Bond Arms

Bond Arms makes derringers. And Bullpup pistols, like the one Jon reviewed here. Back in October I visited their manufacturing facility up in Granbury, Texas, about two-and-a-half hours north of me, and found out how the sausage is made . . .

Full disclosure, I’m at Robert’s house and he’s fed me far too much wine (he called it “Jesus Juice?”). Maybe these photos will have captions later, but for now I’m afraid you’ll have to figure out what’s going on yourself. Except for the lead photo: that’s Bond Arms’ .50 BMG model. Which is an inside joke. I like companies that have a sense of humor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nESqd0uvn_k

Before you get to the good stuff, watch my YouTube video above. In it, I shoot a Bond Arms Bullpup9 and it turns my thumb black. Don’t worry, that was all filmed pre-wine.

Okay, okay, I’ll caption the photo above. That gold thing is a “button.” It’s pushed through a barrel to press in what we know of as button rifling. Watching this process was hella rad. Make the jump to the photo below to see a static image of a man performing said process, which is a piss poor substitute for the real thing.

Jeremy’s drunk posts have fewer typos than Robert’s sober ones. Carry on . . .

^^^ that one I took at home. Thanks for reading. And remember, folks, always spay or neuter your pets.

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38 COMMENTS

    • No kidding, they’ve been devoting an awful lot of time on a company that makes conversation pieces.

    • I find it amusing that the person who said that the “Ideal Carry” cellphone gun was (and I quote) “a useful defense tool” feels the need to jump on every article about the Bond firearms and call them “novelty guns”.

      Haven’t owned a Derringer, but 1000+ rounds in, the Bullpup is anything but.

      • Something that doesn’t look like a gun has advantages. The Bond derringers that are bulky, weigh more than a single stack 9mm and cost double what those 9mm’s cost, have none.

        • People seem to love them for pest control with birdshot. It’s like carrying a shotgun in your pocket for snakes and rats and whatever.

        • Any .38 J frame with CCI shotshells can do the same thing, plus hold 3 more rounds, be faster to reload, more accurate, weigh less… paying $500 for something that is “a good pocket pest control thing” is barking up the wrong tree.

  2. no its the next thing to take the firearm world by storm

    the rifle caliber pistol

    why not

    its not significantly more counterintuitive than the pistol caliber carbine

  3. “Jeremy’s drunk posts have fewer typos than Robert’s sober ones. Carry on . . .”

    That one line made it worth opening the post. After that… holy image dump Batman…

    • Indeed. I always LOVE seeing how things are made.

      This is ONE mfgr in ONE place, making effectively, specialty guns. Look at all those frames. How many do they produce a year? That times all the other mfgrs and their products.

      Q: How many guns are needed?
      A: More

      Q: How many guns do you want?
      A: MORE

  4. I want a Bullpup9…nobody will special order it or put me on a list for it.
    Academy Sports is listed as a dealer…they have no record of it in their system yet.
    Might be even worse than Kel-Tec trying to get one of these. LOL
    Vapor-Ware, you say?

    • You may still have to order direct from Bond. Give them a call at 817-573-4445. Ask for Liz.

  5. I’m always amused/interested when a $10MM+ company (quick back of the napkin using atf docs) is moving product around in 5 gal buckets, and using sorting bins that were available at Hazard Fraught. Also, much of it looks like your neighbor’s garage, you know, the one he’s gonna finish – someday.

    Yeah, yeah. I’ve seen how the sausage is made hundreds of times IRL, it doesn’t all look like a Porsche racing engine assembly clean room by a long shot. It’d be interesting to actually speak with the principals and get a handle on their logic, go through the P&L, see what the (as I see as) inefficiencies actually cost. Or if they cost at all at their level of production.

    Sometimes the ‘garage shop’ setting is actually conducive to the employees being productive. On the small scale. Try to take it wide though….

    (“Remember folks, always spay or neuter your game show hosts.” It’s a Bob Barker reference. )

    • 16V, have you seen the premium they charge for those things?

      Perhaps they are just fine with the profit they are making running the factory the way they are now…

      • 100 years ago or so, I ran the QA dept. for a *very* small manufacturing concern down here in Florida.

        17 employees total. We re-manufactured #5 crossbar telcom switchgear for telcos that weren’t going to get their switches upgraded to digital, since the central office traffic didn’t justify the expense.

        The owners showed us what they wanted the end product to be (wire-spring relay toll trunks) , and pretty much left us the hell alone to produce it. So we set up the production line flow to the way we thought it ought to be. I got to bitch at the wire-wrap people who’s errors I was constantly correcting.

        It worked. They could have brought in an efficiency expert in manufacturing to count steps or do the other things like the US postal service uses for their mail-sorting, but it just wasn’t necessary for a micro facility like we had.

        It wouldn’t surprise me if Bond runs their factory on a similar philosophy.

        As long as the employees are happy with what they make and the company is happy at the end of their fiscal year, who really cares?

        They don’t seem to have a problem selling them for what they are asking…

        • Geoff, as noted, maybe it all works well enough. Hell, maybe it works great.

          I guess my point was that just always truly find it interesting how stone-axe primitive some of our ‘high tech’ manufacturing really is (at least here in ‘Murrica).

        • There’s a lot I didn’t photograph for various reasons. A large room full of cnc machines, a couple of robotic polishing machines, lots of laser engraving, and more. I’ve seen bigger and cleaner but they’re doing a lot in their space. I didn’t expect the number of new cnc setups. The assembly rooms were efficiently laid out.

    • It’s actually a really nice shop compared to places I’ve seen that looked like dungeons and have oil covering the floor. It looks really well organized, which is always good.

      They have a probe in one of the CNC mills… places I’ve been lately producing MEDICAL parts on doing it on machines that don’t have probes. They’ve got good fixtures on the machines, lots of processes that are well tooled up. I’m impressed, Bond is probably one of the most modern gunshops I’ve seen. I see some in-process inspection sheets there, that’s ISO standard and for large volume production, it’s good to have.

      I wouldn’t question Bond’s quality, but I don’t think quality in a 2 shot derringer is worth $500 nor a questionable design like the Bullpup for $1000.

    • Good stuff can be made in small shops. I worked in a “machine shop” that was a steel building in a “retired” machinist’s back yard in his subdivision. You wouldn’t expect in such an unassuming place – complete with Harbor Freight tools that were next to a quarter million dollar, quad-axis Haas CNC mill-lathe – that we made injection molds for medical implants (facial reconstruction, artificial ligaments, cosmetic prostheses), male production and female master molds for thermo-form signage manufacturing (BP, Honda, Burger King), and recreated the tooling for some Frito Lay products. We also made 1911 and Kimber Solo grips, along with things I can’t discuss due to NDAs with household-name manufacturing, aerospace, and firearms companies whose MIT educated engineers lacked enough applicable experience to solve simple problems.

      And there isn’t a darn thing wrong with Harbor Freight tools. Depending on the model, some outperform and outlast Snap-On, Makita, DeWalt, et al. Hit up the Real Tool Reviews on YouTube.

  8. I want to know what the triggers are like on Derringer pistols. Are they 5 pound triggers? Do they have zero take-up and nice, clean, surprise break?

    • I suspect you already know, but…. they are very heavy triggers, there is creep, no grit in mine, and the the break surprises me enough. I like mine an awful lot. It is the handgun that I always have with me even when I have a bigger gun (or two) with me. I think I am becoming superstitious about it. I like having it in my jacket pocket best. I have a laser cartridge to practice with when I am not at the range. I think it points very well for me and the laser agrees.
      If the bullpup comes out in .45acp it will be hard for me to resist.

  10. Bond Arms IMHO are some of the finest derringers on the market , however they are just to damn big for two shots. Spray or neutralize your neighbors pets. Bob Barker never said that, ha…… Oh by the way, heard some big Tom Turkey’s gobbling down south of me. That Hunt Nebraska’s Merriam’s has got me all lathered up, I don’t care about the old bearded birds, I’m going to bust me a jake. Kacherk kacherk

  11. Those long stack barrel handguns in rifle cartridges are not Derringers. They are Howdah pistols.

  12. armed, violent home invasions EXPLODE in AUssie…..
    gun control @ work…..
    Yanks!
    this is yr future is you surrender your guns!

        • Thanks for the link mate, I (sadly) have seen many examples of what you’re going through. Stiff upper lip old chap, it’ll only get worse before you Ozzies (collectively) snap and make it better.

          Or, you’ll all do as Peter Garret wants, and ‘just give it back’ to the Abbos. That’ll be a new golden age to be sure. I mean. I’m sure you’ve learned of their great civilization before the euro-trash arrived and dragged it all down. Right?

        • recommended reading: “The Killing of HIstory: How a Discipline is being Murdered by Literary Critics and Social Theorists” by Keith Windschuttle, 1994; Encounter Books

    • I notice there’s not a single reference to firearms in the article whatsoever. Is your media there as bad as ours here? Completely biased and convinced of their own superiority?

  14. Beautiful weapons. Out of my price range for now, and probably not ever going to be my first choice for a carry weapon. But darn nice, all the same.

  16. 1st do a threat assessment…then a personal risk assessment. How many shots needed to counter the threat…then consider the “visual” of the 2 large bore holes being aimed at the threat…My Snake Slayer is more than enough to keep me safe having done my homework.

  18. And there isn’t a darn thing wrong with Harbor Freight tools. Depending on the model, some outperform and outlast Snap-On, Makita, DeWalt, et al.”

    They’re better than they’ve ever been. They generally work ok for the home gamer, or black-swan industrial user. Reliable? They’re still massively inferior to the good stuff and I’ve yet to see otherwise. Always inferior plastic, always inferior molding, always lousy overmold, the most egregious uses of sintered metal, chowder in the lube, crap bearings, bushing where it needs a bearing, cheap switch gear, under-spec’d electronics. I can go on for hours.

    Show me a test. I know the Chinese thieves can copy a quality tool properly – but it ain’t gonna be at Hazard Fraught pricing. Accuracy? Meh. I use the digital calipers for kick-around work because I don’t care if they get dropped, run over, whatever – I still check stuff with a Mitutoyo…

    “Hit up the Real Tool Reviews on YouTube.”

    So, you get info from a guy who doesn’t even take the tools apart, doesn’t know what to even look for in quality manufacturing, gets a lot of free tools, and relies on YT whoring for a living? Informative and objective I’m sure.

    There are people on YT who actually take tools apart, have real jobs so they don’t need pass-thru links, buy all the tools they test, and know what’s good and bad manufacturing.

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