Help with math (sort of) problem

[brett2k07]

Alright, so I am hoping to get someone who is better at math than I am to help me out. My wife and I are buying a gun safe. We've had several break-ins in the neighborhood recently and I have several firearms that are family heirlooms that I want to protect a little better than they currently are.

So the safe we're looking at is 24 inches wide, 19 inches deep and 60 inches tall. The space we're looking at putting it in is 27 inches wide, so the safe will fit inside the space. The problem is that the opening for this particular space is only 23 1/2 inches wide (it's 1/2 of a larger closet, so there is a door frame on one side of the space). We're trying to figure out if we can actually get the safe inside the space. One of us is of the opinion that if we twist the safe a little bit in order to get one of the edges past the door frame, we could then twist it back to center and viola, done. The other is of the opinion that it will absolutely not fit, despite the twisting.

We have a secondary space we can put it, but when the guys deliver it, we don't want them to drag it to one spot only to find it won't fit and then have to drag it 100' feet on carpet to the other spot (it's 480 lbs). I'm terrible when it comes to angles and all that jazz, so doing the math is almost guaranteed to be wrong.

Any ideas/thoughts/opinions?

Thanks in advance!

[scottish]

Try drawing a picture.   First rotate the safe to fit through the door:

You'd have to rotate the safe to fit through the 23.5" door.   This is 90 - inv-cos( 19/23.5) = 90 - 36 = 54 degrees.   This means that to straighten it out again (i.e. so the safe door is facing the closet door), you have to rotate it 54 degrees back, correct?

Now draw the picture to rotate the safe back 54 degrees.   The hypotenuse of a triangle with sides of 24" and 19" is 30.6".   Pretty sure you'll need a space 30.6" wide to rotate it back.

Doesn't sound like it will fit.

[pbkmaine]

Do you have any cardboard lying around? If so, why not make a model and see if it fits?

[Jim2001]

+1 for the cardboard model.  You should also talk to the folks selling you the safe.  They should be able to help you decide the right size, location and mounting.

[brett2k07]

Thank you for the suggestions. I looked around for a box of similar size previously, but it never occurred to me to break them down and build a model. After doing it, it doesn't look like it will fit, so we're going to have to go with our secondary option.

Thanks!