In this episode of Around the House with Eric G, we sit down with Tom Kubiniec, CEO of SecureIt Tactical and one of the nation’s leading experts on gun safety, firearm storage, and home security. With decades of experience designing military armories for elite units like the Navy SEALs, Tom brings his unique perspective to civilian gun owners who want to protect their families while maintaining secure and responsible firearm access.

Tom challenges the traditional gun safe industry, pointing out why most safes are little more than “metal boxes” that don’t deliver true firearm security. Instead, he introduces the innovative idea of decentralized storage—strategically placing fast-access safes throughout the home so your firearms are both secure and accessible when needed.

Key topics we cover include:

• Why most gun safes fail to provide real security or fire protection.
• How decentralized firearm storage increases safety and accessibility.
• Practical home security tips like motion-sensor lighting and making your home less attractive to burglars.
• The dangers of hidden firearms in homes with children—and safer alternatives for responsible gun owners.
• Why secure firearm access is just as important as locking things away.

Whether you’re a long-time gun owner or just someone interested in home safety, this episode offers valuable insights that go far beyond the basics of locking up firearms. Tom’s mix of practical advice, humor, and straight talk makes this a must-listen for anyone serious about responsible gun ownership and home security.

👉 Tune in now to learn how to better protect your firearms, your home, and your loved ones with SecureIt Tactical’s smarter storage solutions.

Takeaways:

• Tom Kubiniec emphasizes the absurdity of traditional gun safes, claiming they're just metal boxes that completely miss the point of actual firearm security.
• Decentralized storage is the way to go; hiding firearms in multiple locations is smarter than cramming them into one big safe like a game of Tetris.
• Motion sensor lights are your best friends for home security; light up your house like a Christmas tree to scare off any would-be thieves.
• Tom hilariously points out that a big safe is like telling thieves, 'Hey, look at all my valuables!' while decentralized storage keeps them guessing.

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Monument Grills
• Secure It Tactical
• INC. MAGAZINE

To get your questions answered by Eric G give us a call in the studio at 833-239-4144 24/7 and Eric G will get back to you and answer your question and you might end up in a future episode of Around the House.

Thanks for listening to Around the house if you want to hear more please subscribe so you get notified of the latest episode as it posts at https://around-the-house-with-e.captivate.fm/listen

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We love comments and we would love reviews on how this information has helped you on your house! Thanks for listening! For more information about the show head to https://aroundthehouseonline.com/

Information given on the Around the House Show should not be considered construction or design advice for your specific project, nor is it intended to replace consulting at your home or jobsite by a building professional. The views and opinions expressed by those interviewed on the podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Around the House Show.

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Foreign.

Welcome to around the House with Eric G. Your trusted source for all things home improvement.

Whether you're tackling a DIY project, hiring it out, or just trying to keep your home running smoothly, you're in the right place.

With over 30 years of remodeling experience, certified kitchen designer Eric G takes you behind the scenes with expert advice, industry trends, and the latest innovations for your home.

Home.

It's everything you need to know without the fluff.

Today on around the House, we're diving into an important topic.

Gun safety.

We'll be exploring practical tips and insights to ensure safety for everyone.

Whether you're a firearm owner or simply want to stay informed if firearms aren't your thing, we completely understand and we value every one of you tuning in.

However, safety is a priority for all and gun safety is a key part of that conversation.

Join us as we share knowledge to help keep our community safe and informed.

Now, let's get to the show.

Now here's your host, Eric G. Welcome.

To the around the House show, the next generation of home improvement.

I'm Eric G. Thanks for joining me today.

This hour is brought to you by our friends over at Monument Grills.

If you're looking for that brand new barbecue, check them out@monumentgrills.com and I am so excited for this conversation today because we really haven't done it in the history of the around the House show, which I think is crazy.

And when I get an opportunity to talk to experts, it's always fascinating conversation.

Today we got Tom, Tom Kubernick, CEO of Secure It Tactical.

Tom, welcome to around the House.

It's good to be here.

I heard about the podcast and getting booked on it and I was very excited.

This is, this would be a good conversation because again, I don't, yeah, I don't do a lot of, I do a lot of home improvement work, but I don't do a lot of podcasts.

I do a lot of hunting and more firearms based podcasts.

This will be good.

It'll be fun.

Thanks, man.

You are such an expert out there when it comes to dealing with home security.

And home security comes down to even some of the most simple things inside your house to be ready for something going badly.

Yeah, it does.

We take.

My background is defense.

I've been, I've been building military armories for 23 years.

I'm considered the leading authority.

Small arm storage, armory design.

I've done design work for all the SEAL teams, U.S. army Special Forces.

We do all the U.S. embassies in Europe and The Middle East, Marine Corps, most of the military groups use our products or use our services.

But I've been in that space for a long time.

And it was pretty surprising coming into this because the gun storage industry history is more based on how to bend metal than how to actually secure firearms.

And it's, they don't consider the firearm when designing a safe.

What they're making is a metal box with a whole bunch of little V's in it.

And they'll say, we fit 40Vs in here.

So it's a 40 gun safe.

Let's say it holds 17 guns.

And can you actually get to them if you had to?

No.

Is it secure?

Not really.

Is it fireproof?

Not at all.

So it's, it's been a, it's been a fun ride.

We're, we've been, we're growing very quickly.

INC. MAGAZINES FASTEST GROWING companies in America twice in three years.

And I've got a great team and yeah, it's just, it's been a fun, good ride.

And so let's.

What do you, what are the concerns that most people have, do you think, when it comes to security, there's so many levels we can talk about?

Well, I think first off, let's just get into the basics for gun owners out there.

I think kids, people coming over, putting your weapon in a secure place that'll keep the children out or teenagers or whatever else, or just thievery in general, but still have it accessible that you need to get at it.

If someone's kicking your door at 1 o' clock in the morning, you don't want to be sitting there, getting underneath the bed, grabbing the box of, of ammunition, trying to load it up while that person's running down the hall at you.

It's.

There's so much data out there and we've taken a deep dive.

But people, this idea that I've got a big safe in my basement, but I'm gonna keep one gun under my bed or keep a gun in your drawer.

If you have kids, young kids, they're gonna know where the guns are.

And that's.

There's been so many videos done showing where people walk in, they ask the kids, oh yeah, I know where it is.

There's no reason to have an unsecured firearm in your home.

We can demonstrate that a proper fast access gun safe provides much faster access than a hidden gun.

Dramatically faster.

When you follow Our methodology and our protocol, we operate under an idea that every firearm needs to be secured.

And when I say secured I mean out of sight.

I don't, I'm not a fan of trigger locks.

I'm not a fan of any system that allows the gun to be visible.

A, it's a magnet for kids or thieves and B those locking systems are far too slow.

Every everything we make for the consumer side is considered a classified fast access from our biggest answer safes down to our smallest fast boxes.

If you're standing within a few feet of the safe, I'm sub 2 seconds, sub 1 second.

In many cases of being armed at a high ready or armed armed in a low ready position, it's very fast access.

Additionally, we look at firearm storage in a home very different the gun safe industry.

If you look at the ads, they talk about heritage and legacy and passed down from generations and pride of ownership Americana.

They've got this big safe in this beautiful room with a river rock fireplace and a pool table and a big wall.

And out the window is there's a Rocky Mountains.

It's just a multi million dollar kit.

And I'm looking at these ads, I'm going, are you out of your mind?

Why would you advertise or tell people that a safe is a showpiece?

Think about it, it's crazy.

The number one, the first priority for security, the ultimate security is secrecy.

You're going to buy like all of our gun safes are smaller, modular.

Everything we make is designed to be discreet.

You come into my home, you would never know I own firearms.

I have a pretty extensive firearms collection and I'm never more than two seconds, two and a half seconds from being armed in my home.

But you would never know it because everything is discreet.

The other moniker is you hear when you walk into a gun safe dealer.

If you're shopping, buy the biggest safe you can afford because you're going to grow into it.

That's just nuts.

Would you tell a kid getting out of college, buy the biggest car you can find because you're going to grow into it.

You'll grow into that Ferrari.

Yeah, buy what works for you right now.

If you get additional firearms, get another safe.

We use the term decentralized storage.

We pioneered that really with the Marine Corps.

When they're looking at their reaction teams to base readiness, when they're looking at threats.

This is post 9 11, this is quite a few years ago.

And the idea of breaking up this big armory into smaller locations that are strategically located closer to where the threats are going to be.

We look at a home, standard home that has a big gun safe will have a big gun safe in the basement or in the den.

There may be a gun hidden in a closet or in a desk next to your bed.

Our methodology is when a thief breaks into your home, what happens?

So we look at all the crime data.

Thief breaks into your home.

They're going to master bathroom, master bedroom, the closet, home, office, den, dining room.

They're out of the house.

They're in and out of the house in less than nine minutes.

They're looking for easy to grab things they can sell quickly.

Prescription drugs is number one.

That's the master bathroom.

Then they're looking for jewelry.

Then they go to home office.

They can look for any kind of quick electronics.

Dining room for silver.

They're out of the house very quickly.

So when you look at firearm storage, a lot of people want guns in their bedroom.

It's really an unsecured, most unsecure room in your home.

We recommend one firearm in a fast access safe under your bed or next to your bed.

No more than that.

Next best place in your house to secure valuables, including firearms, is your kitchen.

Thieves ignore kitchens.

It's one of the most secure rooms in your home.

Nobody wants to steal your food.

So we look at, if you look at my home, in my kitchen pantry is a pretty good sized pantry.

I've got one of our agile six gun cabinets.

I just got part of my collection stored in there.

But I also have a personal defense AR15 that is set up and ready to roll.

Also there's an exit point to the home.

So in an event of a home invasion or break in, I can get armed and make the decision to I'm gonna get out of the house.

I mean, everybody looks at security and look at defending your home.

If you can run, you run from a firefight.

That's not a fight I want.

No.

Regardless of what I'm carrying is unless my kids are home and I've got to protect them, I'm getting out.

Then I look at the closet next to your front door.

Thieves ignore closets.

I've got a small cabinet in that closet in there.

I've got a couple of rifles, there's old lever guns.

But I've also got a pump shotgun and another AR15.

Somebody's at my front door.

I don't want to let them in.

They want to get cute sub.

Two seconds.

I'm armed, I'm ready and there's a whole process that we go through but simply decentralize your storage.

Don't put everything in one place.

The other big advantage of this is if somebody breaks into your home and they're well organized and they know you're gone for the weekend and they've got all the time in the world, eventually they're going to find something of value, they're going to steal it, they're going to be gone.

If you've got a great big gun safe, they're going to open the safe and I'll talk about that in a minute.

But I can open up any gun safe in America for the most part and remove a gun in 18 seconds.

I know nothing about safe, I know nothing about locks.

But if you've got a big safe with 35 guns in it, you're going to lose them all.

Yeah.

When you decentralize your storage if they find a fast box, if they find one of the cabinets got a couple of rifles in it, they're like cool, we got something and they're gone and and you've lost two of your 36 guns.

Additionally, if you've got a fire in your house, the risk of your house burning to the ground is almost impossible.

When you look at actual fire data today, sure 90 was it 94% of all fires occur in the kitchen, are contained within a pot on the stove or within the oven.

Insurance data drives all this and fire claims are smoke damage app Actual open flame heat damage in a home is extremely rare but in the event of an open flame fire a fire rated gun safe is going to give you about three minutes of protection.

That's it.

A 30 minute to a one hour safe is a we've demonstrated about three to five minutes.

Wow, there's the fire ratings isn't is nonsense when you decentralize though you've got guns stored all over your house so you're the risk of you losing guns is extremely rare but the actual rate of losing guns to fires is almost non existent.

The fires the gun safe industry puts out this big thing about hey look, fires protect your guns.

Name all these stories.

Actual reality is when it does happen like the fires in California, there was nothing left.

The safes were melted, there was nothing.

There's in a true raging fire.

These gun safes offer again three to five minutes of protection at the most.

We do make a true safe, true fire safe.

We made it to prove a point.

It's a double walled steel safe filled with cement.

It does give you a decent fire protection but it's incredibly expensive and impossibly heavy.

It's required.

We will install it.

We will not let you install it.

It's too heavy and it is a true vault for your home.

But people, we did it to prove a point.

Lightweight modular safes are just much easier.

Yeah, Tom, and I'll tell you my personal experience here, and I've never talked about this on the radio.

I made some pretty big errors probably 13, 14 years ago with a quick access gun safe.

And I put it in a poor location, top shelf of my closet.

Was trying to keep it away from girlfriend's kids.

We were having some home invasions in the neighbor in the neighborhood.

So I thought, okay, I'll put it up there.

I was moving out of that house.

I went in, reached up tippy toes to grab my gun out of there so I could pack it up, put it in the case, unload it, dropped it went off.

No kidding.

Wow.

Yeah, that 40 hit me right in the middle of the chest.

That was not.

Yeah, wow.

To me, having the right situation and preventing accidents like that from happening.

And it was my mistake.

I pulled it out, I caught the little metal sheet metal lip of the edge where the door comes down.

It was the one where you put your hand in and I reached in there, it spun the gun out of my hand, dropped off and it was a brand new gun that was defective and no safety, landed on the shelf below, went off.

And that was my mistake.

And I'm not going to sit here and blame a safe company or a gun manufacturer, but that was a tough road back.

But having the right safety with this, having the right situation, that could have gone a lot worse.

I'm here to thanks to some great doctors, but this is a serious deal to me because I want to make sure that the people out there that are caring, that are want to be safe, that they have all the opportunity to do that and to be able to enjoy their toys.

Absolutely, absolutely.

The other piece we'll just throw out early is if you make the decision to own firearms and not everybody should.

If you're going to make that decision, that's a change in how you live your life.

And it is a change.

It is a serious commitment change.

I would also anybody who carries firearms or owns them is take a like a T triple C combat medic training course and carry a proper first aid kit, which we're talking about tourniquets, chest seals, the ability to stop bleeding.

It's, it's training that everybody should have because in, we live in a world where there are bad people and bad things can happen.

And it puts you.

Whenever there's a big crisis, you're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem.

And meaning you can either help or you better get out of the way.

And it doesn't take that much to be in a position to help.

And again, if you're going to own firearms, I think you should be out.

You should have the skill set and the materials to deal with every aspect of firearms ownership.

And first aid is one of them.

It's a, that's a heck of a point.

Heck of a point.

And those first aid things.

And if you've got the training, it's just like any other training you do.

If you've got the training, when it comes down to it, you'll get into muscle memory and you can help other people.

And what's not great about that?

No, that's, that's exactly, it's, you know, you feel good.

I went through the training I got it's again, sharing stories of not always the best way of doing things.

I did the training, got certified and I was talking to a friend of mine who does this training.

I'm like, gary, I don't have a medic kit.

He looks at me, goes, dude, you did the training like eight months ago.

I said, he sells me.

I said, I need two, I need one for my car, I need one for my barn.

So it was just, we put them together.

But you know what, it's just nice to have.

And everywhere I go, if there's a crisis somewhere, I'm in a position to save someone's life.

And it's good to deal with, it's good to have.

You'd mentioned muscle memory and there's, that's something we can talk about.

We are the pioneers of fast access, true fast access gun safes.

And we're also the first company to ever talk about training with your safe.

Everybody gets a firearm, they go to the range.

If you're a handgun shooter and you're getting trained, you're gonna, you're gonna learn about how to draw, aiming, all the motions, all the mechanics of using a firearm and they're gonna have you practice in your home dry fire techniques.

And you want to be again, muscle, you want to build the muscle memory because in a high stress environment you're not going to be able to think or you'll struggle to, you're going to lose fine motor skills.

You need to rely on instinct and instinct is built through repetitive training.

So we have a whole Protocol with our safes where you train with the safe.

If you've got my fast box under your bed, it's a very popular product.

Every night when you go to bed in the dark, you reach down, you do the combination by touch, open the drawer, then you close it.

You that every night for about 45 days, then do it once a week.

You're now in a position, regardless of what's happening, without even thinking, you're going to have that safe open in less than a second and you're going to be behind your bed in a defensive position.

We've also just released and this is a, this was a big breakthrough for us.

We'll see if the industry picks up on it.

We're going to formally roll it out.

It's.

We have it now.

We haven't done the big formal launch because we didn't want to wait.

HSFA locking, high stress, fast access locking.

We hosted a training event where I'm very big.

If you're going to firearms train, don't just own them, you got to shoot them.

You got to train, work with the best.

So we hosted a training event at Summit Point Training center with Gary Melton at Paramount Tactical.

Part of the training was force on force in a shoot house using simunition.

So it's a live fire.

Simunition is a, it's a fake bullet.

But it hurts.

It hurts enough where you're at a primal level.

You don't want to get hit.

It's like a paintball a little smaller.

And we were doing these scenarios where we had safes and simulating a break in an office or breaking in a home.

And what we found is in the stress of the moment and this was even people knew this wasn't real.

But we tried our best to make it as chaotic as possible.

People couldn't do the combinations because they didn't have the fine motor skills to press the small buttons on a gun safe.

And some of the gun safes and we had several different ones there have these like logoed really awkward shaped locks that are like cool or part of their brand image.

People could not open them.

And wow, I'm watching the videos of this and going through, back through the data because at the time we're just kind of laughing at people struggling and it really resonated with me.

So I went, I merely sat down and designed hsfa.

So it's a much simpler lock with much bigger buttons.

And what it's designed to do, it's designed to give you the fastest possible access when you're not at your best.

Because unless you're in the military and you've been through stress inoculation training, I don't care how tough you are.

If all of a sudden a door gets kicked in and someone is shooting at you or shooting at a family member, you're going to be in fight or flight.

You are going to struggle with fine motor skills.

It's going to happen to all of us.

But we're trying to design systems that give you the opportunity to do what you know how to do when you're not at your best.

Yeah.

Because your brain is not thinking about okay, here's the combination.

I got to do this.

I got to push a button.

I got a twist or whatever that safe is that they're doing.

Makes perfectly good sense that.

Yep.

Your brain's going to other things and you better have it just where it's muscle memory.

Yeah that's.

And we.

What's we always the pads are numbered.

But it comes down to a shape.

It comes down to a pattern.

All I've got a whole wall of our agile safes in my office at my home.

And I walk up and I just up.

I don't even know numbers.

I know the numbers but it's a pattern that I can do so fast I don't even think about it anymore because I open them every day.

Smart.

Smart.

So when it comes into we get to safety there.

We get to of course having something like that.

But it's funny.

I have as a designer I have designed three or four big what I would call your magazine gun showrooms before where they took a large basement maybe it was a basement living area or whatever.

So the guys can play cards in there in those.

We see them all on TV shows and magazines.

But you've really got my head spinning on that is not the best case scenario.

That is a entertainment room but really not the best storage room.

And it's interesting to think that way.

And it's perfectly good.

It can be.

It can be.

We build a lot of gun rooms.

We do a lot.

Lot of secret rooms and especially a new home construction.

We can.

If we can get in prior to the house being built.

There's so much you can do and you don't need a lot of space to store a lot of guns.

But more enduring secret of hidden rooms.

But even the home gun room is growing.

It's now of our retail business probably 25% of our business right now is building gun rooms.

And we our military armory design group that's they design armories.

They also will design home gun room.

So if somebody's got a room they want to do photograph, measure the room, give us some measurements, give a photograph and they'll draw up.

It's not architectural.

It's closer to.

If you're getting a kitchen done and they give you the drawings of what the cabinets.

Has your room with your guns on our system all drawn.

And it's pretty, it's.

It looks pretty good.

But what I always recommend for people when you're doing a home gun room is the exposed wall or the hallway door, whatever that is.

Do that with two by sixes.

Do it.

Reinforce that and then use a six pan.

Like your house has six panel wood doors.

Just get an exterior grade security door.

They're about £400 but they don't look like anything.

They just look like a door.

Because the big vault doors you can do that.

But you're telling everybody, oh there's something of value here.

And a good steel door is going to give you about the same level of security.

And then the other the ultimate.

And we've done a lot of these in Texas, a lot of these in Oklahoma where they build the shelters for tornadoes is they drop a conex box like it's like a container, a shipping container or a half a container.

They drop it in underground with ramp stairs going down.

And we build armories.

We've done a lot of rooms like that.

That's the ultimate in fire security.

Nobody knows it's there.

Oh yeah.

That's why I'm a fan of Murphy door.

My buddy Jeremy owns that company.

They make the bookshelves that swing out.

We use here.

Yeah, I use them here at the office.

We have a large armory and nobody.

It looks like bookshelves.

I'm actually going to be ordering a Murphy door from my house.

Reach out to him for me.

We had talked to those guys a while ago at shot show and we proposed offering their doors through our armory design group or home design group.

And they never gotta make something happen there.

I like the product.

Yeah.

My home office is going to be just big bookshelves and I've got this.

It's an alcove.

So I got about a foot and a half.

I'm just going to open the bookshelves up and guns on again.

Yeah.

Is it high security?

No, but it is high stealth.

Nobody's going to know it's there.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It was funny.

I See him every year down about the same time that you guys are doing shot show.

I'm down there for the builder show in Las Vegas at the same time.

And so this year when I was down there, they had put seven or eight of those Murphy doors in the John Wick experience that they had down there.

And so we got a pre tour of it before it had opened.

It was a week before it opened up.

And they were using them in there to hide rooms and everything else.

And it was fun to see that in such an application like that.

And I just.

It's so great to work that I'll make sure and get you guys connected.

That's easy.

Yeah.

We talked to my shot show a couple years ago and it's one of those things where it's.

We build a lot of gun rooms.

I'd love to say, hey guys, I'm not.

I don't need to make money on it.

It's just.

I think it's a good solution.

I do like them.

I think they're well made.

But yeah, it's a good home improvement project.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Your listeners will be happy to know that.

Yeah, I'm the CEO and founder and owner of this company.

But I also do all my own home repair work.

My home.

I do my own renovation work.

I've been doing it my whole life.

It's.

My therapy is I'm getting to a point in life where I don't necessarily want to paint.

I don't mind.

I don't.

There's a thing about painting.

I'm on me right now.

I'm doing it right now.

And I'm.

I hate it about painting is.

I don't want to start my.

We.

My parents lived across the street from me.

We owned the house and my mom moved in a nursing home.

We're going to sell the house.

I was going to paint one room.

I ended up painting the whole place.

Because once you start painting, if you have the right music going, you're in the zone.

You can zen out to it.

But I much prefer woodworking and the more craftsman kind of stuff where I can just take time, go slow and just.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

So I got to ask you.

We'll get back to storage here.

But.

So if you had to pick, would you rather do drywall or painting?

Painting.

I tell you what, drywall is a young man's game.

Yes, it is.

I can do drywall patching.

But to watch good drywallers, we did a major three bedroom, a three car garage with an apartment above attached to Our house.

Many years ago, I lived in California, and the day the drywall guys were going to show up, our builders just like, tom, get your kids.

My kids are little.

Everybody out of the house.

When these guys show up, they're cut from a different cloth.

You don't want to be here.

I was laughing, so I stayed.

I just watched them.

These guys were unbelievable.

I looked at this going, this got to be a four day job.

This was a lot of work.

They were done and there's a lot of them, but probably five hours and drywall's up.

Yeah, it's.

I was watching guys at the beach house that we were working on, and I was watching them on the cameras that we had, and these guys were taking 5, 8, 4 x 12s, just shoving their arm up to the ceiling and hanging a sheet up there and getting it screwed in by themselves.

And I'm just like, you are monsters.

I can't.

No.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And there's always the kid who's sitting there walking sheets up a ladder for this and just up and down that ladder all day with three sheets on his back and no better workout in the world.

But God bless him.

Not for me, brother.

I will dry.

I'll drive the gray doll.

I'll.

That's.

That's where I'm at now.

But when it comes to painting, I hate cleanup.

That's probably the worst part of it, just sitting.

Yeah.

We're in a world now, though, where so many people just throw everything away.

It's a shame because the move to latex, my biggest problem with painting, because I actually painted houses when I was a kid, I had a little business.

That's what I did in the summers when I was probably 17, 18.

The move away from oil based paint.

Back in the day, if you bought good quality oil based paint, it was a pleasure to.

You could just.

In doing trim, doing windows and everything.

There was an art to getting that to lay down.

It felt like you're pinstriping cars.

Yes.

And now with latex paint to make it work, you have to go so fast to keep that wet edge.

You have to be moving so fast.

To me, I always seem like, rush race, you gotta.

I'm a perfectionist with that stuff.

Yep.

And I find it frustrating because I would rather pretend I'm some famous car striper and just do that perfect bead down the window.

Absolutely.

I love that young guys don't know.

The pleasure of painting with good quality oil base.

Yeah.

But that's awesome.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

No, absolutely.

And if you got it to lay out, you had the right brush.

It just laid out like glass.

And it's a whole different ball game.

And brushes were.

Sable, brushes were.

They were expensive.

You took care of.

I still have paint brushes I had when I was 17 that are oil brushes.

I don't reuse.

I'm not getting rid of them.

Because the more you use them, the better they get.

Yeah, the auto paint's gone the same way.

I'm actually restoring 66 Ford Falcon, which I'm getting real close to paint.

And that's my current.

I painted cars in the 80s briefly.

I haven't painted one since I did in high school.

I did in high school.

So I took auto body class because I was doing hot rods.

And.

And.

Oh, by the way, I'll tell you this real quick for you guys out there.

I'm in the pacific northwest here in Portland, Oregon area.

Down in Salem, Oregon is the world's largest muscle car collection.

Is it really?

And yeah, it's the brothers car collection.

It is a private collection.

They open up probably every couple times a year.

And this is the first time they actually let the public in.

You had to know somebody to get in.

And they always do it for charity.

But they have about a 600 car collection.

Wow.

And they have everything from the only 427 Cobra Daytona Coupe sitting there on the rack.

And four of them were sitting there in the collection.

Yeah, that's.

And I went, okay, there's all three of the ones that were made with blue tops and they're in sequential order here.

And I went, okay, I can see all those cars.

I will never be in this situation to see more of those cars in the same place.

So you're a vintage car guy.

I've got a car for you.

You probably haven't heard of Elmquist saber.

So I have two.

I have two Elmquist sabers.

One I found one in a field for $800.

It took me 10 years.

I actually sent it off to a shop.

Eventually I won a class award at Amelia island with it two years ago.

Oh, congrats.

I got a second saber body that a friend who knew I had one gave me the second one.

And it was a two year build.

Suzuki GSX 750 Motor Monster Turbo.

And two weeks ago I set the land speed record for class J in it.

And we went 100.

The record was 111.

Our max speed was 172.

Oh.

In this tiny little car.

So it's the Saber.

It's.

I didn't know what I had when I found it.

I found it in the field.

I got it for 800 bucks.

I just thought it looked cool.

It's a tiny car.

Yeah, it is.

The car that started the kit car industry.

Elmquist Engineering is considered the father of American hot rodding.

Yeah.

A guy named Harry Heim at Clearfield Plastics had these designs for these bodies.

And then he.

They got together and the Elmquist Engineering catalog sold the bodies for $295.

You could make payments and then build your own car.

They made about 700 bodies.

They sold about 500.

Only that we know of.

About 12 are finished right now.

I have two.

There's one in Pennsylvania.

There's a drag racer.

And then we made molds from one of my bodies.

There's a guy in California that vintage races a car where the body was made from the molds.

So we can make more bodies theoretically.

But if you Google search Elmquist Saber, you'll see my cars because they're the only two all over.

But the.

The land speed thing was a childhood dream, and it was one of the best.

I took my youngest son, who's.

He's 22.

Car guy.

It was one of the best weeks we've ever had.

We've had some cool times.

Hunting, traveling, fishing stuff.

He's dad.

This was like the coolest week ever.

Were you going down to Bonneville or what were you doing?

Yeah, that was.

Yeah, we ran Bonneville.

Oh.

So on salt.

It was a lot of fun.

Yeah.

Next year we want to break 200.

So that's.

We have it.

Because when I did my fastest run, I hit 171.

I've got two miles.

I got a mile acceleration and two measured miles.

I hit the rev limiter at 1.5 miles in top gear and the engine started sputtering, which I've got to lift off and wait three seconds for the ECU to reset.

So I gotta re.

We gotta reprogram.

That's the wrong way to do it.

But the whole week was a very difficult.

We didn't have any dyno time on the engine, so we had a tuner with us.

But we were.

My first run was 80 miles an hour.

We just.

It just took us a long time to get things dialed up.

But, yeah, the car was just a little banshee.

But, yeah, that's racing, man.

That's we are solidly off in the.

Weeds as per the subject matter of the show, which is always fun.

Absolutely.

That's what I love about it.

And this show does that.

We have my buddy Andrew Pace that comes on here, who's a healthy building expert and he's also a whiskey sommelier.

So we usually spin off in that too.

So this is how it goes.

But you and I get to.

My goal is to ultimately have a house where I can have the racing saber, the.

As a display piece in.

In like my man cave room.

There we go.

But that is the ultimate.

Yeah, I'm building a log cabinet right now.

We're just.

We just did the layout and I've got a builder.

We're going to start construction in the spring.

I'm building a log cab, three bedroom log cabin lodge on my hunting property.

That's my next big.

Nice.

I can't.

I mean the log work is something that.

I'm just farming that out and most of the work will be done.

I'm going to do a lot.

Some of the trim work.

I. I can't not be involved.

But that's our next big project.

That's awesome.

Let's steer back into the lane again.

Let's get back on track into the lane again.

Because you and I can go off in the weeds even deeper.

But when you're designing, it's gotta be interesting.

From going to designing armories for the military to turning around and designing something for maybe somebody's small safe room that really shows the width of your company, of what your people can do.

From doing big government contracts to just helping somebody out for their small safe room.

We offer the service.

It doesn't take us that much time.

We've got the tools we have and the guys are good enough.

They actually knock it up pretty quick.

And as it works out, our whole background is defense.

But the needs of the American civilian gun owner mirror that of the military.

The needs are no different.

The challenges are the same.

The gun safe industry has not adapted and people don't know how good it can be.

Is one of the biggest challenges right now.

Because gun safes are all the same and it's a mess.

Our system, the guys at Fort was at the Pendleton, the Marine Corps, they call it the Tetris Rack.

The third group at Fort Bragg called the Lego Rack.

Our system is modular.

You start at the bottom and just build from gear storage and gun storage to fully integrate all of your guns and all the gear that goes with them.

Because it's much easier, especially like if you're an avid hunter.

Chad Belding, he's a foul life.

He's.

He and I are good.

He says organization is the key to success and actively hunting and that's what we bring to the table.

But yeah, the design group.

When you look at a home gun room, the needs are no different than a armory for a SEAL team.

It's the gun, the firepower changes, but the actual methodology, what you're actually trying to achieve, which is organization.

With home, we also put a little display factor into it.

Other guns, but the integration of all of the equipment, gear and things that go with it in a man cave.

Sometimes it's firearms related, sometimes we've done rooms with whiskey collections with all sorts of things that you can do to give it that ultimate guy look, if you call it that.

We've done a lot of gun rooms for women as well.

Oh, yeah, absolutely.

We've done a lot of celebrity rooms.

We don't typically.

Those are interesting.

We've done some big sporting celebs, sports stars, but they're pretty.

We find out who it is, but usually it's bought by somebody else, shipped to a warehouse.

They're very quiet.

They don't want people to know how many firearms they own.

Or there's a 12 page NDA that you have to sign before you go talk to them.

I've had that too.

But yeah, it's my buddy David Applebaum, who's on this show all the time.

He's kind of the architect of the stars down in Los Angeles.

He's.

He deals with a lot of that stuff.

Of course, he can't talk much about that stuff, but there's some things.

When he comes on here, he'll tell us great stories about designing homes for Frank Sinatra.

But some of those other things are just things that you just.

It's not a great idea to be talking about the specifics of and what's going on for everybody.

I'll tell you that between the NBA, NFL, Major League Baseball, there's some massive gun rooms.

We've built some.

Some country stars.

We've done some work with.

I designed Ted Nugent.

Really.

We've not built yet.

We did the.

We've done the design work.

I'm not sure where that stands for his home down in Texas.

But my.

I was a guitar player out of high school for.

I was on the road for 12 years.

So Ted was a big influence back in the day.

Okay.

I'm a bass player.

You and I have a lot in common between music and everything else.

Here.

So yeah, I was playing in Seattle bands in the 90s, so I get it.

Were you really okay?

Yeah, I was.

I was 80s guy.

I was in LA at the time.

I was.

I did well and I ended up developing tendonitis and forced me.

I'll take out.

Yeah, it took me right out.

But it got me on a different path that actually in hindsight I'm much happier not being a musician.

I love what I did and I was playing at a pretty high level, but I hated the lifestyle, I hated the hours, I hate the people you're surrounded by are just.

What I'm doing now is just so much more rewarding and I'm getting too.

I was getting too old for the 3am after you play the show, get packed up, get the gear back, get it unloaded, maybe even wait to get paid by the club owner.

All that stuff that got real unattractive to me the older I got.

Yeah, that's.

I do some like solo acoustic charity events and things.

I don't try just hey, you want guitar play, I'll play.

I go down.

We got a little coffee shop in my little town.

I live in it.

I'll go down and around Christmas and just play Christmas tunes just for the fun of it.

But nice.

That's on my.

That's on my terms.

I don't have to do it, which is nice.

Yeah.

Okay.

Tommy, you got a wide depth here of what you do.

I love it.

And I don't watch TV and I'm pretty.

Yeah, I'm up 4:30 in the morning, just.

And I just turn the switch on and go.

Yeah, I'm the same way.

I'm the same way.

So if someone's going to be starting to design their own space, what is the, the best way to do that?

Maybe they're.

Hey, they're going to be building their dream home next year.

Really?

Probably.

Like everything else, the sooner you start, the better.

So couple things to think about.

2 and 78 guns are stored optimal storage.

This is how we store them based on years of working with US Army Special Forces.

2 and 78 on barrel center.

That's roughly your spacing when you're looking at wall capacity in a vertical sense.

So you're rough.

You're roughly 12 vertical guns every 36 inches.

35 and shape.

That's about where you're at.

You can do two stacks, you can go horizontal and that's more visual.

You lose capacity.

But most people have way more wall space than they have guns.

The other things to think about Is what are you doing in the space?

Are you cleaning?

Do you do gunsmithing?

Do you want to have a.

Is it, is it strictly a gun room for security or is it.

What else do you want to do in there?

And then we look at furniture wise and if you want a super high end look, there's companies you can talk to.

If you want more and this is more, we.

We really get involved.

Is the what I call high end functional or high end efficient I really like and I use, I buy them on Amazon.

It's their metal frame, 2 inch thick butcher block workbenches and they come with wheels and the wheels are strong enough where I use them in my shop here and I'm working on cars and I beat the crap out of with hammers and I really like those because my, my I have a home gun room and I have those tables.

I can roll those out in the middle of the table, put them together, put chairs around it.

Poker night, I roll them against the wall.

I'm gunsmithing so I look at making spaces that are really flexible.

If you want fire rating, if you want a gun room to be fireproof, the easiest way to do it is using air crete.

And I don't know if that's available everywhere in the country.

I know in the northeast, air crete is cement that they inject foam into.

So it's concrete foam, it's super lightweight, but it's cement and they actually fill between the drywall and the studs with this air crete.

It dries pretty quickly and hardens and it hasn't the R factors through the roof.

And I recommend that if you're in that, if you're not and you're looking at like higher security double stud.

There's a lot of things your builder can do if you're building a room.

And I've seen a lot of Kevlar style panels too that you could put in between the studs or put up sheathing wise before you even put drywall, for instance.

It seems like I've seen people marketing them out there.

I've never used or seen the product in application.

It's tough because if someone is at a level where they're hacking through the walls, I don't know.

I think you're beyond that already because at that level of determination, I'm not sure you're going to stop somebody.

I don't know.

It's.

That's windows level.

I would simply have, I'd get a good alarm system and pay for good service because not that expensive they also, I mean for basic, you know, I'll throw it out there for.

If you're concerned about basic home security, home safety, the number one thing you can do to improve your home security, if you haven't done it, is motion sensor lights on the outside of your home and not one by the door.

Put up nine of them, light it up and cut the bushes back.

If you got high bushes growing around your houses, cut them back and don't again.

Thieves are like bullies in school.

They're not looking for a fight, they're looking for a weak target.

It sounds awful, but all you got to do is make your house a little more secure than your neighbor's house.

You're gonna leave you alone.

But that's the reality.

That's always my thing.

It's hey, be the most secure house on the block and you'll be the last one to get hit.

Yeah.

If nothing else, if you light that thing up like a stadium, when somebody walks up, they're not going in.

You know, it's absolutely.

You might irritate your neighbors, but it's.

That's okay.

They want to know because they're going to be breaking into their house, not yours.

Yeah.

So yeah.

Very jeweled.

We're running out of time, Tom.

And you and I could do this like a Joe Rogan episode.

I think just keep going.

Especially we got into music and cars.

But if people are trying to really plan ahead, they're thinking about upgrading what they've got and they want to get a hold of you.

What's the best way for them to do that?

Simply Google secure it now.

Secured gun storage is our websites.

Google my name.

We are all over the web or all over social media.

SEO wise.

We do very well.

And you mentioned upgrade I'll throw out there.

We did launch earlier this summer and it's been wildly popular.

A very affordable set of upgrade kits.

We're taking our secure IT Cradle grid system and we're offering kits to upgrade traditional gun safes to our system.

And we launched it as a.

We didn't think, we didn't know if it'd be that popular.

We just thought this is cool.

So we just soft launched it.

And right now this month, gun safe upgrade kits are probably 15 of our sales.

That's saying something for a new product.

I can't think of a product that's ever come out of the gate and just holy crap, people are buying the crap out of this.

So it's a really, really neat little system and it's pretty easy to install.

It's a great do it yourself project.

And the results, the results are phenomenal, man.

That is great.

Tom, thanks for coming on today, man.

I appreciate it.

I love your knowledge.

I love the practicality and the safety of all this.

And we'll have to do this again because, boy, I.

You and I are gonna go in the weeds on this stuff next time, and I think it's gonna even get crazier.

So we can appreciate it.

All right, man.

I just.

It's been a pleasure.

It's been a lot of fun.

Thanks again, brother.

I'm Eric G. And you've been listening to around the House.

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