Visit to Armscor Cartridge, Inc., Victor, MT
The Bitterroot Valley in Montana is a beautiful place even if it was windy and cooler than normal. The mountains were enshrouded in clouds on this spring day. This is small town USA, hunting, fishing and good neighbors. I believe there is one traffic light in Victor, MT and none in neighboring Stevensville.
We met with James Pease of Armscor Cartridge, Inc. (ACI), Victor, MT, who was gracious to give us a tour of the plant. ACI is a partnership with Armscor USA, which manufactures Rock Island Armory firearms, the largest manufacturer of 1911s in the world and the developer of the .22TCM. The new ammo manufacturing facility was opened in 2011. Armscor opened a firearms manufacturing plant in Pahrump, NV in 2016 in addition to firearms and ammunition still made in the Philippines.
I have shot and sold Armscor ammunition and firearms for the past 7 or 8 years. I was expecting to see a large operation but I was really quite surprised. Monday was an off day for their office and most of the staff and many of the loading machines were idle. However, they were cranking out .22 mag and 9mm by the thousands. The inspectors were busy checking every round.
James explained the multi-step and multi-check process to ensure that each round made is precision in every way. Rounds were inspected by the machine and then visually at several stations before being packaged and shipped. James told us that Armscor supplies ammunition to a number of law enforcement agencies in and around Montana in addition to their large volume commercial sales. He answered a lot of questions and even gave me some advice on reloading the .22TCM.
Thanks to James and Armscor for an interesting and informative visit.
The link to the ACI intro video is here
