All right today is a very exciting day, it's no secret that I'm a big fan of Air Arms not
only as a as a company but I'm a big fan of the Rifles. I've been shooting with Air Arms
rifles for about 10 years now and it's been a long time dream of mine to visit the Air
Arms headquarters and factory to meet the people behind the guns. I never thought it
would happen because I live the other side of the world to the Air Arms factory, I live
in South Africa. But I've travelled across two continents today and I'm standing right
in front of the Air Arms factory. I don't waste any more time, let's go inside and meet
the people behind the guns, shell we?
Hi Claire, Matt hi. Great to finally meet you. You too,
welcome to England and welcome to Air Arms. It's great to be here, we're very happy to
have you here. Fantastic, I'm quite keen to get started and go check out how the guns
are made and just meet everyone. Sure, lets go. I'm Alan George, general manager here
at Air Arms. We have Matt Dubber here today, over from South Africa to look at a factory
and see what we do. To see how we produce the products including the ins and outs of the machinery.
Here at Air Arms we produce a full range of rifles. The stocks come from
Maleny in Italy, the barrels come in from Germany. Every single barrel that we do have
in and do do work to. Everything else we pretty much make ourselves.
We have two 11 pallet horizontal machining centres. This is slightly different specification one has a 20,000 RPM
spindle, one has a 15,000 RPM spindle. They are very very complex machines.
Here at Air Arms we have an apprenticeships scheme, at the moment we have 3 apprentices. One is administration
based the other two on the machine shop. 4 days they're at the factory, one of those
days we we have them working with dedicated engineers and all they're are doing is training.
It's very interesting to have someone like Matt come to the factory. Matt's enthusiasm
that he brings, you can see he's overwhelmed by all these components that you've never
seen they're all played out before it's such a different perspective that we have day in and day out.
This is where it gets very exciting this is where all the rifles are assembled
and then packaged away to be sent off. Downstairs where all the parts are made in the factory.
It can get very technical and confusing to the average visitor. I think once you get
up here and you can really see the finished product and you can see everything is put
together and it's a very exciting because you get to see how would the different varieties
of rifles at that this company produces. On these racks over here, we've got all the finished
guns, finished products at all ready to be put in their boxes and be sent off and you
can see each one individually marked with a serial number and date of manufacture so
that they can actually track them throughout their lifespan which is which is pretty awesome.
The detail on these on these stocks is absolutely fantastic, the wood they use really high quality
and they've got some really nice machinery that can do laser checkering and laser embedding,
like this. The quality of the stock is absolutely fantastic, so even though the products aren't
all necessary made here in this factory they all are extremely good quality.
We are testing our target screen today, perfect opportunity with Matt being here for him to give it a
go as well. Same thing again, it's a different perspective, we have in house. We've been
consulting with many army cadet branches throughout the UK but haven't been said, having a more
dedicated shooter puts a different light on things altogether. I used to do 10 metre shooting
but we had we had the trap and that's it they were so if you missed you damage the wall,
or if you'd damaged something. That's a quite a nice invention you've got there. You're
absolutely right, this was brought about some of the army cadets wanted to be out to shoot
air rifles within their small drill halls without damaging everything though and pellets
bouncing back, pellets going through windows, so it hopefully ticks everything on the box.
So they're you go, the target trap has passed its test. As you can see the pellets didn't
even make a dent on this sheet of steel and even if they did this plastic is so thick
that the pellets would do no more than bounce off. The test has been passed and it's great
to see that the products are tested so rigorously by the time this old I don't have any major
issues or people having to return them. It just another day in the life of a Air Arms employee.
So there you go guys, a brief overview of what happens at the Air Arms headquarters
day in and day out. I can honestly say I really enjoyed my time here I'm extremely grateful
to Air Arms for having me over and all that is left to do is to go back to South Africa and cross the bucket list.
To find out more about Air Arms and they're phenomenal range
of precision air guns visit air-arms.co.uk. Click one of the links more for fantastic
videos from Air Arms TV and be sure to subscribe to keep up to date with our new videos. You
and Air Arms, a winning combination.