Kimber Mfg., is pleased to name Troy, Alabama, as its official corporate headquarters and to announce it is hiring aggressively in all departments. After a carefully planned shift of leadership, R&D and manufacturing resources, Kimber has made substantial progress in the transition to its new, state-of-the-art headquarters in Troy, Alabama.
The final step in completing this new facility is adding staff across all departments. Kimber’s new headquarters is situated on 80+ acres with more than 225,000 square-feet of space and is now home to industry-leading design engineering, product management and manufacturing capabilities.
Courtesy Kimber
After an exhaustive search, Troy was chosen for a multitude of reasons including its proximity to top-tier engineering schools as well as gun- and business-friendly support from the city of Troy and the great state of Alabama. Kimber’s Alabama expansion is well ahead of schedule, having filled hundreds of its planned Troy-based positions.
Kimber is seeking qualified applicants across multiple positions and business areas including CNC technicians, machinists, quality control specialists, lean technicians, design engineers, compliance analysts, customer service representatives, materials planners, maintenance technicians, finishing operators, and assembly technicians.
Courtesy Kimber
“Kimber is a great place to work, especially if you love firearms,” said Pedi Gega, director of assembly and product finishing. “We have two indoor gun ranges, one outdoor range, a state-of-the-art design and prototype fabrication center, and a dynamic team of professionals who pride themselves in producing firearms with unmatched attention to detail, design and performance. Every Kimber firearm is created with a unique blend of advanced precision technology and authentic human craftsmanship.”
Kimber Mfg., Inc. is an American company that designs and manufactures premium firearms for individual, sporting, law enforcement and military markets. Complete information on Kimber firearms, accessories and Less-Lethal products is available at www.kimberamerica.com or by phone from Kimber in-house staff at +1 (888) 243-4522. A detailed product catalog is available upon request. Kimber can also be found on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Instagram.
The Deep South is where a lot of gun related manufacturing will end up. I will move there when I retire. Virginia has been ruined too.
Met Aliscia Andrews. She doesn’t have any this cycle, but a 5 min conversation gave me hope.
Vote!
I’d love to work for a gun manufacturer. But not in Alabama. Or anywhere along the bottom fourth of the continental U.S. Tornadoes, hurricanes, air so sweaty thick you can drink it, and bugs the size of helicopters.
…’spose you can use the flying bugs for skeet, tho…
I’d prefer the American Redoubt, if I need to finally leave CA.
Stay north crybaby.
Oof, that hurt.
Oh wait…
Help Keep the South Beautiful….
Put a Yankee On The Bus
What a weenie! Woke up this morning to 39 degrees, the bride suggesting we move south from Austin! We spent 5 wonderful (NOT) years enjoying Rapid City, SD, and temps to 40 below, I’ll take the bugs.
The hurricanes are great for paragliding.
“Virginia has been ruined too.”
… by Northern Virginia carpetbaggers. It breaks my heart that I may feel compelled to move out of the state my family has called home for at least 250 years.
They just flipped my congressional district to blue in 2018, along with two other districts, which gave the dems the House.
Ugh.
May have a bit of a snapback given how low turnout was in 2018. May still need to move depending on situation but I sincerely doubt all is lost.
Have lived in Virginia most of my life, Virginia has slowly been raising taxes to match its neighbor, Maryland. This under both parties. The only decent thing Governor Northam proposed and the General Assembly rejected was getting rid of the auto state inspection. Virginia has long been a nanny state.
South Dakota is the place to go for freedom.
Woke up one morning to a beautiful clear sky and 10 degrees. Sun shined all day long, when the sun set the temp was 20 below zero, on the way to -35 later that night. Black Hills are beautiful. Summer is last 2 weeks in July, rest of year is winter. When we were there in ’80-’85, housing costs were FAR higher than in Austin, TX (nearly double), never figured why. To each his own, enjoy. We occasionally have gone back midsummer, will never live there again. OTOH, could shoot Hi powered rifles out my back door!
Finally got the eff out of NY. Good for them!
Smart move, Kimber.
Adios NY and Hello Alabama. Wise move.
Closer to Auburn than T-Town. Close to Benning too.
Actually, just a short drive up the road from Fort Rucker, AL.
Glad to see gun manufacturers making the smart move to move out of gun-hating democ-Rat ruined states to places that embrace our 2A!
Good news. A little surprised they did not select Huntsville. That city has been very skilled and aggressive at attracting new businesses and relocating businesses. Done a lot of work there on factory start-ups, always been impressed with the pro-business climate there. Especially for defense industry, of which firearms are a natural fit. Very similar sort of workers involved.
Huntsville would have been a good match, there are numerous aerospace companies in the area, so skilled machinists wouldn’t be that difficult to find.
Coming from Yonkers, NY (about 15 miles north of NYC) the culture shock of Alabama could be ‘entertaining’… 🙂
My experience with companies moving (and I have done IT consulting for quite a few in the process) has been that the workers won’t go. They’d rather go on unemployment, change careers, or retire than pick up and go even if they have no kids or anything else to hold them where they are. Most people are just afraid of the unknown. I’d bet most people from Yonkers would think of Troy Al as the far side of the moon.
Yeah, the old hands won’t go, and that’s a grievous loss of institutional knowledge. But down south will probably be where the new American ‘gun valley’ will be.
I really hope someone is recording how those old-timers do things, before they are all gone…
Smart move on Kimber’s part, Newyorkistan looses more tax paying citizens and their dollars.
Good. One less gun maker being strong armed by the state to give them revenue to use to ban guns.
I love it. Deny Cuomo the revenue from jobs.
He does it well enough on his own. Even before covid we had a 2 billion plus budget shortfall. If we are lucky things will get bad enough someone can beat him next November and we are only dealing with a disaster.
Good move,,, New York was NOT your friend.
Let Cuomo & DeBlabbio know your taking money & jobs from that cesspool.
“””FREE KYLE”””
They ought to sell a pair with consecutive serial numbers:
The last Yonkers roll marked slide and
The first T-Roy roll marked slide: as a set.
About time, have never been able to understand what keeps any firearm or ammo mfg. in commie states. Kahr’s still HQ’d in PA, but it m’f’g’s in MA, with Colt, Ruger and Mossberg still in CT.
Ruger is the one I really don’t understand. At least 80% of the manufacturing is in AZ. AZ corporate taxes are not as good as say NV or TX, but are much better than anything in the Northeast.
Tom,
Don’t lose hope for PA just yet. Sanity still exists in the House and Senate. I know and have talked to Senate and House Majority leaders many times (they are both locals). I don’t know the speaker, but I’ve heard he’s good from my Rep.
With all new equipment, I suppose that just like Colt when it switched to all CNC mills, Kimber will be banned from the California Roster and unable to sell any of their new production here.
I liked them when they were in Oregon.
And they made quality rifles.
Tom they still make quality rifles. The Kimber Hunter is an outstanding rifle for the money. The classic select is just nice at any price. I don’t have a classic but I do have a hunter in 257 Roberts and it shoots extremely well for a 800 dollar rifle.
Pratt & Whitney just announced that they’re investing $650 million in a new manufacturing plant in North Carolina, instead of Connecticut. P&W has been in New England since it was founded as a tool maker for the gun companies of New England.
Wow, turbofans in NC, who would have seen that coming?
P&W’s principal IP is metallurgical technology, isn’t it? Growing long-crystals of an alloy to handle hot section temperatures?
Also Boeing moving a lot of production to SC from WA state.
We also have a BMW plant Spartanburg , been here for awhile now.
Also Kimber has entered the realm of college football in the South.
You’ve got the biggest BMW factory in the world, thanks to a 25% tariff. What’s affectionately known as the Chicken Tax has been in place since 1964, protecting jobs & letting the US dominate the manufacture of light trucks (pickups, vans, and SUVs, which is why BMW manufactures all of its SUVs for the entire world at Spartanburg). With the Chicken Tax as living proof for 50+ years, I never understood those who said the President’s tariff war could not bring jobs back to the US.
Go past that BMW plant often, traveling to visit family. Between my house and there I pass an enormous Mercedes plant as well, maybe AL? Went for a factory tour of the BMW plant when I picked up my BMW in 2011, it is astonishing how long that room is, that holds the assembly line, I think you look down the line about a mile, then notice there’s another over your head. Just amazing.
“Also Boeing moving a lot of production to SC from WA state.”
Do a search for Boeing production quality in South Carolina, and airlines that are refusing delivery from aircraft built there…
“pop&whistle” has finally got the message,the OPEN-SEWER is not the best place to work or have a defence related business. the communist leaning yidistanni’s in the media and the political toilet have no love for our great country,or our constitution.
Does a proximity to engineering schools matter, unless you’re looking to make heavy use of student interns? (that’s a double edged sword, on the one hand you know who the top prospects are when you’ve already seen them in a work environment, but it means you have a lot of useless twerps working for you at any given time)
What used to matter was companies using an internship model for gunmaking. That’s tough to do nowadays, because the kids don’t want to put in the years to learn the skills needed. Precious skills will be lost forever…
There are few engineers involved in firearms manufacturing any more. A couple of engineers with modern CAD/CAM software, simulation software and a test firing chamber can design a lot of guns. What a firearm company needs is a lot of machinists and skilled assemblers – in other words, classic manufacturing expertise.
Good for Kimber! Carried one of their 1911s often. Still do. One of their Montanas in .270 is a favorite deer rifle. Welcome to Dixie.
Don’t need a job. I’m retired. But thanks for asking.
Consultancy. Lucrative, fun, make your own hours…
Maybe now Kinber’s quality control will improve.
Have never experienced a problem with their Quality Control. Contacted them just before the COVID hit and sent in a weapon for a trigger job and had it back in 2 weeks and it couldn’t be better. On the other hand Colt has had another on for the same procedure , switch to a match trigger, 6 months and attempting to get an honest response other than ‘your weapon is logged in and will be getting to a gunsmith shortly, or it should be finished in two weeks. CZ also provided fast turn around along with Sig. QC al around is excellent except for COLT which needs a lot of training in Customer Relations.
Had a friend rave about a Kimber .380…but had so many problems with failure to feed…
some people have different ideas about reliability and QC I guess…
I have a 1970 series Colt in 45 ACP. Shot this pistol in IPSC competition for a number of years, using ball equivalent cast bullet handloads, 200 grain bullets at 900 ft/sec.
Some years back, I purchased a Kimber pistol, same caliber, a full sized handgun. I used the same handloads, without problems, firing thousands of rounds in IPSC competition.
I have no experience with Kimber handguns in any other chamberings, therefore I cannot comment on Kimber handguns in .380 caliber.
I have 4 Kimbers. 3 pistols and a rifle. Never had a quality issue one.
Internet gun experts read something and then it’s repeated 10K times. And it always starts with a “guy they know”.
I had terrible issues with Kimber QC and continue to see it. I sold both of my kimber 1911s as a result. Mine were fine during plinking and slowfire range sessions. Furthermore I have seen so many of them fail time and time again on the line in classes, both as an instructor and a student. I’ve seen several go down hard. Slow fire at the range is one thing pressure testing in a demanding class or training scenario I don’t trust them.
See, this proves that you can make an unreliable pistol anywhere.
Happen to guy you know Ralph?
Sorry.
Most of the nations manufacturing base (that’s left) now resides in the south and west. The red areas of the country. Just remember that lefties.
Lefties don’t know what manufacturing means.
Literally. Ask GenX or younger what Texas Instruments or Intel manufacture.
Not genX. Rethink that part of your statement
Wow. If another manufacturer could move to Panama City or Penscaola, the wiregrass and Panhandle would be covered.
Bainbridge, GA, Troy AL…….
Hope they dont bring their urban, yankee baggage with them.
I never did understand why Kimber ever created/established any sort of facilities in New York, the political situation respecting firearms being what is so sadly is.
Should anyone reading the above be curious, I was born, raised and lived for many years in N.Y.C., shaking the dust thereof from my heels in 1967.
I wonder if I sent in my new Pro carry II if they would restamp to get “Yonkers NY” off it?
Yonkers NY is revered in radio history.
Edwin Howard Armstrong grew up there and lived there for many years. Small insignificant discoveries like the superhetrodyne and FM radio technologies.
Here’s a biography on him, it’s well-worth the read :
It’s a also a heavy dive into 1920s radio history in general, all the major players like Lee DeForest…
You gotta be an amateur radio, MW, or SWL guy. Or possibly a hi-fi kook (along with all the prior mentioned) like me since you knew what a Marantz 10B was. In any case twin sons lol.
Yeah, I’m an SWL, ham geek, and hi-fi geek.
My current project is re-capping a Krell krx-1 programmable crossover. Know anyone who may be interested in it?
The plug-in cutoffs are pretty damn cool. Would love to have it but the discretionary funds are loading the boat for the next accident.
Normally, I would Geoff. Perked my ears at Krell. Although I have a series of projects soaking up funds that the intent is to complete, on current status hold due to the lawfare issue (still ongoing). Was sourcing various materials for a constrained layer approach to EMI/RFI shielding wrt a few amp chassis builds before this went down. Armco grain aligned sheet is not the easiest thing to acquire on this side of the pond, you know.
Our iron industry has gone to pot over here, and shipping full sheets of iron from the UK is quite the expensive endeavor. So, not for the foreseeable future I’m afraid. On the good note versus the brown note, finally received my replacement for my segfault’ing bastard of a cpu. Back up & running just in time to offload it for the new gen. :/
Out of pure curiosity, what are you recapping with? Upgrading?
Fortunately, I was not drinking when I ran across “loading the boat for the next accident”, or you would owe me a keyboard.
“Would love to have it but the discretionary funds are loading the boat for the next accident.”
Klaus – I could be up for a trade for a restoreable tube ‘Boat Anchor’ like a Collins or upper-end Hallicrafters. Or maybe something else?
If interested, contact Dan Z. at TTAG, he has my contact number, and you’re maybe 30 miles from me…
9×39 –
The caps in question are the power supply filter bank. I got this in a trade with a bunch of other high-end audio stuff about 20 years back. I fired it up to test it, and smelled ammonia coming from the external power supply. Shut it down fast, opened the power supply up, and discovered the filter caps leaking. I cleaned the oily goo out and set the project aside.
Oddly, it uses those really old plug-in and twist-lock aluminum can capacitors that have 2 capacitors in each one. But they soldered them to to the PCB instead of socket-ing them. Strange…
Don’t be vague, ask for Sprague.
If vacuum tube gear hasn’t been fired up in a while, it’s a good idea to use a Variac/autoformer and start it out very low voltage and gradually work your way up to 120 VAC.
With time, electrolytics can deform, causing them to present a direct short and causing you to lose an expensive and possibly irreplaceable power transformer.
Starting them at a low input voltage and then bringing it up slowly over time can help the plates reform and prevent the dead short.
I know all that shit, ‘miner’. Only been doing it for about 35 years by now. The slow-bake with a Variac is standard stuff.
This unit isn’t tube, it’s 80s vintage solid state…
@ Geoff
Yeah, I know the one’s. They’re holdovers from the mass produced vacuum tube days. Nix any idea of replacing those old dual caps with like, the repro’s are largely garbage. You don’t want NOS electrolytic’s that have been collecting dust on a shelf for ages either. Better still, toss a few low ESR models in there in their stead if you can fit them. Enhances the noise rejection, & will minimize any remaining ripple on the rails further, for not but a tiny fractional bit of added expense.
I’d post a pic of my PS for my amp projects, but this place is indeed this place. So, being generic in description, they are a heavily modified Pass CRC design with a good deal more filtering and reserve. I need loads of damping factor for huge bass horns & line array’s of AMT’s running in bipole. As such, giant toroidial’s are the order of the day, with 1500VA’s on tap per. 55vdc on the rails @ 70% duty cycle max on the trafo. 3 gain stages with the final 2 being giant Toshiba BJT’s. Assume best case given s/n ratio and power, that’s my advice. You do the math. 😀
It’s oft said that all that glitters is gold, but all that’s signal is silver. 5n, just a hint. Nelson’s first watt principle. Noise floor man, noise floor.
“5n, just a hint. Nelson’s first watt principle.”
I’d *kill* for a ‘First Watt’ amp.
Primarily for the designer’s reputation. My home amp is a Nelson Pass design Nakamichi PA-5II. Drop-dead gorgeous bass. Crisp, clean bass with what feels like *endless* extension. An utterly effortless sound. MUCH better sounding than anything else I had heard at the time (late 90s).
I had a Macintosh 2125 (the one with the ballistic front panel meters) but sold it as fast as I could to buy that Nakamichi, once a pawn shop owner I was buddies with loaned it to me for an audition.
There’s a home-brew amp group Nelson runs that features the output devices in the ‘First Watt’ series, (I think they are called SET devices?) The sonic qualities of tube amps in a solid-state device. The new old stock (Toshiba?) rocks ran out years ago, so Nelson shit the cash to have a manufacturer make him a new batch. Pretty much unobtanium today, from what I hear.
I bow at the alter of Nelson Pass design audio amplifiers… 🙂
– Geoff
Noice, very. Had a Nak Dragon once upon a time in a universe far, far away. Only one of real note I ever had in their line of home gear. Car was a different story.
Yup, you nailed it. I orbit around the group. Sometimes active, others much less so. Similar to here, to many pan’s in the fire. Possessed the foresight to snatch up enough to build 20 of them, sans the easily sourced expensive bits at the time. This project’s been in the works for an age it seems. I may have to recap them eventually, but it’s the last amp’s I’ll ever own, I think. Until I get bored, likely.
Might have moved to AL unfortunately they will still make the overpriced, mediocre 1911s on the market.
I only hope the quality does not suffer like Remington arms and Vibroplex CW keys did.
Remington was under incompetent management though. Most of the gun companies who move south or west their quality improves.
Good move. Why Illinois still has so many gun makers here is beyond me, with or w/o the attempted special carve out for SA and RRA. Les Baer and LMT had the right idea….
Its simple really, companies like Springfield Armory and Rock River Arms were working to cover their asses and put small gunshops out of business through a lobbyist, until they got caught. They deserve what they get for staying here.
Don’t expect to find many lean engineers in AL. They have the 6th highest obesity rate.
You have A valid Point about Boeing’s’ quality these days.
That has nothing to do with the move to a more business friendly state..
Boeing has lost its way by moving from an engineer run company to a “Bean counter” management.
They could Save them selves by putting the engineers back in charge.
Vigorous testing would cost more, but the product would sell.
As a NY resident: I don’t blame them.
Was kinda rad to see a local gun in John Wick though.
The Deep South is where a lot of gun related manufacturing will end up. I will move there when I retire. Virginia has been ruined too.
Met Aliscia Andrews. She doesn’t have any this cycle, but a 5 min conversation gave me hope.
Vote!
I’d love to work for a gun manufacturer. But not in Alabama. Or anywhere along the bottom fourth of the continental U.S. Tornadoes, hurricanes, air so sweaty thick you can drink it, and bugs the size of helicopters.
…’spose you can use the flying bugs for skeet, tho…
I’d prefer the American Redoubt, if I need to finally leave CA.
Stay north crybaby.
Oof, that hurt.
Oh wait…
Help Keep the South Beautiful….
Put a Yankee On The Bus
What a weenie! Woke up this morning to 39 degrees, the bride suggesting we move south from Austin! We spent 5 wonderful (NOT) years enjoying Rapid City, SD, and temps to 40 below, I’ll take the bugs.
The hurricanes are great for paragliding.
“Virginia has been ruined too.”
… by Northern Virginia carpetbaggers. It breaks my heart that I may feel compelled to move out of the state my family has called home for at least 250 years.
They just flipped my congressional district to blue in 2018, along with two other districts, which gave the dems the House.
Ugh.
May have a bit of a snapback given how low turnout was in 2018. May still need to move depending on situation but I sincerely doubt all is lost.
Have lived in Virginia most of my life, Virginia has slowly been raising taxes to match its neighbor, Maryland. This under both parties. The only decent thing Governor Northam proposed and the General Assembly rejected was getting rid of the auto state inspection. Virginia has long been a nanny state.
South Dakota is the place to go for freedom.
Woke up one morning to a beautiful clear sky and 10 degrees. Sun shined all day long, when the sun set the temp was 20 below zero, on the way to -35 later that night. Black Hills are beautiful. Summer is last 2 weeks in July, rest of year is winter. When we were there in ’80-’85, housing costs were FAR higher than in Austin, TX (nearly double), never figured why. To each his own, enjoy. We occasionally have gone back midsummer, will never live there again. OTOH, could shoot Hi powered rifles out my back door!
Finally got the eff out of NY. Good for them!
Smart move, Kimber.
Adios NY and Hello Alabama. Wise move.
Closer to Auburn than T-Town. Close to Benning too.
Actually, just a short drive up the road from Fort Rucker, AL.
Glad to see gun manufacturers making the smart move to move out of gun-hating democ-Rat ruined states to places that embrace our 2A!
Good news. A little surprised they did not select Huntsville. That city has been very skilled and aggressive at attracting new businesses and relocating businesses. Done a lot of work there on factory start-ups, always been impressed with the pro-business climate there. Especially for defense industry, of which firearms are a natural fit. Very similar sort of workers involved.
Huntsville would have been a good match, there are numerous aerospace companies in the area, so skilled machinists wouldn’t be that difficult to find.
Coming from Yonkers, NY (about 15 miles north of NYC) the culture shock of Alabama could be ‘entertaining’… 🙂
My experience with companies moving (and I have done IT consulting for quite a few in the process) has been that the workers won’t go. They’d rather go on unemployment, change careers, or retire than pick up and go even if they have no kids or anything else to hold them where they are. Most people are just afraid of the unknown. I’d bet most people from Yonkers would think of Troy Al as the far side of the moon.
Yeah, the old hands won’t go, and that’s a grievous loss of institutional knowledge. But down south will probably be where the new American ‘gun valley’ will be.
I really hope someone is recording how those old-timers do things, before they are all gone…
Smart move on Kimber’s part, Newyorkistan looses more tax paying citizens and their dollars.
Good. One less gun maker being strong armed by the state to give them revenue to use to ban guns.
I love it. Deny Cuomo the revenue from jobs.
He does it well enough on his own. Even before covid we had a 2 billion plus budget shortfall. If we are lucky things will get bad enough someone can beat him next November and we are only dealing with a disaster.
Good move,,, New York was NOT your friend.
Let Cuomo & DeBlabbio know your taking money & jobs from that cesspool.
“””FREE KYLE”””
They ought to sell a pair with consecutive serial numbers:
The last Yonkers roll marked slide and
The first T-Roy roll marked slide: as a set.
About time, have never been able to understand what keeps any firearm or ammo mfg. in commie states. Kahr’s still HQ’d in PA, but it m’f’g’s in MA, with Colt, Ruger and Mossberg still in CT.
Ruger is the one I really don’t understand. At least 80% of the manufacturing is in AZ. AZ corporate taxes are not as good as say NV or TX, but are much better than anything in the Northeast.
Tom,
Don’t lose hope for PA just yet. Sanity still exists in the House and Senate. I know and have talked to Senate and House Majority leaders many times (they are both locals). I don’t know the speaker, but I’ve heard he’s good from my Rep.
With all new equipment, I suppose that just like Colt when it switched to all CNC mills, Kimber will be banned from the California Roster and unable to sell any of their new production here.
I liked them when they were in Oregon.
And they made quality rifles.
Tom they still make quality rifles. The Kimber Hunter is an outstanding rifle for the money. The classic select is just nice at any price. I don’t have a classic but I do have a hunter in 257 Roberts and it shoots extremely well for a 800 dollar rifle.
Pratt & Whitney just announced that they’re investing $650 million in a new manufacturing plant in North Carolina, instead of Connecticut. P&W has been in New England since it was founded as a tool maker for the gun companies of New England.
Wow, turbofans in NC, who would have seen that coming?
P&W’s principal IP is metallurgical technology, isn’t it? Growing long-crystals of an alloy to handle hot section temperatures?
Also Boeing moving a lot of production to SC from WA state.
We also have a BMW plant Spartanburg , been here for awhile now.
Also Kimber has entered the realm of college football in the South.
You’ve got the biggest BMW factory in the world, thanks to a 25% tariff. What’s affectionately known as the Chicken Tax has been in place since 1964, protecting jobs & letting the US dominate the manufacture of light trucks (pickups, vans, and SUVs, which is why BMW manufactures all of its SUVs for the entire world at Spartanburg). With the Chicken Tax as living proof for 50+ years, I never understood those who said the President’s tariff war could not bring jobs back to the US.
Go past that BMW plant often, traveling to visit family. Between my house and there I pass an enormous Mercedes plant as well, maybe AL? Went for a factory tour of the BMW plant when I picked up my BMW in 2011, it is astonishing how long that room is, that holds the assembly line, I think you look down the line about a mile, then notice there’s another over your head. Just amazing.
“Also Boeing moving a lot of production to SC from WA state.”
Do a search for Boeing production quality in South Carolina, and airlines that are refusing delivery from aircraft built there…
“pop&whistle” has finally got the message,the OPEN-SEWER is not the best place to work or have a defence related business. the communist leaning yidistanni’s in the media and the political toilet have no love for our great country,or our constitution.
Does a proximity to engineering schools matter, unless you’re looking to make heavy use of student interns? (that’s a double edged sword, on the one hand you know who the top prospects are when you’ve already seen them in a work environment, but it means you have a lot of useless twerps working for you at any given time)
What used to matter was companies using an internship model for gunmaking. That’s tough to do nowadays, because the kids don’t want to put in the years to learn the skills needed. Precious skills will be lost forever…
There are few engineers involved in firearms manufacturing any more. A couple of engineers with modern CAD/CAM software, simulation software and a test firing chamber can design a lot of guns. What a firearm company needs is a lot of machinists and skilled assemblers – in other words, classic manufacturing expertise.
Good for Kimber! Carried one of their 1911s often. Still do. One of their Montanas in .270 is a favorite deer rifle. Welcome to Dixie.
Don’t need a job. I’m retired. But thanks for asking.
Consultancy. Lucrative, fun, make your own hours…
Maybe now Kinber’s quality control will improve.
Have never experienced a problem with their Quality Control. Contacted them just before the COVID hit and sent in a weapon for a trigger job and had it back in 2 weeks and it couldn’t be better. On the other hand Colt has had another on for the same procedure , switch to a match trigger, 6 months and attempting to get an honest response other than ‘your weapon is logged in and will be getting to a gunsmith shortly, or it should be finished in two weeks. CZ also provided fast turn around along with Sig. QC al around is excellent except for COLT which needs a lot of training in Customer Relations.
Had a friend rave about a Kimber .380…but had so many problems with failure to feed…
some people have different ideas about reliability and QC I guess…
I have a 1970 series Colt in 45 ACP. Shot this pistol in IPSC competition for a number of years, using ball equivalent cast bullet handloads, 200 grain bullets at 900 ft/sec.
Some years back, I purchased a Kimber pistol, same caliber, a full sized handgun. I used the same handloads, without problems, firing thousands of rounds in IPSC competition.
I have no experience with Kimber handguns in any other chamberings, therefore I cannot comment on Kimber handguns in .380 caliber.
I have 4 Kimbers. 3 pistols and a rifle. Never had a quality issue one.
Internet gun experts read something and then it’s repeated 10K times. And it always starts with a “guy they know”.
I had terrible issues with Kimber QC and continue to see it. I sold both of my kimber 1911s as a result. Mine were fine during plinking and slowfire range sessions. Furthermore I have seen so many of them fail time and time again on the line in classes, both as an instructor and a student. I’ve seen several go down hard. Slow fire at the range is one thing pressure testing in a demanding class or training scenario I don’t trust them.
See, this proves that you can make an unreliable pistol anywhere.
Happen to guy you know Ralph?
Sorry.
Most of the nations manufacturing base (that’s left) now resides in the south and west. The red areas of the country. Just remember that lefties.
Lefties don’t know what manufacturing means.
Literally. Ask GenX or younger what Texas Instruments or Intel manufacture.
Not genX. Rethink that part of your statement
Wow. If another manufacturer could move to Panama City or Penscaola, the wiregrass and Panhandle would be covered.
Bainbridge, GA, Troy AL…….
Hope they dont bring their urban, yankee baggage with them.
Beretta left Maryland for Tennessee because of the additional onerous Gun laws that were enacted in 2013.
https://www.gunsamerica.com/digest/beretta-leaves-maryland-heads-tennessee/
The letter of departure from Ugo Gussalli Beretta is quite telling:
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/feb/4/beretta-seeking-the-respect-of-the-second-amendmen/
I never did understand why Kimber ever created/established any sort of facilities in New York, the political situation respecting firearms being what is so sadly is.
Should anyone reading the above be curious, I was born, raised and lived for many years in N.Y.C., shaking the dust thereof from my heels in 1967.
I wonder if I sent in my new Pro carry II if they would restamp to get “Yonkers NY” off it?
Yonkers NY is revered in radio history.
Edwin Howard Armstrong grew up there and lived there for many years. Small insignificant discoveries like the superhetrodyne and FM radio technologies.
Here’s a biography on him, it’s well-worth the read :
http://www.njarc.org/books/man-of-high-fidelity.pdf
It’s a also a heavy dive into 1920s radio history in general, all the major players like Lee DeForest…
You gotta be an amateur radio, MW, or SWL guy. Or possibly a hi-fi kook (along with all the prior mentioned) like me since you knew what a Marantz 10B was. In any case twin sons lol.
Yeah, I’m an SWL, ham geek, and hi-fi geek.
My current project is re-capping a Krell krx-1 programmable crossover. Know anyone who may be interested in it?
It looks like this :
http://www.allegrosound.com/Krell_KRX-1_AllegroSound.html
The plug-in cutoffs are pretty damn cool. Would love to have it but the discretionary funds are loading the boat for the next accident.
Normally, I would Geoff. Perked my ears at Krell. Although I have a series of projects soaking up funds that the intent is to complete, on current status hold due to the lawfare issue (still ongoing). Was sourcing various materials for a constrained layer approach to EMI/RFI shielding wrt a few amp chassis builds before this went down. Armco grain aligned sheet is not the easiest thing to acquire on this side of the pond, you know.
Our iron industry has gone to pot over here, and shipping full sheets of iron from the UK is quite the expensive endeavor. So, not for the foreseeable future I’m afraid. On the good note versus the brown note, finally received my replacement for my segfault’ing bastard of a cpu. Back up & running just in time to offload it for the new gen. :/
Out of pure curiosity, what are you recapping with? Upgrading?
Fortunately, I was not drinking when I ran across “loading the boat for the next accident”, or you would owe me a keyboard.
“Would love to have it but the discretionary funds are loading the boat for the next accident.”
Klaus – I could be up for a trade for a restoreable tube ‘Boat Anchor’ like a Collins or upper-end Hallicrafters. Or maybe something else?
If interested, contact Dan Z. at TTAG, he has my contact number, and you’re maybe 30 miles from me…
9×39 –
The caps in question are the power supply filter bank. I got this in a trade with a bunch of other high-end audio stuff about 20 years back. I fired it up to test it, and smelled ammonia coming from the external power supply. Shut it down fast, opened the power supply up, and discovered the filter caps leaking. I cleaned the oily goo out and set the project aside.
Oddly, it uses those really old plug-in and twist-lock aluminum can capacitors that have 2 capacitors in each one. But they soldered them to to the PCB instead of socket-ing them. Strange…
Don’t be vague, ask for Sprague.
If vacuum tube gear hasn’t been fired up in a while, it’s a good idea to use a Variac/autoformer and start it out very low voltage and gradually work your way up to 120 VAC.
With time, electrolytics can deform, causing them to present a direct short and causing you to lose an expensive and possibly irreplaceable power transformer.
Starting them at a low input voltage and then bringing it up slowly over time can help the plates reform and prevent the dead short.
I know all that shit, ‘miner’. Only been doing it for about 35 years by now. The slow-bake with a Variac is standard stuff.
This unit isn’t tube, it’s 80s vintage solid state…
@ Geoff
Yeah, I know the one’s. They’re holdovers from the mass produced vacuum tube days. Nix any idea of replacing those old dual caps with like, the repro’s are largely garbage. You don’t want NOS electrolytic’s that have been collecting dust on a shelf for ages either. Better still, toss a few low ESR models in there in their stead if you can fit them. Enhances the noise rejection, & will minimize any remaining ripple on the rails further, for not but a tiny fractional bit of added expense.
I’d post a pic of my PS for my amp projects, but this place is indeed this place. So, being generic in description, they are a heavily modified Pass CRC design with a good deal more filtering and reserve. I need loads of damping factor for huge bass horns & line array’s of AMT’s running in bipole. As such, giant toroidial’s are the order of the day, with 1500VA’s on tap per. 55vdc on the rails @ 70% duty cycle max on the trafo. 3 gain stages with the final 2 being giant Toshiba BJT’s. Assume best case given s/n ratio and power, that’s my advice. You do the math. 😀
It’s oft said that all that glitters is gold, but all that’s signal is silver. 5n, just a hint. Nelson’s first watt principle. Noise floor man, noise floor.
“5n, just a hint. Nelson’s first watt principle.”
I’d *kill* for a ‘First Watt’ amp.
Primarily for the designer’s reputation. My home amp is a Nelson Pass design Nakamichi PA-5II. Drop-dead gorgeous bass. Crisp, clean bass with what feels like *endless* extension. An utterly effortless sound. MUCH better sounding than anything else I had heard at the time (late 90s).
I had a Macintosh 2125 (the one with the ballistic front panel meters) but sold it as fast as I could to buy that Nakamichi, once a pawn shop owner I was buddies with loaned it to me for an audition.
There’s a home-brew amp group Nelson runs that features the output devices in the ‘First Watt’ series, (I think they are called SET devices?) The sonic qualities of tube amps in a solid-state device. The new old stock (Toshiba?) rocks ran out years ago, so Nelson shit the cash to have a manufacturer make him a new batch. Pretty much unobtanium today, from what I hear.
I bow at the alter of Nelson Pass design audio amplifiers… 🙂
– Geoff
Noice, very. Had a Nak Dragon once upon a time in a universe far, far away. Only one of real note I ever had in their line of home gear. Car was a different story.
Yup, you nailed it. I orbit around the group. Sometimes active, others much less so. Similar to here, to many pan’s in the fire. Possessed the foresight to snatch up enough to build 20 of them, sans the easily sourced expensive bits at the time. This project’s been in the works for an age it seems. I may have to recap them eventually, but it’s the last amp’s I’ll ever own, I think. Until I get bored, likely.
Might have moved to AL unfortunately they will still make the overpriced, mediocre 1911s on the market.
I only hope the quality does not suffer like Remington arms and Vibroplex CW keys did.
Remington was under incompetent management though. Most of the gun companies who move south or west their quality improves.
Good move. Why Illinois still has so many gun makers here is beyond me, with or w/o the attempted special carve out for SA and RRA. Les Baer and LMT had the right idea….
Its simple really, companies like Springfield Armory and Rock River Arms were working to cover their asses and put small gunshops out of business through a lobbyist, until they got caught. They deserve what they get for staying here.
Don’t expect to find many lean engineers in AL. They have the 6th highest obesity rate.
You have A valid Point about Boeing’s’ quality these days.
That has nothing to do with the move to a more business friendly state..
Boeing has lost its way by moving from an engineer run company to a “Bean counter” management.
They could Save them selves by putting the engineers back in charge.
Vigorous testing would cost more, but the product would sell.
As a NY resident: I don’t blame them.
Was kinda rad to see a local gun in John Wick though.
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