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during the humble beginnings of this country most firearms manufacturing was
going on in the Connecticut Valley area aptly
named gun Valley USA now at the end of the 20th century some of these companies
start moving west to the Arizona area now at the beginning of the 21st century
we have a great deal of great firearms manufacturers here in Arizona and this
is what we're gonna call gun Valley West so please join us Gun Stock Reviews so
we can bring you all these companies and what they do so we're gonna slowly
interview all this great companies and facilities and bring you anything from
firearms manufacturing to training here in Arizona so join us please Gun Stock
Reviews and a new series Gun Valley West I am here in Phoenix Arizona and
the headquarters are the Robar Companies with Freddy Blish the
precedent of Robar a welcome Yamil I'm glad that you're able to come here Thank
You Freddy tell me a brief history of what robar is well robar was founded
in 1983 by Robbie Parkman hence the name robar and he was a firearms instructor
one of the very first firearms instructors at Gunsite he immigrated to
the United States in 1977 began teaching a gunsite and became gunsites first
full-time gunsmith in 1983 establish robar stayed at gunsite until
1986 and he moved down to this building that we're still in today 35 years later
oh wow what's great about that people know as oftentimes for just metal
finishing and we are so much more than that we're actually the country's
largest custom gun shop we cut our teeth doing custom gun working on 1911's and
Browning high powers but right around 1987 after Robbie had moved down here he had
read about a metal finish that had been developed for the oil industry in the
North Sea that was a nickel phosphorous Teflon
plating that would prevent corrosion really great gross it was also self
lubricating you thought what a great finish for firearms and so he contacted
the British scientists and he bought the rights to what he then trademarked as
NP 3 N for nickel there's three an abbreviated name for Teflon is PTFE so
you have the letter P and three letters after it NP3 and so NP3 is a great
finish it is very corrosion resistant very hard
and self lubricating what everybody likes and it's also a finish that is
used on all US military aircraft on particular parts that they require that
as well as the International Space Station so when we're plating parts for
people's firearms are often sitting in the same tank as part that may go on the
F-35 Strike Fighter or the F-18 Super Hornet or on the Apache helicopter etc
so this is a really unique and unique finish in the industry especially for
firearms also then following that Robbie introduced Roguard which is a
Millennium disulfide based coating and it's very very abrasion resistant also
corrosion resistant and also have some self lubricating properties and not long
after that you then also introduced Polley T2 which is a polymer based
coating that has teflon in it so that it would also make for a really good finish
on firearms that wanted a color or something other than matte stainless
steel which is what my NP3 does one of the other things that people don't know
is that we were the first actually do grip reduction in texturing on Glocks
this was in 1987 Scottsdale PD came to us and said hey we have officers with
small hands we can't fit the issued Glock 17 and we then did some grip
reductions on those and textured them and you know the rest is history we do a
lot of glock work as well the other thing that people don't realize is that
we've been building precision rifles ever since 1983 we actually built the
second scout rifle for Jeff Cooper oh wow
Fred wills built the first one and built the second one and the third the
fourth and the fifth I have built scout rifles since then the LAPD SWAT they're
still using our SR60 they've been using it for over 25 years almost 30 years
they're still you know they just Rebarrel when they need to the US Coast
Guard just recently phased out the RC 50 which they used for over 25 years so we
were providing 50 caliber precision rifles to the US Coast Guard and their
efforts to stop drug traffickers they would shoot the engines out of boats
with those so you know we've we've really been a small but yet an iconic
company in the industry and we're positioning ourselves to do the same for
at least another 35 years and you have a great team of gunsmith working back
they're always innovating and working on pistols revolvers and rifles and
carbines and so on and so forth you know for a metal finish two custom
gun work to building custom rifles and custom hand guns because we also build
our own line of 1911's you know we do a lot okay well thanks Freddie thanks for
being with us today and showing us your company and all the beautiful things
that robar makes and you've been working on my scout rifle yes
that's gonna come out really nice so thank you for everything Freddie and
we'll be around and we'll be doing more features and all the good things that
you make here thank you well stay tuned to Gun Stock Reviews and
we'll continue to bring you news about the good great gun companies in the
state of Arizona thank you for watching gun stock reviews please visit our
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you