Dehumidifier and humidity percentage.

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Miguel Hernandez

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I have been using dehumidifiers for a while I only got a dehumidifier gauge not too long ago and it is winter in New Jersey so humidity is normally low I'm seeing about 27% of humidity where I storage my firearms right now. My dehumidifiers is work more in the summer so I haven't seen what the humidity percentage is in the summer. In terms of a storage I heard 50% was where you want to be will 27% be bad for gun storage. For metal I'm sure that's more than fine but what about wood guns? Maybe I'm over exaggerating it but I'm always interested in the knowledge.
 
The NRA has published data where a RH of around 50% is suggested and a temperature of about 70 degrees F. 27% is a bit low and they like higher simply because you do not want the wood drying out, cracking and splitting.

Ron
 
Howdy Miguel,

I have a dehumidifier in my cellar running for 8 years now.
2 rifles with wooden stock have not developed any cracks up to now nor do I experience any problems with rust on my long guns or handguns...most of them blued.
I adjusted to ~45% humidity, most of the time temperature is ~ 50°F (10°Celsius)

Take this number with a grain of salt, I am sure different sorts of wood might react in different ways:
My long gun stocks are 1 walnut and 1 laminated wood....beech or maple might give different results.

Hope this helps.

Best wishes
Carsten
 
In regards to the wood it is important that he wood is treated so it can’t dry out and crack. I remove all the hardware from the wood and treat the unfinished area with lemon pledge. I do this every 4-5 years. I have no cracks in my double barreled shotgun stocks or forearms. I do the same with my pump guns.
 
How the wood was cured may make the difference? http://doublegunshop.com/phiatt4.htm

If the wood is sealed with a good finish, i don't see a problem. My guess.

You may find more info at the NRA Museum. http://www.nramuseum.org/
includes Caring for Your Collectible Firearms, Microcrystalline Wax Use & Tips, Condition Standards, and How to Clean Your Collectible Firearm)
Click to expand...
 
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Miguel Hernandez said:
... My dehumidifiers is work more in the summer so I haven't seen what the humidity percentage is in the summer....
Click to expand...
I have a 70pint dehumidifier in the basement where most of my firearms live. Once the environment outside changes enough so that the RH in the basement, unaided, will maintain ~55% or less 24/7 I do not even turn the DH on.

I do, however, periodically turn on the DH for several minutes during the winter (just like I do the air conditioner in my truck) to get some oil on the seals. :)
 
I actually run a humidifier most of the time in the winter. My safe stays between 29 and 34% RH all year long here in Kansas, temps between 62 and 67ºF. I've seen no splits in a number of wood-stocked rifles.
 
Another consideration with low RH is static electricity.

<Indianna Jones Voice> I hate static electricity! </I J C>
 
I have been maintaining a room for vintage guitars for many years and the number I always was told to shoot for is 45%. So far that has worked very well for vintage wood. Guitars are finished with varnish on the outside and the inside is raw unfinished wood so it has been a pretty good test for preserving wood and preventing cracks or warping. I have had no cracks and no warped necks at 45%.
 
Thanks for the answers so far. I use some
Renaissance Wax when I get my wood stock guns and plan to reapply when I do a deep clean in a 2-3 years. The guns have a 70 to +100 year old finish that is in fair shape. They are European walnut and European beech stock guns (Swiss collection).
 
In my opinion , wax coats wood , it does not treat it ; prevention of damage due to desiccation requires that the wood be treated , not coated.
I preserve valuable wood with a proven , natural wood preservative - teak oil. Fine woods love teak oil.
Properly oiled blued steel , properly oiled wooden stocks ; FINE smelling safe!
 
Why burn incense when I could meditate to ^^ that hehe


Ahhhmmmm.....ahhmmm....

ok at least TWO of us ADMIT it hehe
 
Waveski said:
... I preserve valuable wood with a proven , natural wood preservative - teak oil. Fine woods love teak oil. ...
Click to expand...
You are aware that "Teak Oil" is not really teak oil, yes? (Apparently, many folks do not) And the "Teak Oil" product usually (if not always) includes a hardshell varnish ingredient.

Aside from my shellaced Soviet and commercial Remchesterby wood-stocked longguns, I use pure Tung oil and/or Linseed oil on my woodstocks (most of them being milsurps) ... and it does make the inside of my gunsafes smell WONderful. :D

Since, from what I have read, "Teak Oil" contains Linseed and, perhaps some Tung oil, your gunsafes must smell just the same. :)

I recall, years ago after I got my first gunsafe and populated it with many milsurp longguns (the stocks of which I either refreshed [preferred] or refinished with Tung/Linseed) I was enchanted by the aroma.

I was opening it to retrieve something that I had secured for a female cousin and told her to come over and take a whiff of the inside of the gunsafe. Nothing. No reaction. She didn't Get It.

Later, when I tried that with my sister (without explaining why) her eyes lit up just like mine did. She is certainly special. :)
 
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GBExpat said:
You are aware that "Teak Oil" is not really teak oil, yes?
Click to expand...

Well yes , you are right about that. Anyone who has ever picked up a piece of teak wood and tried to wring it out knows how difficult it is to extract actual teak oil.
My intent in referencing teak oil was to differentiate between coating a wood surface with a wax treatment and "dressing" it with an oil product. I fall back on the teak oil reference because I have a lot of teak brightwork on my boats. I do not use "teak oil" containing varnish , but I have cut oil with varnish in some marine applications .
I have a friend who works wonders on old long guns , including milsurps ; he is a tung oil/linseed oil maestro.
 
Ages ago (it seems) when I was first thinking about refinishing an old milsurp stock I was in a Lowes (I think it was) and looked over the possible products.

I recall that the "Teak Oil" really drew me, just because of its name. Linseed Oil I recognized but "Tung" Oil ??? So I went home and did some research.

That is when I found that most of these products (other than the Linseed Oil) that I was seeing on the shelves were actually light varnishes (heavy on the oil and light on the varnish).

Since then I have experienced a surprising number of folks in forums such as these that do not realize that, for instance, Tung Oil Finish is not the same as Tung Oil and will not produce a true oil finish ... and often times the product probably doesn't contain any Tung Oil.

I have a couple of beater K98ks that I refinished with one of the Tung Oil Finishes just because they are light varnishes. One because it periodically is exposed to real weather and the other because the laminate stock appeared to me that it would benefit from the additional sealing the varnish would provide ... and not look like it had been dipped in polyurethane.

:)
 
Well all Swiss guns are shellaced or have a bee wax and turpentine finish depending on the wood. Of course there are a some dents and cuts in the wood because they Swiss for the most part were quite aggressive with the stocks usually the metal is decent to very good shape for it's age. The troops that went to the alps used the carbine to kick snow off their cleats also they would teepee their carbines in snowy or rainy conditions. So some of the carbines have areas with dark wood. It was to protect the metal and prevention the carbine from being frozen up in snow. They also used muzzle caps to prevent snow or rain from entering the barrels. That being said my long rifle (96/11) is in great shape does have one Arsenal repair but it's quite amazing how they did it. My k11 is also not in bad shape for the most part. K31s have seen better days but they run like champs.
 
As a goof that lives in middle MO that also plays the guitar.....and guitar players are like gun owners....I challenge you to find a real guitar player that has only one guitar. Moisture in the air is an issue with wood.

Guitars have all kinds of different finishes, from very....ahh robust...to pretty basic or nothing at all....and all of them react different to humidity. In the summer seeing 100% is not uncommon, and keeping your house at a comfortable level is a chore....same in the winter, the air seems to just drink water....you can't put it in fast enough. If you are in a dry area, go to a guitar store and look for the acoustic section, usually it is in another room that is closed off and there will be a machine running.

Guns are little different, they are all made of wood.....in a nutshell this is how I run....if it is comfortable for you it is comfortable for your wood (see what I did there). Now in the winter when it is really dry and the windows are cold you will get water forming there....but don't worry....it is good.

I have told this story before....but will again.

My type 99 came from an old guy that had it sitting next to the fireplace for god knows how many decades....the wood was dry, but not cracking.....it took a few applications to bring it back to life, but all is good. if you don't let your wood get cracked....and no one wants chapped and cracking wood....that is just no fun to play with, putting a little oil on there will smooth things right out.
 
One more note on humidity. I have had a "new" shop room for about 10 yrs. I have kept the humidity below 50-52% and have not had anything bloom rust (I don't keep my tools coated or well cared far as it relates to potential rust). Prior to this, I often found tools rusting in the summer where humidity spiked. I think the cuttoff to bloom rust is somewhere between 50% and 55%
 
Living in the humid South I keep a Golden Rod plugged up in my safe. The gauge hovers around 45% year around. Every so often I'll take the gauge outside just to see if its still working. Its kind of interesting to see it start climbing! I have no mold or rust problems at 45% but I do keep an oily rag in a ZipLoc bag laying on the shelf that I use to wipe off any gun that gets handled.
 
lightman said:
Living in the humid South I keep a Golden Rod plugged up in my safe. The gauge hovers around 45% year around. Every so often I'll take the gauge outside just to see if its still working. Its kind of interesting to see it start climbing! I have no mold or rust problems at 45% but I do keep an oily rag in a ZipLoc bag laying on the shelf that I use to wipe off any gun that gets handled.
Click to expand...
You failed to mention whether your gunsafe is inside a (relatively) climate-controlled house or actually exposed to the humid outside.
 
And, of course, this is complicated. The "rod" solutions are basically a warm stick. The purpose of which is to keep the internal temperature of the safe above the dew point temperature.

Dew point is dependent on the amount of moisture vapor in the ambient air. The varies by location, by season, and by weather conditions. Just this moment, 1547 24FEB19, here in DFW, the ambient dew point is 23ºF, the RH is 27% with a dry bulb of 58ºF--a nice mild winter day (far nicer than in 2014 when we had an ice storm).

So, if the temperature of the safe is held above 24º, moisture will not condense out of the air on the surfaces inside the safe.

On Friday, the RH rand from a low of 90% to a high of 97%. The dew point was close to the ambient temperature all day. So, if a person had warmed the air to just above ambient (circa 52ºF the whole day) the air would have not condensed moisture out, but the relative humidity would have been well over a 'target" 50% despite.

Sadly, the numbers for dew point and RH are often conflated, and not in a sensible manner. I don't run a rod, but I use a boxed desiccant, but, that's a specific response to my particular climate. If I lived in the PNW I would probably have a mix of rods and trays of desiccant. Maybe. Perhaps. Sadly, there's not a one-size-fits-most answer.
 
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