Gun Safe Liner – How to Glue Fabric to Metal like a Pro

There are many applications to use quality fabric to metal glue around your home. In this project, we will be gluing a latex backed speaker gun safe liner material to a large gun safe. This will be a nice upgrade to our cheap budget gun safe.

The main reason for gluing in felt fabric onto the inside of the gun cabinet is to protect the guns from damage while being stored in the safe. The barrels and stock often will get marked when they are inserted into the gun safe so this fabric upgrade is a very worthwhile DIY project if you value your guns.

You can use any fabric you chose and this procedure will work well for any type of metal. Be it stainless, painted or bare metal.

Choosing your gun safe fabric.

There is a whole range of different fabrics available to line your gun safe. Start by working out how much felt or carpet you need and then visit a fabric or hardware store to pick it out.

• Fleece
• Felt
• Speaker / Gun safe latex backed liner
• Outdoor marine carpet
• Velour car fabric

Be aware that guns get dirty fast and even when you clean them, there still will be a light coating of oil on them. This oil over time will drip onto your gun safe lining and cause some discoloration. That’s why its best to use a darker material.

The thickness is also important, stick with 2mm or thicker material. It will give you nice thick padding and will be easy to work with. It is surprising how quieter your gun safe will become after padding it out.

Placing your guns and ammo in the safe will be a nice quiet experience.

Best fabric to metal glue

There is a whole range of fabric glue out on the market so you really have to know which glue is best for your application.

We will be gluing fabric to metal and lots of it, so a quick drying spray can make the job really easy. The best I have come across is called Polymat 777 Aerosol Spray Glue. It can stick fabric onto the following items.

• upholstery repair
• bonding felt carpet
• flexible urethane or latex foams
• wood,
• paper
• corrugated cardboard
• fabrics
• Excellent for carpeting speaker boxes.

If you want to glue other smaller items onto your gun-safe liner material like a handgun pocket then you will need a fabric to fabric glue. I find that my wife’s Fabri fuse glue is the best around. She uses it to glue on glass beads onto my daughter’s calisthenics uniforms.

Tips on using Polymat 777

Surface preparation is key to any quality fabric vinyl wrap. Use sugar soap and water to wash down the metal surface to clean away any dirt and oils that may be on the metal.

Be sure to ruff up any glossy surfaces beforehand with a 200-grit sandpaper. This will provide a good bonding surface for the metal pray glue to stick the fabric onto. As gun safes are usually small you can sand it with a sanding block in a few minutes.

Cut out the required fabric sizes and do a test run without any bonding glue. It’s always better to measure twice and only cut once. Speaker fabric can be stretched slightly so don’t be afraid to pull on it to get a nice and flat finish.

Use a rolling pin or a credit card to squeeze all of the fabric into the corners. Be sure to get good contact between the fabric and the metal surface.

Spray the contact glue onto both the metal and the fabric surface before you bind them together. This is the best way to glue metal and fabric together.

Take your shelves out.

If your gun safe has smaller shelves then take them out to be covered and glued. This will make it easy and you will get a better finish. Most modern gun safes will have screwed down shelves. So take these screws out and wrap your shelves in your favorite fabric. Just be sure to make where the screw holes are before you cover them up.

The Polymatt 777 spray glue will dry within a few minutes so you can replace your gun shelf back once it’s wrapped in fabric.

Best Gun Safe Liner Material

Now, this is going to be a personal taste but I will go over a few items that you should be aware of before purchasing your gun safe liner material. Each has its pros and cons.

Fleece

I relined one of my cheapo 5 gun safes with gun safe liner fleece.  It was just a matter of going to my local fabric shop and purchasing a couple of yards of light ray fleece material. I used some 3M Super 77 adhesive spray to stick it all down.

The benefit of fleece is it’s cheap and available at any fabric shop for only a few dollars a yard. It is also easy to work with and sticks down well. The only downside with fleece is that it can be a little thin.

It also works well as a car headliner fabric spray glue. So you can use it on other projects as well.

Speaker Liner.

Now there is a reason that people use Polymat liner for wrapping speaker boxes. It is cheap, thick, and easy to work with. The big benefit is that it resists stains, mold, and mildew. With a high resistance to gas, oil, and salt you have the perfect gun safe liner material.

I have wrapped many sub-woofer boxes with this stuff over the years and its great. The fact that it is latex backed makes for a great moisture barrier.

Outdoor Indoor Marine Carpet.

Outdoor marine carpet is another option to line the inside of your gun safe. Many tradies use it for the inside of toolboxes. It’s a lot thicker than the speaker liner so it’s hard to bend around corners.

If you want to mount handgun pouches to the inside of a safe common tip is to use 3M dual lock mounting tape. This way you can hang up your gun pouches on the door or on the safe wall. They can quickly be removed as they act like velcro but much stronger. This way they are not a permanent solution and you can move your pouches to the next bigger safe. Trust me you will. Buy the biggest gun safe you can afford.

The option of having a removable liner for when it gets dirty is a great idea.  I’ve seen soft rifle cases made of automotive headliner material, that started off grey but ended up black due to the excess oil and dirt from the guns sticking to the liner material.

Gun Safe Fire Proofing

Most budget gun safes don’t have a fire rating but you can increase this by lining it with a layer or two of sheetrock fireproof drywall type x before you line it with fleece or speaker liner material. Sheetrock is a natural fire insulator and will protect your valuable firearms from fire and heat for a short period of time.

Conclusion

At the end of the day due to the gun cabinet usually being housed inside you can use any type of safe liner material that takes your fancy. Many people use outdoor marine carpet, car headliner material, or speaker liner.

Stick with darker materials to hide any marks or oil stains that can come from your guns. Polymat is very well-known in the liner industry and is easy to work with. The latex backing helps with gluing in various conditions. It is the perfect gun safe liner fabric.

Be sure to be safe, and if your guns are outside of the safe while you are doing this DIY project make sure they are unloaded.

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