Original subtitles

We have a lot of opportunities in the U .S. that you don't get anywhere else.

First of all, just in firearms. In most other countries, you can't have this.

So when we have an opportunity to, I want to make a firearm, but I want to do

my way, you can start a business here, go out and earn it and prove it and do

things your own way and not have to follow corporate structure.

There's risk involved, but without risk, there's no reward.

So that's really the American dream is take risks, take chances, believe in

yourself. make it happen.

My dad talked a lot about making a legacy, and that's what he was creating

Something that he could leave on to the family, but making his mark on the

industry that he loved.

A lot of the people that were really close to him told him he was never going

do it. He was wasting his time. Why would anybody buy something from an

guy in Arizona?

He just thought the typical things put people putting you down. He just wanted

to prove people wrong.

Not only can he do it, but he was going to do it whether he liked it or not.

He wasn't going to take no for an answer. He was going to do it his way or

highway, and that's just the way it was.

He always said, if you get a dream, chase it because nobody's going to give

to you.

That's the American dream.

Earn what you've got and make your name out there.

Everybody can have a chance as long as they're willing to grasp it, but it

going to be given to you. You've got to earn it.

Hi, welcome to Patriot Ordnance Factory.

We compromise on nothing. We only put the best materials, the best processes.

It's irrelevant if it's hot, if it's cold, if it's sandy and dusty and muddy.

We don't emulate.

We don't imitate.

We innovate.

Prior to POF, Frank was working as a design engineer in

production control for Allied Tool and Die. He taught himself how to be a CNC

programmer. He had the drive and determination to do whatever

problem was in front of him. He wanted to fix it, and he wanted to be the one.

What my dad did in aerospace, as far as being an engineer in the aerospace

industry, where he really excelled was in process engineering.

So, hey, we need to make this part and need to hold these tolerances, need to

have this certain heat treat.

With firearms, we've got a lot of liability.

Aerospace has a lot of liability, so everything has to be 100 % to the

customer's order. So that was really where he excelled was the roadmap of

running it through the processes and making sure the part that was ordered

was... you know, to print when it got delivered.

I don't remember the exact moment that he came to me to ask me to start this

business, but he had told me that he had met some friends, some people at a

gun show in downtown Phoenix, and somebody needed help developing a part.

And he said, I think I can do it.

And so he went back the next time and showed him, here, I made this part. And

another gentleman was there and said, you made that?

And he said, yeah, I made that. I work at a machine shop. And he said, why

you go into business for yourself? And Frank said, I don't have the money for

that. And he said, I do.

And I believe in you. If you can make this, we can make something of it.

And so that's kind of where it started.

And he came home and told me about the conversation and then said, what do you

think? Should we try it?

And, you know, he always said, if you don't believe in yourself, who's going

And so I said, yeah, I think we should try it.

freedom are within our factory. So all our employees know that we stand with

America and we'll always stand with America.

North or south side of our building is the American flag.

That's a symbol of freedom that's inclusive with liberty and

justice for all. The most wonderful symbol in the world that has to do with

freedom. So we proudly display that in our factory as we work day to day.

We're building everyday symbols of freedom out here.

On Thursday, June 18, 2020, Frank passed away.

He left work at 5 .58.

He was in an open -air Jeep.

Didn't have a top.

And he was driving home. It's about seven miles from the office.

And he got to the door. Brandon and Frank closed every day. And he gives

a wave.

And on his way home, he turned on the carefree highway

and a car.

was making a U -turn onto the highway, and I think he thought they would stop

when they saw him, and they didn't.

And he overcorrected the Jeep, and he rolled the vehicle three times.

And he passed away immediately.

Yeah, I'm going to show you my dad's office.

We've actually left it pretty much exactly the way it was since the

And nobody really comes in here. We kind of want to leave it the way it was,

keep his memory alive.

Nobody's ever going to feel this office anyways, no matter how good they are.

Keeping the space exactly the way it's set, I mean, things that were important

to him.

My papa, the books he liked to read, his hat, he loved cars.

Obviously, look around the room, patriotic.

Ronald Reagan pictures and some of the art that he had made over the years.

We want to keep it exactly the way it is. It's kind of a selfishly museum

but for the family, this is his office. Nobody else is going to sit in here.

So on top of keeping his office the way it is, we keep my dad's cell phone still

active. I keep it on me every day.

It's a reminder of him, you know, as a kid, even just up until the accident,

Thanksgiving, New Year's, Christmas, it didn't matter. He was texting every

contact he had, Happy Thanksgiving, Happy New Year's, Merry Christmas.

You know, at the time you get upset, you're like, hey, man, pay attention to

family. But you look at it now, he still gets text messages, miss you, buddy,

Merry Christmas.

You know, you get emotional about it.

I think he meant a lot to people. I mean,

he was a good man.

People respected him, and he was caring. He was giving, you know.

And so I think that kind of thing, I mean, people seen it.

People cared, you know.

It's humbling for me, you know.

Obviously, I loved him. He was my dad, but see how other people cared.

in Arizona at the Ben Avery shooting range, the largest shooting range, I

believe, in the United States. And most particularly, we're on Frank's shooting

range. This range was dedicated to him after his unfortunate death, an untimely

death.

And this was something that he was actually working on long before that.

came to fruition, unfortunately, very quick as a result of his death.

So I was up here working as a contractor teaching shooting, and I heard about

this guy that had developed this rifle where he had converted AR -15s to piston

-driven guns, which sounded pretty interesting because of the reliability

on the AK -47.

So I called him up while I was here in Arizona.

I bought one of his guns.

We shot it.

100 % operational, but it was also very apparent that he was not a shooter.

So there was some modifications that we needed to do to the gun to make it more

user -friendly.

But that rifle, I shot about 33 ,000 rounds through with my business partner,

also a friend of Sue's, Rue Don Alexander.

And he had another gun that he also put approximately 30 -something thousand

rounds through.

Now, the barrels were shot out, but the mechanisms were still running. So we

knew Frank was on to it.

So I think what they brought out for us today is their revolution in 6 .5

Creedmoor. And immediately, when you look at the extrusions and the cut and

they machined their material and all the small things, it really makes a big

difference. All the stuff, the type of railing that he uses, the connection

points that he uses, the stock that he uses, the grips, the trigger that he

created. There's so much thought that goes into this rifle to get what

you're looking at today. And this is years, from 2005 to right now today.

All of these ideas you're looking at, I'm sitting here in this rifle.

My recommendation is if you want to buy one, get that gun.

It's just shot at 200 meters. It's like just stacking them on top of ammo.

Very accurate.

We're here at the POF factory floor.

We're going to kind of walk through every step of the process as far as

going to start with assembly first, and then we can run through the machine

shop.

So all the receivers, once they get the forward assist and the trapdoor on,

Ian's installing the barrel. He's got the barrel nut.

We torque them to 45 foot -pounds of torque.

We have the special arbors that we made, and that way we're making sure we're

not getting any tension on the receiver itself because it is, at the end of the

day, that upper receiver is a thin -walled aluminum.

If you just try to put it in a vice without something holding that barrel

extension, you're going to crack the receiver.

So we want to make sure that it's properly torqued but without damaging

upper.

Right now, we're actually running extractors.

What the extractor does is when the bolt is locked up into battery, you pull the

trigger, right? It fires. When it goes to extract the round, the extractor is

holding onto the rim.

of the shell casing, and that's what's going to pull it out of chamber, and

the ejector will kick it out of the firearm.

So this machine makes all of our bolts and extractors.

It's a Ganesh GenTurn.

It's a nine -axis milling machine, which means we have the bar feeder. It's

going to load the bar stock.

It'll push bar into the set length that it needs to be, and then it's got the

tooling that can cut from nine different axes, so we can do it complete.

Instead of doing multiple steps to where we used to do it, We would make a blank

and then put it on another machine to finish it, and then it would go back to

lathe to get turned.

Now we've taken three steps, put it down to one step on this machine.

So we're going to start out with a billet block of aluminum, and this is

one is going to look like once it comes off.

Basically, once you start the manufacturing process, it must be

So our job is to get the serial number on there and get it in our logbooks as

fast as possible.

You don't want these sitting out without serial numbers because that's a no -no.

You cannot do that. They want a serial number on it as soon as the

process starts.

Innovation, we use that word a lot at POS and this room.

It's so easy to just pick up calipers and reverse engineer what somebody else

did. But to step up and do your own design, put all the risk on your

and see it come to life, something that was in your head, hit paper, going to

SolidWorks, program, machine, I mean, it's so much more gratifying to know

you designed this out of your own head. You didn't copy somebody else.

Obviously, there's the artistic side. Everybody's got their own style and the

different firearms that they make, but seeing something that we put together

watch it function, yeah, it's a big point of pride.

I mean, everybody needs to decompress, and so for me, it is the outdoors. I

mean, when I was little, going fishing with my grandpa Neil, I was always...

That was my favorite thing. Now I don't get a cell phone service when we go

fishing, so I don't have to hear emails, banging, text, phone calls.

It's peaceful, man.

For me, that's why I love being in the outdoors, relaxing with friends and

family, taking a step back and enjoying life.

We got the chairs in the back.

Work is a big responsibility. It doesn't matter what job you have or what your

title is.

Without what you're doing, like I said, it doesn't matter the title, position.

If you don't do your job, somebody else can't do theirs.

So for me, every day, yeah, that's all stressful. Any chance to get to just

back and kind of forget about it for an hour or two, you've got to do it. You've

got to recharge a little bit.

Cody comes out here to get away from day -to -day business.

He's got a tremendous amount of pressure on him.

God rest his soul, Frank passed.

Cody took control of the shop.

He puts a lot on his shoulders.

Coming out here gives him a chance to just unwind for the day.

You know, we do this.

This is close to home. This is another place that we go just down the road that

we do a lot of dove hunting.

So when September comes, we're slaying doves.

Have a good time.

We don't want to follow people. We don't want to be imitators.

Patriot Ordnance Factory wasn't built on following.

We were built on leading, building the first of many firsts. I mean, that's a

tagline that we use a lot.

I see a lot of companies out there that regurgitate the same Me Too products,

and it drives me nuts because you might make a sale, but you're not going to

grow and damn sure aren't earning people's respect, and that's just not

game. That's not what we do. We want to be different. We want people to respect

us as engineers and builders and machinists.

The only way to do that is be different and take risks.

For Patriot Ordnance Factory, we have quite a few patents.

When you look at the 415, we're the first commercially available piston gun

there.

especially one that cleans out the front that doesn't use springs on their

piston return system.

We were the first true small frame .308 out there. Nobody even has a .308 that's

as light as ours.

Those are the kind of things that we take pride in, is taking chances where

other people won't.

And that's, like I said, for us, it's trying to be leaders, not followers.

My dad's American dream, his version of living out his American dream was taking

advantage of every opportunity you're given, not taking no for an answer,

putting in the hard work and know that you've earned it.

There's no other place in the world that you can come up with an idea with a

little bit of grunt work and work ethic. You can turn yourself out into a good

situation because nothing is given to you.

At the end of the day, you're not just buying a product, a widget, you're also

buying a lifestyle too.

Why? Because that will always stand for America, will always stand for our flag.

And how do you show it? Well, you show it by actually doing it.

Everything we build is symbols of freedom.

That's what we do.