My latest theory on CURRENT gun manufacturing

[GarandTd]

Quality is relative IMO. It can be associated with cheap things, expensive things, durable things, and things intended to be thrown away. Price does not always reflect quality. Quality can come from any nation.

Has quality taken a drastic downturn? Or, has modern technology given us an easier way to share our experiences?

I've been lucky, I guess. My purchases have been of a quality level that is acceptable for what I paid.

[turkeestalker]

I have a challenge for you all.
Without using your smartphone or Funk and Wagnall...just from the foundation you write your comments from, Define "Quality"

That is a good question, and I am not trying to be a smart arse or a brand basher here as I have always been fond of Ruger firearms, but I'll tell you what I don't call it...

1) I don't call it a new revolver with a flat spot on the rear edge of the cylinder that measures almost a quarter inch along the edge and extends 3/8 up the side of the cylinder.

2) I don't call it a new revolver with nearly a 16th of an inch of daylight showing between the top of the barrel and the bottom of the dovetailed front sight blade.

3) I don't call it a revolver whose grip panels do not follow the contour of the frame and extend a 16th of an inch below the bottom on only one corner of one side, and the other corner of the other side. That also wears medallions that are canted differently panel to panel.

All three revolvers purchased new in a twelve month period at a little over $2K out of pocket.
The first one Ruger replaced without any issues, and the third one as well but not without a failed attempt at correcting it and a couple of months in between.
The second one I was told is as it is engineered to be along with a flat refusal to discuss it further, really.
They did at least offer a brass bead option for free since I did not care for the FO that came on the revolver.
The brass bead sight is only marginally better than the FO one regarding the gap between the blade and barrel.

I don't call that quality and I'm not inclined to purchase any more new Ruger firearms.

[HiBC]

I don't call that quality and I'm not inclined to purchase any more new Ruger firearms.

Bingo.
And I've considered Ruger "Very Good" for decades. My last one was a Lypsey
44 SPL. I'm happy with it.

As I was told at the Juran seminar:" We can use focus panels,surveys,accumulate and analyze data,...but it all boils down to how the customer FEELS about the dollar spent on your product"

[NateKirk]

From personal experience, all I can say is that when you pay people less than a wage to live and enjoy themselves on, all it breeds is the attitude of "who cares?" whether the rate is fair or not.

[FITASC]

Gucci said it best:
"The bitterness of poor quality is remembered long after the sweetness of low price has faded from memory."

[HiBC]

NateKirk,I understand your point.Have you considered the economic realities of your point?

I understand there is the us vs them suspicion that we are victims getting screwed by the greedy corporation ....etc. That's real easy.Who made the decision to apply for and accept the job? You shook hands on an agreement when you took the job.
Economic fact: Every job has a certain "value added" to the product. If you are a total cost,not wage,of $25 an hour to the company,and your operation represents 25 cents to the shipped wholesale price of the product,you must do at least 100 per hour for the company to break even.But its not a non-profit organization.You have to be a player on the team of making money.
Getting hired does not entitle you to anything. You have to be part of the bottom line.No private enterprise exists to subsidize your life.
And no,life is not fair.Its not supposed to be.

If screwing down screws or flipping burger only represents $10 per hour to the business,they cannot pay you 12,or you cost them $2 an hour.

So smile,do the job that sucks in a way that shows you are a great candidate to advance to a better job.Good help is hard to find and the company may leverage you into making lots more money for them.

Sad reality,maybe not fair,but true...your personal life and challenges don't add to the product value.
Somebody else wants your job and will work for your wage.

And you can find a better job,maybe. If not,be grateful for what you have.
Got a cellphone? I don't. Got pay TV? I don't.etc. I'm not complaining.I'm getting by.
Detroit WAS the pride and joy of USA. Lots of good paying long term jobs.
You tell me what happened. Did those good wages,bennies,and security make every employee proud,dedicated and productive?

[Nathan]

Quality is relative...

Quality is not relative. Quality is the measurement of how a product meets the internal requirements. Tolerance, performance, fit, finish, feeling, color, durability, etc...

Customer Quality is how well a product meets your customer's requirements.

Many companies build super high quality products. How many hear and respond well to the customers' changing demands? Those are the companies and products which make us happy.

[armoredman]

May I just say that I appreciated HBiC's insight into the world of high quality manufacturing, almost makes me wish I had done that instead.

[Nathan]

I like where HiBC went except companies want to be more successful than that. On one side people are a cost of doing business and I'm not sure that 4 times value is exactly right, but it is close. I could go into value of work, etc, but I won't, but there is some requirement that worker and engineer work together to improve worker value. Understand, this looks like some


All that said, there is real value in having workers that are high enough paid or have good enough incentives to be able to own the company's products. This creates pride in a persons work, understanding of the end user and inate ability to inspect for customer quality items. Also workers must feel empowered to stop production for poor quality. That reduces final QC work which reduces worker value and customer quality.


On these forums, I hear a lot about company A must not do QC anymore. It would be easy to find an employee who agrees with you. The problem is random inspectors catch too little when pressured to ship and too much when pressured for quality and this has little to do with what actual customers care about.

Inspectors will hone in on process limitations like finish color on a Glock being 1/2 shade off, but miss that sights were not installed. Essentially, they get used to holding a line on process variables and miss the abnormals that customers expect them to find.

What you really want is experienced people at each process who understand when the process changes and react quick to changing it back...basically tolerance reduction through adjustments. Then you want final inspection to be a handful of typical customer interactions like:
1) Confirm gun unloaded
2) Function check all safeties
3) Fire 5 round group at 15 yards
4) Confirm unloaded
5) Field strip looking for wear or poor appearance
6) lube and assemble
7) Pack and include signed target

[Don P]

That is the goal, unfortunately, the process does not always deliver the desired result.

Also, the focus on the process virtually ensures the workers will have little or no pride in their work. Business wants a process where they can hire monkeys off the street (literate, but monkeys) and they will follow rote instructions (procedures) and produce perfect products.

But monkeys are monkeys, some will actually care about what they do, learn skills and try to perfect them, and some will not. Some will only do as little as it takes to get by. The drawback to a union shop is that the "bad" monkeys are just as protected as the good ones, and they get equal pay for doing poor work, which affects the morale of the good ones, adversely.

Right on the head. Folks being hired where I worked with no experience, no mechanical aptitude, expected to produce quality parts with minimal scrap and the big goal MEET PRODUCTION RATE. They would hire folks who have never seen a caliper, micrometer and no idea about decimal point dimensions. The machine I operated required a skill level of 2-3. They held me at level 1 because of personality conflicts with management and not my job performance. BS in the work place. The more they took away from me the less I cared about quality parts.

[444]

To some extent, I agree that a lot of guns produced today are not the equal of what was produced 60 years ago. A lot of that is cosmetic in my opinion. Guns today don't look as good as they used to for the most part. I don't think the operational quality of the firearm is down across the board however. One exception (again, in my opinion) is the surprising out of the box accuracy of rifles today. And I am talking low cost rifles. But anyway.............

I also think that the gun designs of today suit today's machinery. They are designed to be mass produced. So they don't look like guns made 60 years ago.

It is also my opinion that a large portion of the people who buy guns don't know anything about guns, and they never shoot them. Out of the remaining people that shoot them, most of them don't know anything about guns either.
So the guns they are buying are just fine by them. So why should the company selling them make something else ? Today we have the internet where anyone can broadcast his dissatisfaction to the world. And for all we know, he doesn't know what he is doing or what he is talking about. But, we all can hear his story.

Maybe this is just me, but something like this has happened to me, many times: you see a guy shooting his new Wizbang 2001 and you say, so how do you like that Wizbang 2001 ? And he says, I love this gun because of the accuracy. And he is shooting at a propane bottle from 15 feet away, and hitting it most of the time. Or another classic is someone who is shooting at a lifesize human target from 10 yards and hitting the paper about half the time. But they put one shot right in the center of the A-Zone and they couldn't be prouder. Or the guys that take a semi-auto rifle and do a mag dump into a hillside (no target) with only one malfunction and they think they are king of the hill. These are the people who actually fire the guns they buy. Most people buy guns and either never fire them at all or fire them once or twice. If you have ever taken a CCW class, you can see plenty of those people. The guns they are buying are more than adequate for what they do with them and what they are capable of doing with them.

It's only a small percentage of the gun buying public who know enough to see the flaws. And it is only a small percentage who shoot them enough and have the knowledge and skill to determine they are sub par. And for those people, there are higher end products available as well as all kinds of options for customization. If you do buy a run of the mill gun, you probably intend to use that gun only as a starting point. Then you start taking off parts, adding parts, and sending it to a true craftsman to customize. And although I wasn't around 60 years ago, I bet the same thing held true then too.

[HiBC]

As LIFE dealt the cards,I went from being a proud,well paid Toolmaker to,via a series of steps,to being a School Custodian making $8.97.
No whining,no blaming.
I was selling a gun a month to make mortgage. I did good work and I was reliable. Wages went up as well as could be expected. Good help is hard to find.
I learned to live cheaper.
Now,I'm not a Veteran. I in no way suggest there is any comparison between
a school Custodian and a member of the Armed Forces.
Our Warriors are poorly paid,may have Hell for working conditions ,promises are not kept...need I go on? They know every whiny complaint we civilians may have,and more. Some have been spit on. Their flag burned.
But they are Warriors. They know who they are. In spite of it all,and despite their own whiners and their own Sad Sacks,our Warriors ARE excellence,pride,and quality.

As I humbly recognize,A custodian is not a Veteran.

But. When I saw those kids,I understood I was responsible for their well being
Their Health and Safety,and more.
The working environment for the staff.
I took ownership in "Excellent " health dept ratings. I took ownership in "# 1 School of Choice" awards.I was,in away,their "Warrior"

I will spare you the description of how dysfunctional the political bureacracy of the school district is,and the frequent climate of being a "subhuman janitor"
I'll leave it to your imagination.

I could,and did,smile swabbing urinals,kmowing this was how I paid for that Rose for Her.
And Oh,my Goodness! How I enjoyed that $1.69 40 OZ ice cold Old Milwaukee at home after my shift at midnight.

You see,even as a $8.93 an hour Custodian,I never stopped being a Proud Toolmaker.I tried to never forget that it was MY handshake that agreed to accept $8.93 an hour for my work.
And I could not afford to lose that job as an over 50 dinosaur machinist during an economic downturn.I mostly stayed grateful had it,and I never forgot I was there by choice.

You see,i never forgot that my work was MY PRODUCT . And I never stopped being a Proud Toolmaker. As a Custodian,I could maintain that I was owner of,and responsible for the QUALITY OF MY PRODUCT. Even cleaning up puke for $9.00 an hour for people who look down on janitors.I do not give them the power to define WHO I AM. I could look myself in the eye in the mirror.
And NO ONE who has rationalized the decline of their own motivation or productivity,their own slide into mediocrity,has ANY RIGHT to complain about the poor quality of any product,gun or otherwise.
You own it.

[tipoc]

The op started this thread by saying he believed that the general quality of firearms these days has fallen off from the past. He also observed that he doesn't see many people who actually work in the firearms industry active on gun forums.

I think we've talked about the latter point, some reasons that make sense have been advanced.

On the first point though, many on this thread seem to believe that there has been a large drop off in quality and that it's because American workers are monkeys who can't be counted on to do the job right out of laziness, ignorance or ineptitude. Part of the reason for this is due to unions who protect them from being fired, so that thinking goes. Or, another claims, the problem is that the workers do not take pride in what they do and are not thankful enough for just having a job. That American workers do not strive everyday to be and do their personal best. This latter just being a backhanded way of also blaming workers.

I think both those trends of thought are wrong.

The only gun manufacturer producing in the U.S. that has a union is Colt, far as I know. So blaming unions is not in reality a factor in the industry at all. In the U.S. less than 7% of workers are organized into unions. It's a bit more than double that if we count public sector workers like firemen, post office, state, local and federal workers, etc. The raw numbers for union workers have been declining over the last 4 decades as industrial production in the U.S. has shrunk. So unions are not the boogeyman here.

I'm not sure how to measure the quality thing because the standards in the industry have changed greatly over the last 30 years. Longer maybe. Since the AR grew in popularity and Glocks revolutionized things the standards, withing the industry, regarding what was a quality gun have changed greatly. So have the tastes of the buying public. Those changes are international and much bigger than the issue of trained and motivated workers. Although the latter are a piece of it, it's a smaller part.

tipoc

[Sevens]

The op started this thread by saying he believed that the general quality of firearms these days has fallen off from the past.

I haven't scrolled up to examine exactly what I said and there is no value in arguing "what I meant..." but I can clarify exactly what I am thinking -- it is simply that quality control and final inspection seems often and/or largely missing.

The most recent example was the brand new to market S&W M&P 2.0 Compact the my best shooting bro received and it was improperly assembled. All of the parts produced are (so far) appearing to be working parts, but the human person that grabbed these parts and placed them in to the pistol did the job improperly. It was not a piece that shifted during shipping, it was placed in the wrong place and the pistol appeared to function with extremely noticeable drag. As he bought TWO of these pistols (from different sellers) and these two arrived at FFL on the same day (two different shipping carriers, if that is somehow relevant) it was 100% obvious that one of them was assembled incorrectly.

It was simply this particular (latest) example that spurred me on to ask why we never hear from folks who work/have recently worked in the industry... but this is, in my view, a constant stream of examples of failure from the largest gunmakers in the recent past. And especially S&W. The Bodyguard hassles, the new "Victory" rimfire pistol, some of the face-down failures I've seen reported on even high dollar revolvers... and from Ruger also in many assorted examples.

My OP seems to have spawned off an interesting avenue of discussion... not where I had intended to discuss, but such is the nature of discussions.

[turkeestalker]

Not to the OP or his original intent with his question, but to the bias that I see voiced against union workers and non union workers alike.

I've spent a number of years working both sides of the fence.
My first twelve years in a family business that was non union, and I'm now on my twenty second year working through a union at the same skilled trade I started in.
There are good people on both sides of that fence, the same as there are bad.

I told my father when I left him to go to work for a union shop, that I would not have wanted to work for the local union of five years prior.
That it was a bit of a pill to swallow to work for the current one at that time, but they were changing.
That I could see where I would be proud to be a part of that same union in another five years.

All of that has rung true.
The unions of today are not the unions of yesterday, they've changed as time has passed and as society has changed, and they continue to do so.
If they didn't or couldn't, then they're history.
That is pretty much a universal truth whether talking unions or anything else.

These days if you're not an asset to a contractor, you're not marketable and will ultimately not work. You'll be forced to find another way to make a living.
In the last 22 years, many members from my local have been forced to do just that, thankfully.
What remains is a pretty solid foundation of well trained, highly skilled, quality craftsmen with good work ethics that go to work with the intent of making the contractor money, and we're good at it.
If he doesn't make money, we're out of a job.

I'm sure that there are unions still out there that believe that 'brotherhood' means protecting the 'chit'bums that are bending you over.
Not my union, and I'm betting that if there are still some out there, they'll not be around that much longer anyway.

I'm fortunate as my local still holds about 50% of the work share in our jurisdiction, most are kicking and clawing to hang onto 10 to 20%.
Without that 10 to 20% or even 50%, collectively bargaining to set a standard, no one, union or non union, is going to appreciate the results.

I don't hate on non union workers, we've all got to eat and I've been there, done that.
Having been there and being where I am now, I understand the value of that collective bargaining that sets the standard.

Unions were established out of necessity.
Many lost their way for quite a stretch since they were formed, but not so much these days.
Once they're gone, they won't be coming back.
Careful what you wish for.

[BBarn]

The gun industry is very competitive. For the most part, customers are getting what they are paying for. There are occasional lapses in workmanship that get out the door, especially with the publicly held manufacturers.

When the compensation of a public company's leadership is based on stock performance and there are shareholders involved, the number one focus is nearly always on stock price and/or dividends. As a result, the product sometimes suffers as a result of financial pressures regardless of the product they are making.

I've learned that some gun manufacturers have a moderate degree of variability in their workmanship standards (based on the variations I see in fit and finish). For that reason, I've quit buying new guns sight unseen (i.e. order online and pick up at a local FFL holder). I don't mind paying a little more at a store where I can inspect the product. Can save some frustration later.

[Don P]

I've seen it happen too often. Parts having issues whether it be finish or fit or dimensional and supervisors/management saying pack it and ship it. If the management staff does this what does that say to the personal on the shop floor making the parts??? Parts that would fail mil-spec would be placed into the non military customer parts inventory. Again what does that say to the folks on the floor making the parts. In hole at the end of EVERY MONTH it was ship it to make the production numbers set for the month regardless. There were months where 40% of what was shipped came back for quality issues. And the insanity of it is this would happen every month with the only thing that changed was the percentage of what was returned for QC issues

[buck460XVR]

I think a large part of this"lack of quality" imodern firearms has to do with fit and finish. Back when I was a kid and good wood was cheap, you expected to get nice wood on any firearm you bought. Now those pieces of good wood are as much as what most folks want to spend on a good rifle anymore. I've been buying new guns off and on for over half a century. In that time, I've gotten "stinkers" from every time period. What I have found is the general public now wants a gun that shoots well right outta the box and cares little about aesthetics. They'd rather spend that extra $100 on a good red-dot than on a nice piece of wood. They'd rather have a brushed stainless finish and a synthetic stock that does not have to be cared for the minute you come in from the field and you have to worry about when hunting in a heavy downpour.....and the manufacturers have responded. Same goes for accuracy. Used to be it was virtually impossible to get a gun to shoot to MOA straight from the box without trigger/stock work without spending two weeks pay. Now it is the norm with a sub $400 gun. Used to be Ruger folks(whether revolver or rifle) always claimed, once you spend $100 on a trigger job you have a nice firearm. IMHO, Relative cost for new guns has drastically reduced in my lifetime, as has beauty and art form in guns, while overall quality has stayed the same and accuracy and reliability "right outta the box" has improved. Used to be folks bought maybe half a dozen guns in their lifetime....and thus to get a "stinker" was rare. Now for most folks, especially on gun forums, half a dozen guns is nuttin'. They buy that many in a year. Thus the chance of getting a "stinker" is much greater.

Folks love to whine. Seems in our country and with the advent of the internet, we have become a nation of whiners. Me, I'm just grateful for the readily available options we have for firearms here in America, and that they are available for a cost that is prohibitive to very few. If I have to deal with a "stinker" once in a while, so be it. I do the same with virtually every other mass produced product I buy. Whining seems to do nuttin' but get other whiners whining.

[K_Mac]

Well said 460. Quality firearms are more available, at a lower price than ever before. They may not be as pretty as they once we're, but guns are tools for me and I really don't need to pay for deep, dark bluing or exotic woods. I like those things and am glad they are available even though I will probably never own an heirloom quality firearm.

[444]

buck460XVR

That is basically what I was trying to get across in my previous post. Especially in regards to rifles.

I can remember 30 years ago, if you had a rifle that would honestly shoot sub-MOA groups out of the box, it was cause for joyous celebration. Today, this is common.

And one of the reasons for this is modern manufacturing methods and design. I just got a Savage rifle in a trade. It is a "chassis" rifle. There is no wood at all. The action sits in aluminum bedding blocks and the barrel is free floated. The bolt head "floats". I took it out yesterday to try a different powder. The rifle is .308 and I was trying H4895 because I have a bunch of it sitting here. The bullet is the 168 grain Sierra MatchKing again, because I have a bunch of them sitting here. Five different loads, with 10 different five shot groups. And every group was sub-MOA. The best load was just over an half inch at 100 yards.......with a bone stock, out of the box rifle.

The rifle IMO looks terrible.

But it shoots MUCH better than something I would have bought in the 1970s that had a lot more attention to detail with wood to metal fitting and checkering and all that. And it was much cheaper to manufacture and much cheaper to buy.

This summer I have purchased a total of five new rifles (four Savages and a Ruger American). All of them are plastic and are bottom-end rifles. And they all shoot very good. I bought a Savage rifle in 6.5 Creemoor last May for $499. I worked up a load for it and went to a long range. I got the dope for 500 yards and then used that in a ballistic calculator to get the dope for 1200 yards and made four consecutive hits at 1200 yards on a 24" by 24" steel plate. Again this was a bone stock, right out of the box, $499 rifle and............I was using factory ammo (Hornady 140 grain ELD Match) when I tried the shots at 1200 yards.

Again, the rifle has a plastic stock (with an aluminum chassis) and the finish on the metal is a dull, probably sprayed on coating. But, it shoots far better than a much nicer looking rifle of yesteryear that had a rich/deep blue. And I am one of THOSE guys that would much rather have a cheaper rifle that shoots very good, than a beautiful rifle that doesn't shoot nearly as well.

In addition, if I want to change calibers or get a new barrel, with the modern Savages, I can buy a barrel vice, a set of go and no-go headspace gauges, and a wrench; and I can change barrels at home because they used a totally different system than what was used 50 years ago.