Along with other media members, I attended the open house festivities at Wilson Combat's expansive new facilities – just up the hillside from their previous location near Berryville, Ark. We – I was there with Number 1 Son – had a chance to see the extensive phone center operate before the tour. They were busy taking calls – likely orders – for their large product line. It took only a few minutes to see that a pair of coordinators were assigning incoming calls to the customer service call-takers, speeding up the process and minimizing wait times. How had he gotten here from a garage in Berryville? I'd previously visited Wilson Combat in 2000. It was a smaller operation then. Craftsmen worked at a few stations, there was a test fire range out the back door. The whole thing took less than a half-hour. Bill Wilson started in the mid-1970s working on other people's pistols – predominantly Colt Government Model pistols. In the mid-90s, he began production of slides and frames to make Wilson Combat pistols. He did "packages" – specific types of pistol – but customers ordered from a whole selection of options, making each gun a true custom firearm. Along with way, Bill picked up Scattergun Technologies of Nashville, Tenn. They still have it and turn out shotguns – but the biggest part of that business is refurbishing police 870s. Some years back, Ryan and Bill Wilson turned their attention to the AR15, making some very nice rifles along the way. Where are they today? The business is nearly neck-and-neck Wilson Combat 1911 pistols and AR rifles for completed guns – and Wilson sells a lot of barreled upper receivers for the AR. They run a land office business on sights, parts, springs and magazines. Bill has been an ammunition reloader for many years. In advance of the ammo drought resulting from reasonable fears of government nonsense, Wilson Combat came out with a line of ammunition – which they've recently refined. We were split up into groups and taken on tours. Bill was the tour guide for our group – admitting this was one of few days he'd be in the Wilson Combat Headquarters this year. His office is quite small – reflecting the time he spends in the shop. According to Bill, Ryan Wilson does the hard work – and he's doing it quite well. We saw pistol and rifle fabrication, barrel manufacture, finishing, shipping and the final inspection/shooting operation. Remarkably, there were people who'd worked at Wilson Combat since the early 1980s – some who had offspring and other families now working there. There were a number of craftsmen working individual projects, others who worked to keep CNC machinery programmed and running. While still selling "packages" in the pistol, rifle and shotgun lines, there are many options upon which buyers must decide. In final assembly, Bob Chaney – the boss in that section -- showed us a pistol and a work order. "We have to make sure the pistol being shipped is compared to the work order," he said. Checking each detail is their job. In the case of the pistol he'd picked up, he found the front sight had a red fiber optic tube – the work order called for green. He handed it to one of the staff to be changed. The pistol is then taken into the indoor/outdoor range for function test, accuracy test and zero. Pistols are run about 78 rounds – if everything works as planned. If not, back it goes. Much of that ammo is factory hardball, "the toughest round for the 1911 to feed," Bill noted. His 200 grain semi-wadcutter lead rounds will feed in guns that choke on mass-produced ball. Finally, we got to go out back and shoot some of their guns – Beretta 92A1 and Brigadier Tactical (Ernie Langdon consulted with Wilson Combat on the Beretta project), CQBs of various flavors, the Tactical Carry, a full-size 1911 pistol set up as a Vickers Special, and a couple of carbines – a suppressed gun in 5.56mm and one of the new .308 rifles. The rest of the group got to go down and look at the Wilson Combat ammunition plant. We had to leave the new 71,000 square ft. facility for the drive home. I'm looking forward to spending some time with new Wilson Combat guns and on reporting on them for you. -- Rich Grassi Grassi is founder and editor of our companion service, The Tactical Wire (www.thetacticalwire.com)