The American Gun Factory - Inside Standard Manufacturing & CSMC

whilst in the united states i was desperate to check out a gun maker [Music] obviously i'm familiar with the work of mossberg ruger and the gang who all make fantastic utilitarian tools i wanted to see what some of the high-end makers had to offer so after a few emails back and forth we had a day booked in at the connecticut shotgun manufacturing company and boy this place was a lot to take in [Laughter] [Music] the factory is obviously in connecticut in the town of new britain and the company itself is surrounded by mystique and rumor which had me really excited to look around [Music] founded by tony galazan who studied engineering before entering the world of gun making this place is wild they're not scared to try new things and from the company's inception they have never stopped innovating the range of guns they now build is mind-blowing as is the range of price points from a few hundred dollar shotgun up to a six-figure showpace with a range in the middle with prices designed to compete with european guns [Music] walking into their huge factory i definitely didn't expect this beautiful gun room where we met lou the head of sales and marketing at connecticut shotgun we'll come back to the gun room to look at their guns in a minute but for now let's head into the factory this is like the willy wonka and when you go down the hallway and it starts getting the original volume how many kids do you bring in here yeah right kids at a different level oh these are toys for big boys and girls and uh so you've kind of went through a door you're in a a very proper gun room yeah and they just open the door and here we are these are barrels ready to be born yeah what is the steel are made of uh i think it's 44-20 we take a steel bar it's not hollow yet and we deep hole drill a hole right down the middle and then mill the outside afterwards and then we shape the outside on this lathe the mono block design it's pressed in and i want to call to your attention this notch once this barrel is put in it's cross pin and then braze for three levels of strength let me tell you now that this factory is huge so i apologize at this point for the intensity of this video so basically we rough out all the stocks on these cnc machines and basically these are all different flavors if you get fitted for a gun for example we'll find one of the 18 primitives here once it's roughed out now it gets hand fitted okay so every gun is individually fitted up that's how we do it and after this this will then go up and be engraved yeah i'm finished off the gun's already been the barrels have been joined to the action and so forth and now he's going to find all the high spots and he's going to just completely hand fit everything everything is hand-fitted yeah how many how many stocks get fitted everything's fitted everything everything sometimes we have you gotta hit 70 dimensions like for example this guy here he's a pretty much off off the shelf kind of stock dimensions instinctive shooting i think it's more you know if a guy is target shooting if he has a gun that doesn't fit him well i don't think he'll do very well but a guy up late hunting i think he'll probably interestingly i would say the opposite yeah you might be well close you can wrap yourself in before the shot can't you certainly with sporting and trap discipline so as long as it's somewhere close you couldn't manipulate it but an uplift shot you need to look where it shoots but they're 15-yard shots most of the time too on time you forget on top of you know your camera [Applause] have you finished your stocks we like to use troil we do a london finish and it's a mixture what you use like luna and turkish yeah but the easter egg we do have california english california english walnut english wound up the tree from california yeah they brought over you know the set the cuts from the back in the 1890s you know they they spliced them onto our calico walnut trees did as they took the little sap little pieces of tree trunk not the tree the bridges yeah and they spliced it and they put it like the california root with an english top yeah what was their thinking at the time for wood or for fruit oh no it's for it was for wood for the figure they had a lot of time back then yeah here's the barrel laughing machine yeah there's honing and laughing in the chokes [Music] arguably their most famous gun is the american a10 [Music] so whilst we were back in the gun room for a coffee lou talked me through connecticut shotgun and the a-10 [Music] the guy who kind of started this all in 1975 anthony galazan that's where the name galazan comes from he created a company called connecticut shotgun so connecticut shotgun in that regard there's really a couple of things going on there we do repairs on some kinds of guns like the winchester model 21s uh but we also uh are purveyors of uh fine shotguns you know we use guns we were had three the three parker invincible guns so you know the rarest of the rear guns we buy sell and trade expensive guns and then we also make side by side and over and other shotguns really we cut our teeth making side by side shotguns we took over the the the fox line from savage we took over the model 21 line from winchester we make a model 21 although we don't call it winchester and then we make our own brand of side-by-side shotguns called the rbls and i'm sure i'm missing something and now we're making over and under competition shotguns which we're really excited about and that's really the future of connecticut shotgun is making you know guns for sporting clays in eight hands right and on that segway and the a10 is probably your most famous gun worldwide it's the one i knew about before any of the other stuff should we have a look at one [Music] how much is an a10 let's let's start that off an 810 is about fifteen thousand dollars that's where plain non plain side lock yeah is that going great when you say side lock and plane you know there's it's a kind of an oxymoron in a sense but uh for fifteen thousand dollars you get a uh rose and scroll it's it's laser engraved and it's hand chased this is only 40 grand yeah it's a lot of gun for the money and if you compare any other side lock outside of you know turkey or something like that when did this stop when did the a-10s in 2010 and it's a full side lock and it's very similar to something else or is that coincidence or is that planned well yes and no i mean it's coincidence in a sense that this gun really is an amalgam of all the best ideas we've seen out there for example i want to call your attention to the bridle if you look at a lot of the other guns that the bridle here has got standoffs where if these screws come loose the whole mechanism falls apart the big advantage of this bridle as you can see it's instagram to the lock plate so it's impossible for this bridle to ever come loose and and give you a problem in the field so this is the most robust rigid design we found out there one of the things you do get when you buy this gun is you get peace of mind because everything in this gun has been a time proven design that's been around for a long time when i'm uh uh people state that i may have copied people i will tell you this this is a laser welded rib the barrels are laser welded and that's kind of comes from the ears some issues there in my head no there's actually no issues it's a far superior is it called is it cold process then oh yeah it's it's it's a it's it's it's even though it's obviously to to fuse metal together you have to get to a temperature but it's so quick and so precise that it fuses it together and the only gun company that i know that does is besides this is fabri you've got a balancing weight system here because your rib and the way that this clips up is all the better yeah this rib you can put a weight balancing system in there and i do that only on the 12 gauge guns not the uh if the customer requests it but uh i i don't do it on the sub gauge guns because people are looking for you know letter guns they're not going to be hanging you know yeah selling many 20 bus boaters yeah right they're not going to be hanging tungsten weights to get the gun back to 10 or 15 pounds what i do do is a lot of pigeon guns in 12 gauge and 28 gauge combos on the big frame they want a gun when they enter the race in 12 gauge and 28 gauge they want a gun they can shoot in both events and because they're used to hands the work exactly and it's balanced exactly like so if he's blindfolded he because it's a mental game if he's blindfolding shooting he doesn't want to think is this the 28 gauge gun or just a 12 gauge gun he's just trying to get that bird down that design i think is far superior i've seen some cross bolt designs out there you've seen this design around but you've never seen it with that large of cross-sectional area again it's designed where it's not round yeah it's not round and one of the advantages to it there's a the shape of it the galaxy and lock up the shape one of the advantages to it is when uh when the gun eventually does start to wear it the taper causes it to lock in and continue to have the lock up when the gun closes you can create the most incredible machine in the world with robots and you can have tesla and elon musk develop all this stuff for you i want to see the most shotgun at the end of the day if there's not handwork and a fine shotgun it'll show [Music] these are barrels waiting to go on for uh there's deep hole drilling here there's machine making barrels it'll make the long barrels too it'll drill a blind hole all the way through that is quite smart most people just buy in barrel blocks well it's nice to see someone actually doing it yeah but uh it's very interesting how deep though drill is done obscenely expensive too yeah but you know they last forever it's going to get them out to send you something enough to el dorado have them sharpened so basically how this machine works it's hollow yep and then through pressure let's just say 900 pounds per square inch of pressure comes out the other side that pressure makes this rod very stiff yeah and through these two holes it blows the oil in the chips while it's cooling the tip out through the v-way guide because it's a blind hole sounds awesome because the chips can't fall there is no other there is no other side to the hole so you're blasting oil to make the shaft rigid you're spraying oil in the tip to keep the cooling and then it's coming back through the v-way guide and coming out to the hole that has not come out the other side yet awesome so these are about to go off and be home yeah these will actually get these will get honed on top of that but it's pretty good on one barrel for one pass yeah it wouldn't wouldn't pass proof but are laughing and it'll be bang on yeah and that knocks in the thread for the choke at the same time no that'll that'll be a sec a a different operation all together okay so the reaming will be the champ dream of the chamber and putting the choke in and laughing it out it'll be all different i'm tapering the outside that's another operation that's a lot that's what we thought we were back down so yeah this goes like four machines three more now wow pretty cool [Music] so where this factory makes so many different guns all on the same production lines there was something fascinating around every corner for me coming from the uk where health and safety is king i had genuinely forgotten what life was like before we were all babied by the state so to watch people just going about their business without unnecessary barriers was nice to see [Music] unbeknown to me before organizing this trip was that under the same roof was three companies connecticut shotgun galazan and standard manufacturing the latter is responsible for this the dp-12 which is actually the best-known gun made in this facility that is why there is such an array of guns lying around from humble pistols all the way up to the custom work under this same building is standard manufacturing that is the affordable guns that they build they start about 400 bucks and they're probably most famous for this the dp-12 that's been in movies it is a side-by-side pump action you can load up both mags i don't presume you can also load up just the one if you feel the need and it's unnecessarily cool you have a qr code for the manual just in case because trying to figure out how to load this in my head it's quite simple just load it from the back and then pump and go 45 degree battle sites i mean i have no idea how reliable one of these is in my head this is one of those guns that's basically impossible to regulate and probably would cost three or four thousand dollars to get it where i needed to be but that's probably not where the market is because realistically it just looks badass doesn't it this is for danny double before dan's going when they finally say you're only allowed 20 guns this is two-in-one we make high-grade guns yes and then we used to go through this thing called the shot show yes the shot show has glocks and all this stuff right so i bring guns like this and i lay them across my table and it's everybody's walking by nobody's been paying attention to these even if a guy casually walks up oh i can't afford something like this and then everybody's going to the glock booth everybody's going to the smith and wesson booth everybody's going to every other booth and i said i make just really great nice guns and everybody just walk into these three or 400 plastic guns so i thought i thought we should make guns people actually buy where's this conversation going is when you see the machines out there people are not really concerned of the parts they're making it's not because they just don't care is because the same level of attention is doing a joke right they're doing their job it's a gun factory right and the thing of it is is to make very expensive guns we all agree you need really good machines we've got the machinery we've got the people we've got the resources we're just not making the stuff that yeah and to be perfectly frank with you if uh uh we didn't make the tactical stuff and the 1911's and all this stuff we'd be very struggling to kind of we wouldn't be able to make the grand americans and the foxes and the rbls and the you know so pretty much all the overheads paid for with the consumer commodity gun so these are your cheap guns how what do the guns start for made in this factory 400 these can go anywhere from four hundred dollars to twelve hundred dollars depending on the circumstances in the world these are about twelve hundred dollars these are like the six hundred dollars and i also make handguns i make a full damascus handgun the 453 degree battle sites are quite smart yeah it's just hard to it's just hard to shoot like you know you can't shoot that thing to skeet or something like that it's just to make a long story short if you're in the gun industry make this stuff this is this yeah but it's not fun it doesn't matter what people want there's there's a there's an onus on a gun maker making traditional and cool beautiful guns continue making them i got it you know we're an interesting you know we're like a tale of two cities here these are the best of times these are the worst of times welcome to one of the strangest rooms at the factory this is where all of the metal finishing is done i've got blacking over there anodization over here case color hardening over there be blasting over this is like the finished room if you like [Music] this is a process as old as guns themselves of course case color hardening before we invented super steels and modern hardening techniques they took a low-grade steel part put them in a mix of bone and leather charcoal and got them very hot once they were up to temperature they were then quenched leaving the surface of the metal hardened [Music] the byproduct of which with the well-known finish that we love today [Music] the coloring yeah you wanna you don't wanna do too much of one the one of them gets more on the blueish and one more on the pinkish side you're looking for the perfect color and the mixes have just you've learned the mixes regardless of which hat they have on these guys never stop innovating one of the latest releases is the g1 that i was lucky enough to shoot at alvis sandonoma a g1a is a sporting gun it looks a bit like krieg off but what we've done different with the krieg off is we've put our the rim on there and so the krieg off to really get a good seal every time on the gun the frame is made out of stainless steel okay the advantage stainless steel the density of stainless steel is much greater than that of steel so that puts all the weight between your hands how much is it about six thousand dollars six thousand bucks yeah that comes with that wood well maybe that's so great yeah i'm gonna charge extra for wood i'm charging extra for you know kind of actually wanted to look nice and this is a new product who comes up with all your designs well we design all the stuff internally besides the people that we have shooting guns and we have a lot of shooters here that do a lot of sporting clays trap and skeet and so forth and we also have engineers here and so mix it kind of overlaps one another so we got a lot of creative people here and a lot of people enjoy the sport how long does it take from start to finish to come up and build one of these from an idea to this from the inception it probably takes a year okay and you put it through a few tests and see what it's like and it's nice to see something different it's all built in here in the united states yeah eventually we hope to get these guns out to the uk into europe and so forth for our tactical stuff we go through distributors basically six or eight distributors to cover every gun shop between hawaii and maine and alaska and florida so the six big for the tactical stuff we kind of go through distributors because high value but the g1 for the connecticut shotgun end of the business the g1s uh that all goes that's all sold discreetly through you know if somebody calls up and they get someone in our call center yeah and we'll walk them through the process here's the wire edm room all the precision cuts very smart process we have two kinds of edm machines here we have the wire cutting edms and then the dye sink machines which these are those are fox frames a lot of processes goes into making one of these things doesn't it do you guys build anything else in the future it's just guns just pretty much guns just guns that keeps us busy at what point legally do you have to stab it with a serial number uh once eighty percent like when they're savers eighty percent on the firing pins and this is 30 80 at this point it's already being documented somewhere the problem is you got a lot of unscrupulous people that kind of circumvent it every step of the way so there's checks and balances in place to avoid people taking guns with you know you see the whole thing now with ghost guns and everything yeah we talked about remember the approaching machine here we wire edm to magazine well and if you remember remember that big fortune that i threw back into the pile this is the same gun right here just gone through a few hours of machining yeah [Music] use a lot of smaller machines as opposed to other factors into there's a big machine that does a load you've got a lot of smaller machines that do processes along the line is that a conscious choice or pretty much we have kind of the whole factory broke up with the work cells yep there is logic to it yeah whether whether it's big or small i don't know but that's just kind of what works for us now up until this point we've seen and we've pretty much half a day at least we've spent the whole time just going and seeing cnc machines cnc machines making parts indiscriminately parts parts parts parts and everybody was in disbelief that they could understand that some of these parts go into two hundred thousand dollar guns and these parts go into twenty four hundred dollar guns uh to that end here we have one of the uh what one the west kind of guns is the single action revolvers iconic american thing the 1873 single-action revolvers here they're engraved and that is predominantly laser on yeah it's laid out now it's gonna be all completely hand chased like for example there you can see this all been done by he in this spot right here ready and how much was something about that retail full about 3 500 so wow the kind of off the production line off the manufacturing area of the mater the parts here is one of the nodes that comes off of that comes off of kind of all the manufacturing and this is the first assembly area where you have gunsmiths uh in this particular person this woman here what she does is she does all the polishing how long you guys been making this one for oh about three years now nice definitely quality guy everything handmade everything hand-touched how long does it take you to put one of these together are you just assembling or oh yeah right now i'm just finally assembling i have a few more honestly maybe 15 to 20 minutes you want to knock one together yeah that's pretty good yeah you got to take your time though you don't want to scratch yourself oh yeah it could be like well you still have to time it and do all this other things to it because that's where they match you get the glory of bringing it together [Music] do you ever think you make too many models of guns warming up it's insane like you rate what a dozen different pistol types i see it from a whole different perspective oh yeah i've been here for 22 years every year like the g1 we've been talking about the g1 for it's probably been five years we've really been talking about it but yeah we work out a little bit here we've got probably like 10 different guns working on here and there and one may come into fruition this year but after 20 for example i've been here for 22 years after 22 years having all these models of guns is not really a lot of guns yeah it's just that you know you look at other manufacturers and no one else does that and that's not a bad thing it's just more of an observation what i would almost be afraid of is a company and i there's a lot of them out there that strictly make ar-15s because that business is up and that business is down what do they do when business is very you know business is very soft yeah we've got options we can switch back to single actions or 1911's constantly yeah we're always constantly always always consciously something going on here always and i think that's what really stimulates the new products the development the creative ideas you're always doing it's kind of like take for example cosworth or formula one teams they're always coming out with you know the car they're racing in in 2022 is gonna be a completely different car that they're gonna be racing this year between base one and race five we've seen five different cars like they're changing so fast we're in a sense kind of that have that mindset here [Applause] [Music] this is an ar-15 we make ar-15s from scratch i know you guys aren't here to see ar-15s you're buying forgings in and then finishing them we're finishing the forgings most of the guys the united states aren't doing it this way they're buying a finished lower upper in the components and putting it together so they're shopping around when you buy an ar-15 for 499 or 600 us it's like the same four guys are making the lowers at the lowest price for everybody so instead of having these machines generating heat and noise and having you know technical people making these they're everybody's just buying everything from everyone else and finding the cheapest price they can get their gun for our ar-15 on the other hand is completely made from a forging in-house the uppers the lowers you know everything's insured to fit the finish and also even the color of the anodization is exactly the same because it's all done in house very few companies can boast that they make the complete gun in-house you may have noticed when you load a magazine into an ar-15 when you load a magazine into it it goes into a square hole yeah you might have asked yourself how does a square pocket this rectangle hole how's it put in there there's two ways of doing it we're doing both here uh we do it with a four-foot broach and basically what you do yeah it's got a big motor behind it and a big hydraulic ram and what basically is you put the receiver in there and the brooch pulls it through and if you look at these teeth every set of it's like a medieval torture device every one of these teeth is just offset by a fraction of a of a thousandth of an inch and as it pulls out the teeth get bigger and bigger and bigger and by the time the thing is pulled the machine is pulled the brooch four feet through it you've gone from a shape that was not the shape of the magazine to a finish shape when it gets to the other end that's the first step in greatness what is put that into context what is the first step in greatness making great products having the foundation of it okay next was the sanding and polishing which had an enviable amount of equipment to handle [Applause] the juxtaposition between the quality of guns that they work on seemed strange to me at first but the more workers i met and saw working on guns the more normal it felt here's all the single actions here all the you know this is just all the assembly stuff here and we're making pellets by palace and countless of these guns all day this could be the most american shotgun ever it's a connecticut shotgun h fox 911 exhibition grade let me draw your attention to a number of things firstly i've never shown a fox on the channel before and it's kind of bizarre that there's no draw or second bump or anything on the back that's because it's all locked up through this little bar here which is i mean it's going to be plenty strong enough it's just a little bizarre what that does allow is a very very shallow action even in the 12 ball which is called 12 gauge this is a 410 so it doesn't look like a particularly full tiny frame you have two us flags on the top enamel bin i think that's really cool i probably live to regret that but it's just nice to see something a little different the cross flags are smart statue of liberty it's a map of america i'm right there you have the twin towers on the bottom and the new york skyline on the side there this is a very special gun the carving the wood everything about this is just a bit different and just does get a show these guys can make some really wild stuff do you do just stock guns or is everything you build for a customer no i built stock guns as well for example uh we make a gun called the revelation and that gun you could have any way you want it as long as there's 12 different flavors to it i dropped this out because this is one of the coolest things i've seen inside a gun you do that just because is that a customer asked you to do once yes it was it was just something to see to really push the envelope of the gun makers art you know that's not what everyone's getting nobody's getting rubies and sapphires inside they're done they're getting pretty much this look at how perfect that is there what you need is a handy buy right and you have to really look close to see it but that's how you just unscrew the locks and uh you know the gun comes completely apart you can do you can clean it and once it's all back in now back in you can't really i mean if the light hits it just right you can see the hidden fasteners but uh you know we're bringing all the greatest ideas we've seen guns into guns that normal people shooting enthusiasts can afford [Music] so this is a plastic machine yeah we injection molded our own parts here for a revolver we make here we go thank you very much what are these the switch gun these are the handles for the switch gun the switch gun is a fold out 2-2 magnum revolver [Music] that fits right in your pocket yet still has a usable grip and a half decent trigger it's cool it's 449 and i wish i could have one i mean it's really hard to convey quite how big this place is you might think that this video has given you any sense of the scale we've been walking around here for an hour and a bit and haven't been in the same place we've been to some gummakers i've never been this is a gun factory this is a serious factory you know there's pallets of black guns just rolling out the door this is insane just walk through from the finishing room and there's just walked into another huge finishing room there's a guy filing up a set of barrels it's just cool this is really really cool you've got a revelation here he's polishing the frame so every part then comes in here and gets fitted and fired up by hand this is now we're talking about the purdy in the holland and that's where it'll sit here and work out until it's exactly right everything the girls and the actors are joined together a little piece of your life for sale how much floor space is here hundred thousand square feet a hundred thousand square feet yeah well you've watched every one of us you've walked every one of them and do you work in like a batch unit says the bachelor a batch of five batch 10 batch of 20. yeah batch of one i mean that's just depends it depends on the workstation you know some guns i some guns i may sell 100 guns a year sometimes i may solve two guns a year this is a 2 2 lr double rifle the model 21. how much does it sell for well about 25 000 just because it's such a pig to make yeah make two a year this is about to have its ribs laid on we talked at about the a10 around the beginning that is laser welding the rib and this is soft soldering i'm going to solder that in there you can do it right now watch them do it there we go this is going to be cool most shotgun barrels are constructed of multiple components and as such the two tubes must be supported together somehow [Music] the a-10 is welded the g1 has a barrel hanger but this little beauty is soldered in the traditional way what he's doing is putting the bottom rib on and that's integral part of the barrel assembly and the barrels have been regulated underneath there's regulation blocks that were put in place and now he's going to come in with a torch and braise the soft side of the ribbon into place this is a system that hasn't changed in 150 years you can put the wedges behind there and now these wedges are going to push the rib onto the surface so they can't go yep and really force them on there [Music] once the tubes are regulated ribs are soldered into place the excess solder is cleaned up and the barrels are blue for a strong joint the gap from barrel to rib must be minimal and so hand fitting is required [Music] there were two rooms left on today's tour the first was the engraving room where all of the laser work is done the simplicity of this setup was surprising given the quality of laser engraving on their guns [Music] and the room where all the stocks are oiled or lacquered this is where people come to rub the wood yeah that's good is there a lock on the door uh in the morning there is and so that was that it's now three months later and i'm still processing the experience [Music] this factory and indeed this gun maker is like no other [Music] i had a lot of fun that day and all this testing out the a10 and the g1 [Music] but now i can't wait to come back and try some of their less sensible offerings [Music] guys thanks for watching take care and as shane would say shoot standard [Music] you

Channel: TGS Outdoors

Views: 527,022

Keywords: the gun shop, gun, guns, shotgun, shotguns, rifle, rifles, shooting, shoot, botley, botley gun shop, ammo, ammunition, tgs

Id: sNx5ugLIre4

Length: 36min 2sec (2162 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 01 2022