It took a while but I found that thread again. I have the engineer's name and number from UL and I will give him a call Monday (although I'm sure he has better things to do.)
Not a bad idea at all. If you have some additional time, you should call every safe tech and manufacturer that you can and see what they have to say.
After I couldn't find any safe with a UL rating that uses ceramics as its primary insulation myself, I posed this question to the two largest groups of professional safe techs (that includes manufacturers) from all around the world. Not only could nobody point me towards one here in the US, but nobody could point me to any foreign safes with similar ratings that use it either.
I'm not saying one doesn't exist. I'm just saying that nobody knows where it's hiding if it does. If one was found, I still wouldn't think it was the best option, even though we would at least know that it was a proven material. Even though the material itself is UL listed, does not mean that that material used in a safe will meet UL standards for safe construction.
If ceramics worked as well as some people say they do, they would be used much more often. It is cheaper to produce safes with ceramic insulation, even though the material cost more than what is currently used.
UL subjects the safes to a "cool down" period where after the active testing phase is completed the furnace is shut off and allowed to slowly cool down while still cooking the safe. This scenario is likely to be more real because burning embers from the fire will continue to provide heat to the safe. Some of these gun safe manufacturers only expose the safes to heat during the furnace "On" testing period then open up the furnace door once the test has ended. With the mass of these safes and especially ones insulated with concrete, the safe will cook the interior for hours after the fire is finished and that's even without any new heat added.
Yet all of those "cement" filled UL fire rated safes past the test time and time again.
I was actually posing the question as to why burglary rated composite safes usually do not have UL ratings, even though in all likelihood they could pass the test.
This is why the lightweight fire insulating barrier that Sturdy uses is so effective
My kitchen oven uses a similar lightweighth insulating barrier. When it's on clean mode, the kitchen gets warm. I dont' think it's very effective.
As they said from the other thread I just read again: they have a list of references from customers, fireman etc who have witnessed how effective their fire insulated safes are in real fires so give them a call if you want to talk with customers that are thankful they had their guns protected by Sturdy during a fire.
Every manufacturer can provide you a similar list. I can give you the names and numbers of people who had shoeboxes full of items under their beds that survived fires. Each fire is different. Sometimes a little luck is involved. This is why UL test their safes under worst case scenario testing.
Heck, Liberty has photos of a safe that survived a wild fire. A wild fire that melted automobiles. Either they use some really special steel, or the safe just so happened to be located in a position that didn't get that hot. For every non UL listed safe that a manufacturer can show a survival photo of, I can show you several that didn't survive. I've never seen a Sturdy in a fire locally, because they sell so few safes (compared to other major manufacturers), and there are so few acutal fires, that the odds of one of their safes being in a real fire are very, very, low.
Of all of the manufacturers, Sentry probably has the most experience with home fires. The have millions and millions of safes inside of homes (and businesses) all over the world. They have plenty of photos on their website along with customer testimonials, although not nearly as many as you would expect having an exposure of millions of customers.