Solid Timber Gun Cabinets
The same steel-lined carcass, behind solid timber doors. Nothing about the outside announces what is inside — which for a great many houses is the whole point.
Discretion is a security feature
A steel cabinet standing in a hall tells every visitor, tradesman and delivery driver that there are guns in the house and precisely where they are. A glazed cabinet does the same, more elegantly. A solid-fronted cabinet tells them nothing at all.
That is not a substitute for security and we would never present it as one — concealment has no standing in itself, and your storage still has to satisfy your firearms enquiry officer on its own merits. But it does defeat the opportunist who never finds it, and the overwhelming majority of domestic burglaries are exactly that: quick, and limited to what can be seen.
It also solves a problem of taste. A solid cabinet reads as a cupboard, a press or a wardrobe, and can be detailed to match anything already in the room. In a hall, a dressing room or a study full of older furniture, it is very often the only version that works.
The joinery is doing two jobs
On a glazed cabinet the timber frames the collection. On a solid cabinet the timber is the entire object, and it has to stand up to being looked at as furniture rather than as storage.
That means the door panel does most of the work. A fielded panel — raised in the centre with a bevelled margin — throws a shadow line and gives the door depth, and it is the detail most commonly found on the older furniture these pieces sit alongside. An arched fielded panel does the same with a little more formality. A flat panel suits a painted finish and a plainer room.
Around the panel, the mouldings, cornice and plinth are matched to what is already in the room rather than to a house style of ours. Where a cabinet stands alongside eighteenth-century furniture, that is the difference between a piece that belongs and a piece that has been delivered.
Behind all of it the construction is identical to a glazed cabinet: steel over 2mm lining the carcass, folded steel doors with anti-cut pins on the hinge side, and BS 3621 locks. The timber is the finish. The steel is the security.
When solid is the better answer
We would usually suggest solid doors where the cabinet has to stand somewhere semi-public — a hall, a landing, a boot room that trades and cleaners pass through.
Also where the collection is more valuable than it is decorative. A pair of best London guns behind glass is an advertisement; the same pair behind a fielded oak panel is a cupboard.
And where the room is already full. In a study lined with older furniture, another glazed case competes with what is there. A solid press simply joins it.
Solid-fronted cabinets
Arched fielded panel
A single tall door with an arched fielded panel over a carved plinth.
Solid doors, lined inside
Plain outside, baize-lined and racked within.
Double doors
Two fielded panels, matched across the pair.
Or set into panelling
Taken further, a solid front can disappear into the wall entirely.
Questions we are asked
Is a solid cabinet more secure than a glazed one?
The carcass, locks and fixings are identical, so structurally they are the same cabinet. What differs is what a stranger in the room learns. Solid doors give nothing away, and that has real value against opportunist theft, but it is not a substitute for proper fixing and locking.
Can it be made to match existing furniture?
That is usually the brief. We match timber, mouldings, cornice profile, plinth and finish to what is already in the room. Where the room contains older furniture we will antique the finish so a new piece does not look conspicuously new.
Can I convert a solid cabinet to glazed later?
It is possible but rarely economic — the door has to be rebuilt around the weight of laminated glass rather than adapted. It is much better to decide at the drawing stage, and it costs nothing to discuss both.
Does a solid front make it harder to check the guns?
A little, and it is worth thinking about if several people use the room through a season. Some clients solve it with a glazed upper section over solid doors below, which gives visibility of the guns and discretion for everything else.
All gun cabinets
The overview: what we make, what it costs and how a commission runs.
The specification
Steel, anti-bandit glass, locks and fixings, in full.
What the rules actually say
No law requires a gun cabinet. What the Firearms Rules do require.
Send us your gun list
Send us your gun list and a photograph of the room, and we will come back with a drawing and a price. From £7,000 plus VAT, delivered and installed anywhere in the UK.
Start a commissionFurther reading: gun room security, and what the rules actually say. Responsibility for the security condition on your certificate rests with you as the certificate holder, and the adequacy of any storage arrangement is a matter for your local police firearms licensing department.