waterhouse
Member
When I placed my order at SHOT the nice folks at STI invited me up for a factory tour, so I made the drive up this morning.
It is quite an impressive operation. All parts, including magazines and small parts like sears and firing pins, are made in house, and the amount of machinery and cutting tools is simply amazing. I think the neatest part of the tour was seeing the step by step process on each part . . .you can really see the parts evolve in each step. They have sheet metal at one stage which is bent at another and welded at another and then has cuts put into it. Voila! A magazine is born. I got to watch similar processes for the frames, slides, magwells, and sears. I don't know much about machine work, and those of you who do probably wouldn't have been as fascinated, but I was pretty much in awe at the whole system.
Everyone there was a class act and they were happy to answer all of my questions. Great folks and a great company.
It is quite an impressive operation. All parts, including magazines and small parts like sears and firing pins, are made in house, and the amount of machinery and cutting tools is simply amazing. I think the neatest part of the tour was seeing the step by step process on each part . . .you can really see the parts evolve in each step. They have sheet metal at one stage which is bent at another and welded at another and then has cuts put into it. Voila! A magazine is born. I got to watch similar processes for the frames, slides, magwells, and sears. I don't know much about machine work, and those of you who do probably wouldn't have been as fascinated, but I was pretty much in awe at the whole system.
Everyone there was a class act and they were happy to answer all of my questions. Great folks and a great company.