Ted Hatfield is, in some sense, the spiritual heir of Ruger on a smaller scale. For Ruger, everything begins with the product. When he brought out a single-shot rifle in the 1960s, it was against all the wisdom of the trade. Americans, the line went, wanted their guns to have lots of firepower. They wouldn't buy anything but a repeating rifle. But Ruger's simple, elegant single-shot has been a tremendous success.
"I built it because I'd always been fascinated by the old drop-block buffalo rifles, and I figured if I liked those rifles, then a lot of other American shooters would too," Ruger says. That is his market test.
Hatfield, too, began with a product he trusted and his intuition proved correct in the market. But he had to find a way to get the gun into production. He quickly discovered that, thanks to Ruger's pioneering work, he didn't need to buy any machine tools or, for that matter, pay to have any steel cut. All the parts could be cast in small foundries. He merely needed to find a supplier, make the necessary forms, and put in an order. He was able to subcontract the work.
"Ruger," he says, "revolutionized the whole business and some of the big boys never realized it or admitted it. They were stuck with those huge factories and all those machine tools and unions, and they went broke. And if they didn't go broke, they are struggling. They just got left behind. They're right there on the cutting edge of technology -- about 50 years ago."
With the money he had taken in deposits and some additional liquidity supplied by the bank, Hatfield ordered the metal parts that he needed. He could order in quantity and do the assembly himself in the garage. But he still had to make the stocks, the wooden portions of the guns, and they had to be made right, since the stock is an integral part of a muzzle-loader. "Without the wood," Hatfield says, "all you have is a pile of parts. And if the wood isn't cut just right, you've got a gun that won't shoot straight."
Since there is no way to cast wood, Hatfield bought an old lathe and began turning stocks. "That thing probably made stocks for rifles that were used in the Spanish-American War," he says. Besides being obsolete, the machine was limited. Once the stock had been turned to shape, there were still another 10 cuts that had to be made for the barrel well, the ramrod sleeve, the barrel tang, and the rest. Hatfield improvised some jigs and, using some handyman tools, was able to make all the necessary cuts. But it was a slow process. "We were looking at a limit of 200 guns a year, and I wasn't going to make any money at that level. I wanted to make 200 a month. I knew I could sell them. I just had to figure out how to make them."
Hatfield made as many guns as he could and set out to educate himself about the available technology. For a while, it seemed that everything was either too big and expensive or too small and specialized. Then he learned about computer numerically controlled milling.
"That's what broke it open for me. Before that, I didn't know the first thing about computers -- still don't know much -- but I learned to love those rascals."
Traditional machine tools are designed to perform one task -- one cut, say, across the face of a block of wood or steel. To make the 10 cuts in a Hatfield stock, a production line would require 10 machines -- an assembly line. The cost of the machines would make such an assembly line prohibitive unless Hatfield could use thousands of stocks. A CNC milling machine can perform all 10 functions with no physical adjustments. Each function is controlled by a program that is run on an ordinary personal computer. The tool is adapted to the product, and limited runs are possible. Hatfield found a CNC operation in South Dakota that could turn out a stock in seven minutes on one machine and would handle any order, no matter how small. The main capital outlays were for a set of engineering diagrams and the writing of a computer program. "I jobbed that out," Hatfield says, "and was happy to do it.
"I wanted to be a businessman, and I wanted to make guns," he says. "No way I could have done both 20 years ago. Not making the kind of guns I make. I would have had to own a factory and, at the kind of numbers I'm dealing in, that would have been out of the question. I wouldn't make enough in 50 years to pay off what it would cost me to tool up.
"I'll tell you the way I see what I'm doing," Hatfield continues. "I'm trying to make a product according to the standards of the old American craftsmen, who were perfectionists and also liked to put a little personality into their work. And I'm trying to do it with the very latest technology. It seems like kind of a strange mix, but it works."
Once he had located the subcontractors and ordered the necessary parts, Hatfield began delivering guns and taking orders, working out of the basement of a liquor store and relying on receivables and borrowed money for cash. Sales of his first model have grown by 100% annually in spite of the fact that the black-powder craze peaked and then crashed in the early '80s.
Why?
According to Sam Fadala, an expert in the field of muzzle-loaders who is widely published on the subject, the reasons can be found in both the product and the producer. "In the first place, the gun is genuine. There really was a gun like it, made more than 150 years ago. I looked it up and compared them. Hatfield went to some pains to make a true replica.
"And then," Fadala goes on, "he does real good work. The materials and the workmanship are first class. I had a gun editor out here at my house, in Wyoming, and I showed him my Hatfield and we took it out and shot it 30 times without a misfire. In today's flintlocks, that's extraordinary."
