Well, after a few days of misery and hell, its time to update everyone with what is going on. I will put it all into bite size chunks. Please read thru it all because at least one of these things will affect you in some way...
LockBox hold down holes: The holes that were cut into the bottom of the LockBox were put in 180º off. This meant I needed to bring the boxes all back and have the new holes put in. Now this in and of itself isn't a huge deal because, well, the rubber floor liner would be covering up those holes anyway. Not a deal killer but not exactly pretty...if you knew it was there. But when I go those boxes back home I found another issue, and I didn't even notice it until the new hold down hardware came in. The holes were the wrong size. It seems I transposed numbers. I was thinking .308" when I should have been thinking .380". Ugh, back to the metal shop to laser out the new size. Sure I could have drilled them all out but its just faster to let the laser do it.
Emboss Die: Remember my big dollar custom die? Well they went ahead and did the embossing on the LockBox lids and NOT the FEM Locking Lid thankfully. Everything looked good until I went to do a test fit of the Medeco lock into the emboss. Wouldn't fit. WTF?! The die was not made to the correct size. My measurements were correct, the mechanical engineer's measurements were correct, the metal shop's measurements were correct. But the die maker's measurements were off. So much so that it can't be just machined to fit, it needs a whole new die. So my metal shop is looking at doing a work around because I refuse to wait WEEKS for another stupid die.
Internal size/volume: 5" width x 2.375" height x 9.75" length. Sounds fine right? Well here is the issue as I see it; some folks just want a lock box to lock up important items such as their wallet, phone, passport, pot, etc. Some folks want it to secure their sidearm. I took the official unit, with the rubber liner and with the felt panels into my local gunshop called Turner's Outdoor. I plopped the LockBox down and told them I wanted to make a list of every gun they had that would fit the LockBox. We checked nearly everything they had in stock and guess what? Not a single handgun would fit. No, I take that back, their snub-nosed .40 revolver fit just fine. But they also had zero sub-compacts. I know those would all fit but I had no way of verifying. At the beginning of this thread we talked firearms. I knew that the larger sport guns would not fit. That wasn't my target goal. I am bringing this up because I don't want ANYONE to get something that they didn't want nor expect. So I am detailing that to you all now.
So what am I doing about this? I am having about 20 or so tall boxes being made that will be about 5" tall and WILL fit the majority of handguns out there albeit on an angle. I'm not sure yet how I am going to do this to be fair to all of you and to make sure you all get exactly what you want and not feel like you were cheated. I'm trying to work that out now. In the meantime, the 80 Series LCs will have TWO sizes right out of the gate. The LockBox 80-Mini and the LockBox 80-Scout. Mini for small item security. Scout for larger item/handgun security.
Sorry guys, I'm sure this isn't what you signed up for
Joey
