After the amazing IWA exhibition we visited the Pedersoli factory in Gardone, Val Tromphia the home of the Italian arms industry for the last 500 years or so.

The Pedersoli factory is a high tech manufacturing plant and now produces over 15000 firearms per year. There were only three machines remaining in use since my last visit, 13 years ago.

The entire factory has been expanded and is now equipped with the latest in CNC machinery to produce high quality replica's of antique firearms at reasonable cost.  All stocks are made on site from slabbed trees selected by Mr Pedersoli, air dried in the yard, then a shed before kiln drying, after drying they are rough sawn then stacked in the machining area for 3 months to normalize before  final shaping, the CNC machinery profiles the entire stock and does all the insetting etc. for the metal parts, after final shaping the stocks are hung by the nose for 6 months to stabilize before the metal parts are fitted, from the time the timber arrives in the yard until it is fitted to a firearm 2 years has elapsed.  The wood waste is converted to tubular plugs which are burnt for process and factory heating saving considerable fuel costs for the factory.

In the metal plant there is a machine which spits out a nipple every 40 seconds 24 hours per day, two other similar machines make all the screws and bolts etc. required for the plant. The lock plates are cut out of steel plate by a spark erosion machine which finishes the plates ready to polish, with all holes ready to be tapped etc., a draft angle on the edges for wood fitting purposes, deep hole drills bore the barrels which are then reamed & polished before rifling on the multi-stage broach machine seen below.

There are many dedicated CNC machines producing such things as Sharps & Rolling Block actions, others profile barrels as required, the machine dedicated to the Sharps action is loaded with forged blanks and produces 26 fully machined actions per day, as below.

Other machines spit out flask tops etc. for the million plus flasks delivered every year from another factory while others make bullet moulds, and the myriad other components for the large range of high quality firearms in production.

A new storage area has been established for finished stock which is expected to improve delivery schedules as production runs can be extended and some buffer stock held for customer orders rather than deliveries to order when various models are produced for dealer orders.