Category Archives: Factory Tour

Ammunition, Factory Tour

Ian McCollum Tours the S&B Factory – It’s a Very Cool Video

I am a huge fan of S&B ammo, factory tour videos and Ian McCollum’s Forgotten Weapons series (If you don’t know about Ian, click here for his website and here for his Youtube channel.) So, when he posted this morning about his tour of the S&B facility in Vlašim, in the Czech Republic, I knew I had to watch it.

As usual, Ian does a great job. Larry Vickers created a video back in 2018 of his tour and it was interesting to compare what Larry saw six-plus years ago to what Ian just saw.

I learned three new things watching Ian’s video:

  1. Literally every single round that ships from S&B is QC inspected at each step of manufacturing through various computerized methods – imaging, weight, etc. Literally, every single round – not samples – must pass their quality checks. No wonder their quality is so good.
  2. It takes 2-3 days to change over from one to another caliber so they want long production runs to absorb all the setup costs. I can only imagine the fixed costs are enormous too. A facility like you see in the video costs millions and millions of dollars.
  3. Civilian and military ammo both have their necks annealed. The only difference is that the military inspects want to be able to see that it happened whereas commercial/private shooters view seeing the discolored neck as defective so additional polishing is done to remove it. Other than the additional polishing – the process is the same.
The 100% QC capabilities are stunning. This machine will kick out any case that video inspection deems as being deffective. Literally every single case! All of my old school sampling and inspection methods from 30+ years ago sure seems dated now.

So, with no further to-do, here’s Ian’s S&B factory tour video:

Summary

This is S&B factory tour video is another great production by Ian. I have shot S&B for years – espectially 9mm, 10mm and .45ACP plus some .300 Win Mag and .338 Lapua and they continue to impress me.

I hope you find this interesting also.

Note: All screen shots are from Ian’s video and remain his property.

If you find this post useful, please share the link on Facebook, with your friends, etc. Your support is much appreciated and if you have any feedback, please email me at in**@ro*********.com. Please note that for links to other websites, I may be paid via an affiliate program such as Avantlink, Impact, Amazon and eBay.

AR & Related Rifles and Pistols, Factory Tour, Rifles, Sniper / Precision Rifles

Two Bergara Factory Tour Videos – Watch Barrels, Receivers, and B14 Rifles Being Built

During the course of my researching Begara, the history of the brand and the parent company – Dikar S Coop, I encountered this very interesting tour of the Dikar S Coop factory in Bergara, Spain. It was conducted in 2019 and is a chance for you to see some of their barrel, bolt and receiver making plus assembly and testing.

In both videos, you can see in that they have invested in modern CNC manufacturing and have quality control steps integrated with manufacturing including visual inspections, go-no jigs and testing for run out.

They show their process for making B14 barrels. Here, they are getting ready to do button rifling.
Here’s a screen shot of the CNC milling of a B14 receiver body.
In addition to the manufacturing, you can see them assembling receivers.
Here, the gentleman is assembling a B14 Wilderness.
All rifles are proof tested. The person on the left is a rerpesentative of the Spanish proof house – he’s inspecting a casing.
The tested rifles are packaged and then stored in the warehouse to await loading into containers.

Now, watch the video!

This first video was produced by Bergara and was the source for the above photos:

Please note, all photos are screenshots from the video and remain the property of their respective owners. They are used solely to highlight the video.

A Second Video From 2022

This second video was produced by Pedro Ampuero in 2022 and is also very cool. I’d recommend watching it as well for further insights. It is just over 20 minutes long so he could get into more detail.

Summary

I hope you enjoy these videos as much as I did. I’ve learned a great deal about Bergara over the past year and the fine barrels and rifles they make and wanted to share these.

If you find this post useful, please share the link on Facebook, with your friends, etc. Your support is much appreciated and if you have any feedback, please email me at in**@ro*********.com. Please note that for links to other websites, I may be paid via an affiliate program such as Avantlink, Impact, Amazon and eBay.