The New BlumSafe Professional Junior — The Next Level of Security and Capacity for the Steel Door BlumSafe

When we went about designing the unique BlumSafe Professional, our Class B-rated burglary safe, we started re-thinking the smaller, regular steel door BlumSafe. Specifically,  how could we enhance the regular BlumSafe’s security and capacity without too significant a price increase, but maintaining the outside dimensions of the original BlumSafe? And how to do THAT while keeping it US-manufactured, doing our small part in strengthening the US economy and heavy industrial base, while also contributing to our safes’ sustainability? And could we engineer it to comply with California Department of Justice gun safe storage standards?

Well, we did it. We are pleased to announce the introduction of the new BlumSafe Professional Junior (I call it the 3.0, because its the third variation on the original BlumSafe in eight years). This model slots in our lineup, price and capability-wise between the identically-sized steel door BlumSafe and the larger, much heavier, and fireproof BlumSafe Professional. While the external dimensions are identical to the original BlumSafe, we were able to reengineer the door on the Professional Junior to enable an extra Jewelry Drawer-worth of capacity (in other words, it can hold a base drawer, 12 winders and one jewelry drawer on top – or any combination of winders, drawers or the two included shelves, up to that capacity).

Specific Improvements to Security.

The most tangible improvements in this new model  are in the door locking mechanism and the thickness of the walls of the safe, which combined, improve the security of this new model  over the existing BlumSafe.

Lock. The locking mechanism has several upgrades that make this safe much more resistant to pry attacks and other attacks on the door.

-Keypad and Lock Mechanism. Like with its bigger brother, the BlumSafe Professional, we have upgraded the keypad on the Professional Junior to a UL-listed lock, in this case the Securam Scanlogic keypad and fingerprint sensor, together with Securam’s powered lock body. This keypad/lock combination impressed us so much in testing that we have recently introduced it as an option on the full-sized BlumSafe Professional (which currently does not offer a fingerprint option). The fingerprint RF sensor is super-fast and reliable, and we have not been able to make it fault yet. [NOTE: If you missed it, we are introducing a next generation of keypad for our regular steel door and display door BlumSafes that also offers a super-reliable, much improved fingerprint sensor and is retrofittable to older US-built BlumSafes (more Information  on the new BlumSafe keypad here)].  The 9 volt battery on this Securam keypad is also very conveniently serviceable from the outside of the safe.

–Locking Jaws.  Prying risk is one concern with safes — that the doorframe of the safe, into which the lock’s straight locking bolts slide, will be pried out, or the door is bent so the straight lock bolts no longer engage the frame or can be pulled off the frame.  It is a matter of physics that with enough time and effort, it will be easier to pry the 3/16” thick steel used in the BlumSafe line (including this one) than the 1/2” steel used in the heavier Blumsafe Professional’s doorframe. However, the new BlumSafe Professional Junior uses a patent pending design, a set of three jaws running from top to bottom of the safe door.  When the door is closed, the jaws descend into openings in the frame, clamping the door shut, rather than deploying locking bars that simply slide into frame holes. This design makes it much harder to pry the safe open. When I first saw this simple yet effective design, I asked myself, “why didn’t YOU think of this!”

-Hard Plates in Lock. Hardening the lock against drilling penetration is also something that we focused on with the BlumSafe Professional, where we installed a hardened anti-drill plate combined with a 200 ball bearing plate that is designed to chew up drill bits if they get through the ½” thick door to the ball bearings. Accordingly we designed the BlumSafe 3.0 with two hardened (Rc 60+) drill resistant steel plates to slow down drilling penetration.

–Safe Body. Frankly, we did not see the 14 gauge walls of the BlumSafe body as an issue requiring improvement. After all, the safe is installed in a wall, cabinet or closet, bolted to studs or a back wall, and therefore providing protection of the body and requiring more time to penetrate.  However, several safe standards call for safe walls to be 12 gauge – which we feel is unfair to us because these standards are for safes that are meant to be free-standing  with exposed walls, unlike ours. Regardless, we have increased the wall thickness on this new model  to 12 gauge, which allow us to satisfy standards like the California Department of Justice regulatory gun safe standards (gun owners, take note). It also puts us into the position where we believe, if we invested the money to subject ourselves to their expensive testing, we would be able to pass the UL RSC Level-II standard (however,  the former lawyer in me calls out, “short of undergoing the testing, we make no representation that we would achieve the certification”).

The Bottom Line.

We are very proud of the Blumsafe 3.0/BlumSafe Professional Junior, which we have redesigned to be the “Son of the BlumSafe Professional”.  However, these improvements in the Professional Junior  do not make the existing steel door BlumSafe (the “2.0”) a slacker, of which we have sold many hundreds and will continue to offer.  The Made in America (Minnesota, to be exact) Professional Junior  is priced $900 more than the regular steel door BlumSafe.

Existing BlumSafe Owners.

Because the external dimensions and mounting hole pattern of the original BlumSafe and the new Professional Junior  are identical, it is easy for people to “upgrade” and swap out an old BlumSafe  for this new one, as well as maintaining compatibility with our winders, drawers and any accessories (either ours, like the Electronic Screen or Mirror or the customers’, like a hinged painting). This also makes life easier for our customers who add a second (or third) BlumSafe to an existing one, and want the safe and opening size to be the same. If you are an existing BlumSafe owner and want to upgrade to this new model (again, you can economize by reusing your drawers and winders) or add a Professional Junior, contact us at Support@blumsafe.com and until the end of September we will give you a $200 coupon towards your purchase.

If you have any questions about our new safe, do not hesitate to reach out to us.

Thanks for your time,

Rob