Original subtitles

Over the years, I've noticed as I watch builders or hear people talking about

it, they over -complicated the simple and simplified the complicated and kind

missing the essence of what it is to build properly, especially with how

the nature is of what you're building.

Everything's got a place where it fits, and so what you're trying not to do is

disrupt it.

I just want to keep it simple for that everyday shooter, for that...

that every man or every woman, so to speak, that doesn't have to be

by the build, but they can also take it seriously and do things the right way

and achieve it without every specific new widget or gadget

that really doesn't help you do anything.

If I can offer anybody anything when it comes to the barrels and the build

itself, after building so many, they don't have to overthink this.

But I don't want them to under -respect it.

As an entrepreneur, there always has to be some level of irrational belief in

the opportunity.

I'm getting up before the kids are up. My wife's taking care of them all day.

I'm getting home after. The kids are already in bed.

You know, there were those candid moments of, like, is this the right

this worth it?

But I could always confidently tell her, we're so close.

I moved to Florida. I actually wanted to be a teacher at university. The path

didn't go exactly as we expected. I just stumbled into actually cleaning CNC

machines.

I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur.

Frankly, I didn't know barrels was the end path.

The whole goal of being an entrepreneur was just the freedom of just, this is

the life I want to live. Because my dad had been corporate his whole life and

was let go right before reaching full tenure.

It was just low -hanging fruit.

budget cuts, and all that loyalty of being there and just getting cut right

the end. That was one of the most significant catalysts, was seeing that

to him.

I never wanted to have that destiny outside of my hands.

So my first exposure to CNC manufacturing as a whole, it really just

whole mindset to want to pursue something in manufacturing.

Went to enough shops in the area that also make firearms parts.

and had a really key relationship with a gentleman named Phil Bacardi.

Phil bought a machine from that company, and I installed the machine. I'm

basically leveling it, you know, taking the blocks off from shipping.

He's a very outgoing guy. He's talking a lot about what he's doing. He's got

firearms parts all over. And so I'm just asking a lot of questions.

And he's like, you know what, man, if you want, you know, I'm here every day.

you want to come out on the weekends, you just show up, and you can watch. And

if you want to tinker on the lathe, you can tinker on the lathe.

follows through when you're like, yeah, I'll be there. Let me know. I can help

you out. I'm not going to call you and ask for your help. The fact that I went,

it really just, I guess, points to just the passion of what we were trying to do

at the time because it's very contrary to me naturally to take him up on his

offer and actually intrude on his shop.

I would watch him do certain things, and then I remember I would have my own raw

steel that I had gotten from the shop, and I would just sit there and pretend

cut threads.

And I'd bring him to him, like, what do you think? Ah, you got a little tears

here. You know, he just would critique it and give me advice. And what was

interesting is he didn't want to scale it. He was very much, he knew what he

wanted in the sense of, I want me on one or two guys, and I'm going to be happy,

you know, take care of my bills that way. Where me, I just, I was dreaming

It was just always like, there's an open door. Let's push. There's an open door.

Let's push.

I really started to grow my method, and he started to grow his method.

At one point, unfortunately, we did kind of have a falling out. Yeah, we went

several years where it was basically just a head nod, but then I found out he

was dying.

We called him, and you could just hear how weak it was in his voice.

And I said, Phil, I just want you to know that you will always be a part of

Ballistic's story.

It was fundamental that you...

This information he shared, and I heard he broke down, and he said,

he said, Adam, you did what I never could.

And about four hours later, he died.

Very thankful to have the opportunity to reconnect with him, and you could just

tell we both, it was just a moment of forgiveness and rekindling.

So it started in 2008.

My father -in -law gave me a loan for $5 ,000 and bought an engine lathe,

brought it in the shop, or I guess the garage at that point, and really just

started tinkering, started making custom barrels, and took a 55 -gallon drum and

put a 30 -gallon drum inside of it, poured concrete around it, put dirt in

and that's how I would test fire. And somehow the neighbors never called the

cops on me.

He was working in 8 to 5, and before and after that, he was...

turning barrels in our garage.

And it was a lot of long hours. It was six or seven days a week.

He had gone to his boss and said, you know, I need to make more money so my

can stay home with the kids because that was very important to both of us.

And his boss basically told him, you can't make that much more money. And so

said, you know, I can't just sit back and give up.

It forced me to go all in on ballistic.

And I just quit there. I gave up all of our insurance. And I just had, I mean,

literally, we had a three -month -old. He asked me what I thought about him

quitting his full -time job, his day job.

I knew it was crazy. Everybody told us it was crazy. They're like, what are you

doing? You have a good job. Don't quit.

And I, you know, you're right.

But if we didn't take a chance, we knew we would regret it for the rest of our

life.

If I'm going to buy tires and a car, and I want to know what's the best to buy

and what runs the best, how do I make it run most efficiently? I'm not going to

ask the driver. I want to go to the mechanic.

I'm not a pro shooter.

I'm not going to teach you how to shoot at 1 ,000 yards. It's not what I did.

I know how to build these and how they're supposed to function. This is

can help you with.

I know why certain things are happening, and that's where it stops.

So I'm building, and I'm slowly learning.

the shooting community or what they're wanting.

So a lot of stuff is built to order, but I've already got a bad taste in my

mouth for muzzle brakes.

I've already seen a lot of people do things a bunch of ways that I didn't

were practical.

And I love the idea of an AR -15, something that was meant to be a little

lighter and to do a specific job.

There is something going on with the contour of every barrel. The barrel

actually whips when a bullet goes through it. It just happens.

as they get hot all these right angles and different cuts too much weight on

front not enough on the back end is going to make this thing move a little

and now your accuracy is going to is going to degrade everybody they want to

limit barrel barrel whip they would do a bowl barrel and for and when that when

i learned that or saw that or was building heavy bp profiles on air 15 i

didn't like it i i this doesn't make sense we're

We're making this chassis hold a real heavy barrel, and that's not really what

it was for.

You're not doing anything innovative. You're just making a beefy barrel and

turning this AR -15 into not an AR -15.

So I was like, is there a way to limit barrel whip and keep rigidity and not

so heavy?

At that point, he had an idea for a barrel because he was just shooting so

rifles.

working for another company, just constant, nonstop, nonstop.

And he was starting to develop a feel for the recoil pulse based on profile.

And he had an idea based on adjusting weight, basically getting optimum weight

design. And he gave me a call, and he said, this is what I want to do. I was

like, well, yeah, I think I know what you're talking about.

I remember I was going over there for something totally different one day.

And he's like, hey, come here. And he's on a machine.

And he had it typed in. The program was Hanson. He's like, make the first one

right now.

So I kind of just took in my head what I thought he was saying, machined him a

barrel, and sent it back to him. And he's like, this is exactly what I

It made it very mechanical, firearm organic in the sense of it was a

conversation with the fireman. The recoil pulses were where they needed to

The balances were where they needed to be.

And it was the first optimal weight barrel on the market, and it was

noticeable. The client was kind of like, you know what, this is our Nike Air

Jordan. Like, this is the B .A. Hanson.

When we first started going to the shot show, we were on the line and people

were shooting, and they would come up and they're like, oh, great, another AR.

Yeah, everybody's got an AR on the line. And they would shoot it, and they're

like, why does this feel so different?

And then right there is when things really catapulted and just exploded.

was no plan we could predict.

Over the next couple years, this is our plan. No, we would blow that out in six

months, seven months. We're already there. Now we've got to get smarter

We've got a few more hats we've got to put on.

A couple more people, not enough space.

This is actually the original machine that started in the garage.

This is what originally all barrels 100 % were made on this by hand. It took me

probably three hours a barrel.

So it's a little bit different process then to now. But amazingly, we actually

still use the machine in day -to -day operations for some fine -tuning up

polishing pieces when needed. So I'm surprised it's still running.

And, you know, it's kind of just appreciative of those roots, the

from my father -in -law to purchase it. It's definitely surreal sometimes to

think about those early days in the garage and then, you know, coming out

and pretty much 24 -7 these machines are turning and just a pretty neat piece

of... BA history here.

So the process of making a blank is really kind of three primary operations

it's been cut.

We've got our line of drills, reamers with some additional reamers over there,

and then also our three buttons.

So at this point, it's going to go into the turning side of the operation.

The first thing we want to do is what we call cut and face. We're basically

going to be cutting the blank to the length that we want and creating

perpendicular surfaces.

so that we can then turn it on centers and create that outer diameter parallel

to the inner diameter to make sure that we're holding true through the rest of

the operations.

So at this point, we take this qualified blank and turn it into a chambered

blank, and from there, it'll move on to profile.

One of the things that we do unique is we actually chamber first. That kind of

goes back to our roots.

If we ever had a problem with the part, it typically always happened at

chambering, so we wanted to be able to make sure to turn that barrel into a

shorter barrel as opposed to scrapping it. We just didn't have any reserve

revenues to afford scrapping.

We have five lines of profiling machines.

They're all geared towards different calibers profiles.

So depending on one day or another, we just have different parts running

each line.

Profile in two operations.

So here you have our chambered blank.

And then we cut the front and the rear profile.

I prefer not to use a steady rest. As long as you have your concentricities

throughout the operation, being able to cut two profiles is giving us a very

fantastic result.

So from this point, it would be doing the machine next to you there.

and it would come out as a full profile. So this is kind of a medium -heavy 18

-inch 308 barrel.

The last operation on the turning side of it is we cut the muzzle threads.

We're going to remove a couple hundred thousands from the muzzle, make sure

we're in clean rifling, cut the threads, and then crown it.

At this point, the barrel is basically complete.

It's going to go to final polish and then final inspection step.

Every barrel, before it leaves the shop, I get... eyes on it and i prove it to

be sent out we actually have games that we play around here where if someone

buys a new rifle or barrel from a different company we bring it in here we

scope it to compare it to see how we're doing compared to them and 99 of the

time we're blowing the competition out of the water so i'm currently

analyzing the threads

of these barrels to make sure that the pitch and major is where they need to be

for the barrel extension.

Small little things that you can do when building a rifle to make it as accurate

as possible is making sure your extensions are perfect, making sure the

receiver is lapped so that the barrel extension fits nice and snug, making

your muzzle chamfer and your threads are good, doing all that to make sure that

your barrel is going to shoot nice and straight.

Here we are looking at the inside of the board, the chamber of the rifle. So

here, let's see the chamber.

Enter the chamber.

This is the main body of the chamber.

The case is going to sit against the wall.

And here, now we have the neck.

Here we have our lead right before the rifling starts.

Now we have nice, concentric rifling fat.

So this is a nice, clean button.

No damage.

It's hardly any feed lines to speak of.

This is a very good barrel.

Now this is an example of one that is in the raw. It has not been coated, and it

has not been lapped.

Our lapping process utilizes an abrasive compound and a brush.

And we blast and slowly take away the very top layer of metal.

And this evens out the finish inside the chamber, inside the rifling itself.

So we go through here.

Everything is a bright, shiny silver.

This makes everything even and smooth throughout the entire

barrel.

So you can't even see any feed lines.

Nothing left.

The reason we do that is so that when we coat the barrel, the rifling comes out

perfectly clean and beautiful.

I take a high amount of pride in my work.

We are a very high -volume manufacturer, and we get a lot of barrels out there.

I get worried about the barrels that did not make the cut that we missed.

I come from the Marine Corps. I was a designated marksman.

I'm a shooter. I love firearms. I know what it means when the barrel or the gun

does not do what it's supposed to, and that means the bullet does not go where

it's intended, and that can have drastic consequences. So that's what worries

me. So I always press my guys and everyone on the floor to have the

degree of professionalism and quality control that we can because these are

just a toy or a piece of plastic that gets out there. This is going to be

determination if someone lives or dies, maybe it's the right person.

Kevin Holderby, and I'm the president of Frogman Outdoors.

We're a 501c3 nonprofit that supports wounded SOCOM veterans through guided

fishing and hunting trips. The goal was bring some people together, make new

friendships. And then maybe they can reach out and check on each other.

Adam from Ballistic Advantage just happens to be my neighbor, moved in

years ago.

Asked what he could do to help. When I told him about the nonprofit, he said,

well, maybe I can build you some rifles. So we've been using his platform since

I think this is our fourth year with the Hummel.

So my name is Joel Fleming.

I'm an associate manufacturing engineer at Ballistic Advantage. I was a

reconnaissance scout sniper in the Marine Corps.

I've never actually been on like any kind of big game hunting or actually

hunting in general.

I've shot squirrels here and there, but never actually gone on a hunt.

So pretty excited to be afforded the opportunity to come out here and hunt

hogs.

Got him.

Good size pig?

Yeah.

There's a couple in there that are big.

All right.

Good shot, buddy.

Smoked him.

Good shooting.

Oh, yeah, dude.

That was so quiet.

Of course, that was money.

Of course.

Those

are

the times that we're after right there.

Looks like a great shot, too.

That's a damn good one.

You can hear that thing thumping back there. Really? Yeah. Oh, yeah. We did it

all the way down the road.

It looked like you had some fun. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It was a lot of fun.

First time shooting anything that big.

A gentleman came up. He has two daughters.

And he said, I'm so -and -so SWAT officer.

And he said, I just wanted you to know that my duty gun has a BA barrel.

And when I just built rifles for my daughters, I put BA barrels in it. I

wanted you to know that whether I'm on duty or at home, we trust your product

with our life.

And that just resonated so strongly with me.

And it really reinforced the intention all along is, you know, every barrel

coming out of the shop, the end user needs to be able to trust.

It's very surreal for me, especially to think like right now we have barrels in

Ukraine and Israel.

global pursuit of protecting individuals and the innocent.

I moved to Florida thinking I was going to become a professor, and to wind up in

manufacturing and creating one of the largest barrel manufacturers in the

country, it's almost fantastical.

And the fact that that's a possibility and a potential, it highlights what the

real American dream is.