One of the advantages of being almost famous (for loose definitions of “almost” and “famous”) is that sometimes, people recognize me in public places. No, I don’t have paparazzi following me around taking pictures, and I do not yet need to wear dark glasses. Nonetheless: it sometimes happens—and always with positive results.
A few weeks back, I was shopping in a hardware store in my hometown, and a woman approached me and asked, “Are you Clayton Cramer?” It turns out that she works for a Boise firearms manufacturer, Tactical Solutions. One thing led to another, and she arranged for me to go a tour of the plant.
I should explain that even if I was not a firearms enthusiast, I would still be interested in seeing the inside of a firearms manufacturer. While researching my last book, Armed America, I was fascinated by what I learned about the part that firearms manufacturing played in the development of industrial America. A series of U.S. contracts for muskets and pistols, then for rifles, played a major part in creating the system of advanced manufacturing that became known in Europe in the nineteenth century as “the American system” or “the arsenal system.”
This system includes all the parts of what we now recognize as modern industrial production: interchangeable parts; specialization of labor; mass production; modern machine tools (including what became the vertical mill); blueprints; go/no-go gauges for testing parts. Everything that today we take for granted in mass produced, inexpensive parts is a descendant of methods originally developed between 1794 and about 1850 for U.S. government military contracts.
Not surprisingly, I love to watch modern manufacturing processes, and it does not matter too much if it is ballpoint pens or coil springs. Yes, Science Channel’s How It’s Made can cause me to waste hours in front of the tube. Tour a firearms manufacturer? Where do I sign up?
Like all modern manufacturers, they have the kind of big, expensive computer controlled milling machines that causes serious machine tool envy.
Tactical Solutions started out as a machine shop, making parts for the aerospace industry—but the downturn in the economy a few years ago caused them to branch into a product line that was both a personal interest of the owners, Dan Person and Chet Alvord, and an area that tends to do well, even if the rest of the economy is slow: guns.
Today, Tactical Solutions builds a variety of items: .22 LR conversions; various .22 barrels and accessories; and suppressors. They started making the Pac-Lite barrel assembly as a replacement for Ruger’s Mark I, II, III, and 22/45.pistols. It uses a chrome moly steel .22 barrel inside an aluminum housing that creates an attractive and lightweight unit. They now produce this similar barrel assembly for pistols and rifles, in a variety of barrel lengths, both threaded and non-threaded, including the Browning Buck Mark pistols, the Ruger 10/22, and .22 LR upper receivers for AR-15 rifles. Today they are getting ready to ship a .22 conversion for Glock pistols, which should be out by the time this article appears.
Tactical Solutions is not a big company—about 30 employees, all of them shooters, hunters, or other sportsmen—so there is a bit of passion in their work, as you might expect. One unsurprising consequence of this is that they keep developing useful accessories based on their own experience and desires—which in my experience, is the most productive method of developing products.
As an example, the Ruger 10/22 magazine release was clearly designed with the original 10 round Ruger magazine in mind. As you put larger magazines in it—and who hasn’t suffered the occasional Ramboesque moment shooting this fun little rifle—pushing that release can get to be a more of a struggle. While I do not normally go shooting in freezing weather, I suspect that pushing the standard magazine release while wearing heavy gloves might not work so well. Tactical Solutions makes an extended magazine release for the 10/22 that solves both problems.