Canadian Manufactured 7.62 x 51 Semi Auto

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WoWa Wee Waaa!
I think Savage just made me declare bankruptcy.
One more question...
Who in Canada carries Knight Armament?
 
Satain said:
WoWa Wee Waaa!
I think Savage just made me declare bankruptcy.
One more question...
Who in Canada carries Knight Armament?
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No one as the US State Dept has declared KAC a critical defense industry and only allows export to Authorized Governments and there Agencies
 
purple said:
I don't want to throw cold water on your dream,but you are playing to an extremely limited market here.How many sports and recreational shooters and hunters in Canada would actually buy these when there are already so many choices out there.Economies of scale are everything and that means a good sized market,incl export sales(read to the US) to make this a viable undertaking.Shooters are notoriously cheap and I wonder what your realistic sales projections would be based on a $1500-$2000 product.
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If the Remington R-25 was non restricted they would be selling out daily. Every time I go to the gunstore, a hunter is ogling over the R-25 but as soon as they find out it's restricted they sadly put it down. The price of $1500 doesn't seem to bother them at all. At least that's been my observations. Also look at how hard it is to keep the Swiss arms or Tavor in stock. 3K rifles, yet hard to obtain.

By the way I agree with Navy Shooters assessment. Take what you like and build that. Otherwise you'll end up with the Simpson mobile :D
 
koalorka said:
If you decide to design something from the ground up it will fail miserably and this thread will be the last we ever hear of it.
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I agree. Take years for LWRC to fix up their piston system. Even magpul takes two years to iron out the first functional Masada. HK416 and SCAR with lots of funding took 2 to 3 years to create a final product.

Easier, faster and lower risk to just buy the licence and TDP to build a US design that is proven. Get the commerical license for the Canadian and European market and you are good to go.

THe market cannot wait another two years and do the beta testing. Your market is not really big enough for your to do some massive R&D for a new design.

To be honest, I really don't think a rifle like what he describes will be under 2500 bucks if he needs to make a penny.
 
You cannot buy a TDP without US DOS approval

Trust me -- doing that with someones gun was already looked at...

You end up with the Diemaco - Colt Canada issue.

1) You need an ALL Canadian design

or

2) You have a LE/MIL only sales -- which frankly is about a bad a markets as Canadian civilian firearms
 
Severus,
first off, good on you for stepping up to the plate. I have felt for some time now that we DO meed a Canadian firearms industry.
As we are right next to the US we have become lazy and spoiled, with such easy access to their stuff. Now that it is not nearly so easy to get their stuff, this is the time to consider building our own.

There are many good ideas on this thread, so I wont duplicate my wishlist all over again.

If this really does happen, I would like to do an article for the CSSA magazine on the ups and downs of starting a gun making business in Canada.

Best of luck
 
MikeH and I looked into this last year, albiet intially for AR15 style rifles first.

You need
Site w/ 3 phase power, that is acceptable to be used for a manufacturing business under a Firearms business license (which differes province to province)
Said Firearms Business license with Manufacturing
Machinery:
CNC Mill
CNC Lathe
Annodizing capability

Thats for basics - with the bbl blank outsources, bolts and firecontrol and other small parts outsources, and you doing the final on the bbl, the upper and lower, and coating it.

While you can get forgings cheap - guess what DOS wont issue permits for them without more info than you can give (Its a rough peice of aluminum)

IMHO -- your best off make a receiver out of a piece of extruded aluminum - weld in rails and a barrel trunion, and cut out parts for the fire control etc.
 
greentips said:
I agree. Take years for LWRC to fix up their piston system. Even magpul takes two years to iron out the first functional Masada. HK416 and SCAR with lots of funding took 2 to 3 years to create a final product.

Easier, faster and lower risk to just buy the licence and TDP to build a US design that is proven. Get the commerical license for the Canadian and European market and you are good to go.

THe market cannot wait another two years and do the beta testing. Your market is not really big enough for your to do some massive R&D for a new design.

To be honest, I really don't think a rifle like what he describes will be under 2500 bucks if he needs to make a penny.
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I've been keeping my mouth shut a bit since it was fun to dream about a Canadian produced rifle. Time for a reality check.

I hope Severus is for real, I really do. But if he is the real deal he hasn't shown it to me yet.

I have some questions.

1) Do you have a qualified firearms designer on board? Seriously, you can't put a gun together by cobbling parts from various designs and expect them to work. Timing, lock work, pressure curves, a huge number of mathematical calculations and just plain old ingenuity will be needed....that kind of help is VERY hard to find and ain't cheap to hire.

2) The Canadian Firearms market is obscenely small. If you produce a rifle that is in the $2500 - $3000 range how many do you think you will sell a year? I'm betting less that 50. Wow, a whole $150k max in sales, and that's if it's a success. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say you sell 100. So $300k in sales. Your profit margin when you take out everything heat,rent, lights, material, and labor etc(of which there probably won't be any in the first year) will probably be less than 30% (if you are very lucky). So that gives you $90k. But talking about profit is pointless. There won't be any because $300k just isn't enough to sustain the business. Imagine the amount of people they have at Robarms to produce their products. Do you think $300k in sales would sustain them? Even if you sold 200 rifles a year, $600k isn't enough money to cover your operating costs. It's just not.

This quote from Armdsask drives home the point. How many Swiss Arms rifles do you think are sold in Canada every year, and they are a proven design....remember Armdsask is in the industry too....
Armedsask said:
KPA made bases for the Swiss Arms rifles because they had an order for them. A run was made and they now have a couple hundred sitting on the shelf and it will likely take years to sell all of them.
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You have to produce more than just black rifles to sustain the business.

3) Of those 100 rifles how many will be returned to the factory with teething pains in the first year? Can your business and reputation handle it if they have problems that have to be worked out? What if you have to do a full recall?

4) Count on at lest two to three years to get a completed marketable product. That's if you are lucky. Can your business model sustain three years with NO sales?

Severus I'm not trying to be a #### and I wish you the best of luck. You say you already have access to a CNC shop, that's s great start. Answer the above questions and you'll make a believer out of me. If you can't answer them you are dreaming and really haven' thought this whole thing through.
 
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Further to Kevin's comments on manufacturing.

After you get the infastructure, and licensing you also need insurance, as previously mentioned.

Now what is acceptable profit to the gun buyer?

think about yourself - you make decent money doing what you do right? Lets say you are not in Fort Mac or Iraq like myself or Kevin. - 70K a year good coin? - machinists (good ones anyway) are worth more like 90K.

So say there are 2 folk involved in design, building, prototyping, marketing etc. and these 2 folk pony up a good chunk of cash for infastructure, or take on debt. say - oh, 300K .
5 year payments on 300K is 6K a month.
Say these 2 folk really want to make this work for the firearms industry in Canada, and they will take a cut in pay for the first 5 years. - say 60K a year each, and hire one machinst @ 90.

So expenses for 3 people and infastructure payments is 23.5K a month.

276K a year without operating expenses - and realitically you will only make a gun a day with only 2 guys in a 300K shop, and the other running the business?

so 245 rifles a year. 1126 dollars a gun goes to staying alive and keeping ownership. No material yet. no profit. What is acceptable profit? 10 %? 15%? what do you think material is? 400? 500? How do you pay for an expansion to get to 2 rifles a day with out profit?

so useing numbers that i might have close to my fingertips.....
1126 capital, labour
500 material ( this is based on a base AR15 from last year @ par USD...now is 30% higher.)
100 coating
252 profit (say @15%, oh and 26% of this goes to the .gov)
25 shipping

2003 before the dealer gets it.

2303 after (again using the %15 rule)


The summary of the huge rant is you will never ever get an under 2K rifle made in canada. Ever. Dealers also have to make money, or you will not get dealers.

Period.

Dont even ask. All it does is piss of the folk that try to make things happen, and we are way more frustrated then you in not being able to do what we would love to do, because y'all will not pay for the "made in canada", even though you say you will.
 
I think at 3000 dollars a pop, he will be able to sell 1000 in Canada.

Even reverse engineering something takes 2 years - look at MSAR. When they first came out, they were full of issues.

I think robarm will come out with a 308 XCR before any Canadian can ramp up a 308 rifle on its own.
 
What if the price point was $1,500 and sales were 1,000? That would be revenue of $1.5 million.

Let’s say that foreign sales add up to another 1,000 rifles. Now total revenue could be $3 million and things would start looking good.

Now that we're on the roll, let’s imagine that the military in Boogaland selects the Severus 3000 as the standard issue for its military and places an order for 10,000. Then we'd be rocking.
 
K-2

My point is that the price point IS NOT 1500 bucks. We are @ 1500 of COST. So all the sales in the world we would still be @ zero profit.

And to get to 100 guns a month is 5 a day. you are now looking @ 500K to 600K of investment, the price point has now went up to 1700 bucks and you are loosing 200 for every gun sold. that is a 200K loss in the first year.

Sorry, but would you invest in a stock or RRSP knowing that you would loose 30% of you investment the first year?
 
K-2 said:
What if the price point was $1,500 and sales were 1,000? That would be revenue of $1.5 million.

Let’s say that foreign sales add up to another 1,000 rifles. Now total revenue could be $3 million and things would start looking good.

Now that we're on the roll, let’s imagine that the military in Boogaland selects the Severus 3000 as the standard issue for its military and places an order for 10,000. Then we'd be rocking.
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You can't produce them that cheap, and 1000 rifles a year for a $3k rifle is a pipe dream in Canada. Maybe over five years. Do you think Canada Ammo has sold 1000 Tavors this year? :rolleyes: And that's a non-restricted bullpup for frig sakes!!!!!!
 
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