishes bolt counts, steel gauges and even usable interior depth, and carries no burglary listing at all.

We do not test safes. Everything below is each maker's published specification, or a named dealer's spec sheet where the maker does not state a figure, linked at the value it supports and checked 2026-10-17. Each brand carries a dated CPSC recall search on its card below.

The verdict

The published numbers

Two details in that table are worth pausing on. Liberty's own product pages say "UL-listed safe body" and "12-gauge steel, UL-listed body" without naming the standard; the explicit UL RSC wording comes from the dealer spec sheet. And Liberty publishes a "security level" on a ten-point scale (Level 3 for the Centurion, Level 6 for the Colonial, Level 7 for the Franklin) that is a Liberty ranking, not a certification. It is useful for comparing Liberty to Liberty and meaningless for comparing Liberty to anything else.

Burglary: a listing on one side, a bolt count on the other

A UL RSC listing under UL 1037 means the design resisted a timed attack with hand tools (UL's notice on the standard). At Level 1 that is five minutes and one technician, which is a lower bar than most buyers assume, and it is still the only burglary evidence in this market that somebody outside the company produced. Our UL RSC explainer has the detail.

Steelwater's answer is construction. The HD593924 publishes twenty 1.5 inch bolts, thirteen active and seven on the hinge side, in a 9-gauge body. That hinge-side count directly addresses the cut-the-hinges worry we cover in gun safe hinges explained. On published material it is a heavier safe than any Liberty in this comparison, and nobody independent has attacked it.

If you want the certification and the steel, this comparison does not contain the answer; that is the AMSEC end of the market, which we cover in Hollon vs AMSEC and best UL RSC gun safes.

Fire claims, and why neither brand gets credit for the number

Steelwater claims two hours at 1,875°F on the HD line and an hour at the same temperature on the SW line. Liberty claims 110 minutes at 1,200°F on the Franklin, 75 minutes on the Colonial and 40 minutes on the Centurion. None of those figures names a testing lab, and Liberty uses the word "certified" for the Franklin rating without saying who certified it.

So the honest reading is that the fire numbers here cannot be compared across the two brands at all. A higher temperature with a shorter duration, measured on a different furnace curve against a different pass criterion, is not a better rating; it is a different advertisement. Where a rating does come from an outside lab, we say so and we weight it; see gun safe fire ratings and best fireproof gun safes.

Capacity, and the one honest number in the category

The Steelwater SW592818 does something we have seen no other maker in our registry do: it publishes both the interior depth (14.25 in) and the usable depth (11 7/8 in), because the door mechanism takes the difference. It also prints a recommended capacity of 12 to 16 long guns against a maximum of 20.

That is the gap every buyer in this category runs into. A 24-gun Liberty and a 20-gun Steelwater will both hold far fewer scoped rifles than the label says, and our gun safe size guide uses roughly half the advertised figure as the planning number. Steelwater is the only brand here that admits it in print, and that transparency is worth something when you are choosing between spec sheets.

On raw volume, the HD593924 is the biggest safe in this comparison at 59 x 39 x 24 in, and the Centurion is the narrowest Liberty at 28.25 in wide. If a doorway or a closet is the constraint, read best gun safes for a closet before you compare anything else.

Warranty, and the way you actually buy each one

Liberty's warranty is transferable for the life of the safe and covers repair or replacement after a fire or an attempted break-in, with five years on the lock. The transferability is a genuine differentiator: it survives a house sale, which no other warranty in this comparison does.

Steelwater's warranty is a lifetime fire and burglary warranty with one year of full parts and labour, and it carries a condition worth reading twice: the burglary coverage requires the safe to be properly anchored to the floor. That is not a catch so much as a statement of how safes work, and it matches our own view that an unanchored safe is a heavy box. Our bolt-down guide covers the method.

The buying channel matters too. Liberty goes through dealers, which usually means delivery into the room and anchoring included, and it means you can look at the safe first. Steelwater sells direct, which means curbside freight on a 453 to 932 lb crate and your own arrangements from there. For an upstairs or basement installation, factor that in; how to move a gun safe and can a gun safe be laid down are the two pages to read before the truck arrives.

Who should buy which

Buy Liberty if: you want a UL RSC listing (Colonial or above, not the Centurion), you value a transferable lifetime warranty, you want a dealer to deliver and anchor it, or you want a UL-listed mechanical dial option without hunting for it.

Buy Steelwater if: published construction is your filter, you want the most steel and the most bolts for the money, you can handle freight delivery, and you are going to anchor it properly anyway. The usable-depth disclosure is a good sign about a company.

Skip the Centurion specifically if burglary resistance is the point. A 14-gauge body with no body listing is a long way below the Colonial, and the price gap between them is usually smaller than the specification gap. Our budget vs premium gun safes page works through where that money actually goes.