Gary Reeder
Every day we go thru the safes and each gun is in
Tuesday, July 19, 2022, 16:30

it's own box. We look at the gun, see what parts we need, and if the parts are not here and we are still waiting, the box goes back in the safe and we pull the next one in line out and check it. We currently have 11 safes full of guns but we are getting 3 or 4 guns out every week. So we are making some progress.
Right now we are waiting on pretty much everything, but some parts we have. The hard to get things like gun parts, the chemicals for our Black Chromex, the chemicals for color case, the Corian for our grips, a lot of internal parts for 1911s and for revolvers are all mostly on back order. I have changed the company that makes our Black Chromex chemicals to another company who is behind but not as much as the other company. Normally we get a 30 gallon tub of the chemicals but these days we get a 3 lb pail of the chemicals and the rest is back ordered. Some steels are extremely hard to get. Certain sizes are really hard to find. I sorta saw this coming and ordered about 3 times the amount of 2" round bars of steel for our cylinders so that is one thing we do have right now.
Another problem is 3 of our guys walked out a while back. They say they would rather sit on their asses and draw unemployment. I am running ads on our local radio stations looking for machinists and have picked up one older retired machinist and that will help. I also have picked up 2 other guys in the last couple of months that have other jobs and can help out a couple of days a week. So it's crazy. I think every store or shop in town has signs in the windows asking for hired help.

As far as what guns we work on next, I try to go by the date they came in and get to them in order. Some like those I mentioned above we can't do that due to some of the items for the gun are on back order, but I try to keep the guns we work on in the order they came in.