Guidefitter Spotlight Episode 13: Ken and Zach from Salmon River Solutions

Transcript

Bryan Koontz (00:03), Hey everyone. Today I'm talking with Ken Trapp and Zach Lester from Salmon River Solutions. They've started a very cool business involved in long range shooting. Zach is a machinist. Actually, both of them are machinists. And from their love of hunting and long range shooting, they started Salmon River Solutions. So take a listen to this conversation with the two of them. They share an office space with the guys at Rockslide out in Idaho. So cool business. They're very obviously deeply embedded into their industry and long-range shooting and hunting. So take a listen to these two entrepreneurs as we talk about their business and we talk about suppressors and muzzle breaks and all kinds of things. So thanks for listening and welcome to the Guidefitter Spotlight.

Bryan Koontz (00:00), So Ken, you and I have talked. Zach, we have not talked. I've never, I don't think we've talked. Are you also a machinist? I love the, I love part of the startup story that Ken and I talked about, but I would love to hear your version of how the heck did you guys start one of the shooting companies, you know? around. Like if you if you know you know I think you're you're one of those brands where if you know you know but how did that how did that get started from your perspective?

SRS (00:35), Yeah, Brian, nice to meet you. I am a diehard machinist. Been machining for 12 plus years, worked in a lot of medical, aerospace, tool and die industries. And through that, and I had met at a tool and die shop and then had previously reconnected at another shop we both ended up. And he kind of approached me with this idea for SRS, the niche market of stuff to make. And we purchased a mill from his dad, a CNC vertical mill, threw it in my 30 by 40 foot shop in the backyard. And we just hustled and kind of started SRS. And within three or four months, we working full time, both of us, with our day jobs. Just dove.

Bryan Koontz (01:37), That's awesome. That's awesome. And did you grow up, you know, shooting, hunting, like, what's your, you know, what's the, because it's one thing to be a machinist, but it's another thing to get into the kind of company that you've built, right? So what's, what's your, what's the backstory there?

SRS (01:56), I've always enjoyed shooting, as far as the hunting niche or market, that's all Ken. I'm more predominantly the machinist. Ken was the guy in the market that saw some holes of innovation that could be, you know, brought forth from product development. And so we just collaborated and Ken brought, I guess, the ideas and we're both machinists. I'm more the, I guess.

Bryan Koontz (02:03), Mm-hmm. Got.

SRS (02:25), machinist if you want to put a label on it. Yeah, I do. Less and less on the shop floor every day it seems.

Bryan Koontz (02:29), Do you, you, do you, so Zach, do you embrace the term you're the nerd? Is that, is that like a good, that's like a badge of honor? You're the machinist nerd. You know how to make everything that he comes up.

SRS (02:41), Yeah, I don't mind that term. And again, Ken's a very great machinist as well, but if we just had to pick and choose a class, I guess I'd be more of the machinist and Ken is definitely the guy that knows the market better than I do. We're a good mix together.

Bryan Koontz (02:43), Ha ha. Yeah, that's awesome. Now how did you guys get to know each other? Like what's your relationship background?

SRS (03:06), I mean, we started at a shop together pretty close. We started maybe six months apart. I worked there for a year and a half, then left, went to a new shop, and then ended up convincing Zach to come over to that shop. And then he went back to the other shop. Then he came back to the other shop. So we've worked in multiple shops together and hung out. Think the first time we hung out outside of working together was when. We went rock climbing one time and. But yeah, started the business and. Yeah, been going good since.

Bryan Koontz (03:45), That's awesome. So Ken, you know, you and I have talked a little bit about how things got started. You were you were going through some ups and downs in life and all the things. Can you just, you know, maybe revisit that whole startup story? you know, I love clearly I started Guidefitter and plenty of ups and downs for for sure. Sometimes you want to rip your hair out. But I would love to hear.

SRS (04:06), Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (04:14), your startup story for Salmon Rover? Like how did this amazing company happen?

SRS (04:20), I pretty much, want to say like the first actual SRS product I thought of, pretty much I, I used to be on the long range hunting forum a ton. I like lived on there constantly on there. and.

Bryan Koontz (04:38), How did you, let's back up a minute from that. How did you end up on that? How did you get into long range shooting? What's that? How did you get there?

SRS (04:48), I had a brother-in-law that was actually a pretty good shooter, ex-military, and I went shooting with them and shooting like a 300 Win Mag, seven pounds, terrible recoil. I was lucky to hit a pie plate-sized target at 100 yards, and I was like, I should probably get better at this if I actually want to keep hunting and actually harvest animals, and especially humanely.

Bryan Koontz (05:11), Well.

SRS (05:19), So from there, I started getting into it like, OK, what can I do? And one of my biggest things was getting rid of flinching. So I got a muzzle break and that helped. Then I put a super heavy stock on the gun to me, like 14 pounds so I could practice and not have a ton of recoil, get used to that. And then from there, I started diving into forums. I got into reloading and all that kind of stuff. Reloading is a pretty deep dive and there's so much information with it.

Bryan Koontz (05:45), Yeah, I've not got I've not gone down that rabbit hole, but I know there is a rabbit hole to go down. So yeah, yeah.

SRS (05:52), Yeah. But, yeah. So that that was pretty much my like introduction to like kind of precision rifle type stuff. And I mean, since then, I, I shoot a lot. I used to shoot. I used to think I shot a lot. Then I started shooting competitions and stuff like that, where, you know, I might shoot 200 rounds, two or seven rounds in, you know, a weekend. And then you got practice leading up to that and whatnot. So, you know, I'm shooting thousands, thousands of rounds. Every year now, burnout barrels. But that's really where a lot of our product innovation comes from.

Bryan Koontz (06:29), Wow. Okay. So that is a background. then you said you found yourself on these forums and that how did that lead to the company to thinking like I want to do this insane thing like entrepreneur, which.

SRS (06:42), Yeah, I ended up designing the Arca plus pick combo rail and made a couple of those and it's pretty well received. I think I just at some point one guy was like I made a Picatinny rail and I made an Arca rail and one guy was like, be cool if you could make it into one rail and I was like, I could do that. So, know, kind of slap the design together and made a few. And then people were interested in it and wanted them. And I was like, I should probably figure out how I can actually make these. And, being like, was a crappy time in my life, but it worked out because I was in the middle of getting a divorce. Me and Zach started the company. But yeah, haven't looked back since it's been going, going great. Everything worked out good.

Bryan Koontz (07:37), That's awesome. You know, think there's lots, I don't know, I think there's times in life when stuff goes south and it's like, it's like, got to like, just swipe out whatever is going on. And like all this innovation just can happen in your mind, you know? You know, like when things are going badly, a divorce, whatever it might be. And it's just, it's those times when you're like, okay, let's do some crazy stuff here. And, you know, like maybe Salmon River wouldn't have happened if he wouldn't have gone through those times, right? You know, so I think I...

S RS (08:15), I can attest to that. Was going through a rough time and he'd come to get away from life and just work in the shop in my backyard by himself late, odd hours. You know. Yeah, it was pretty much like.

Bryan Koontz (08:26), Interesting. So you would just grind it out in the shop, like as you're clearing your head, you're like, you're on the mill and you're just doing stuff.

SRS (08:35), Yeah. And I was like, well, what do I have to lose? So I quit my day job and I was like, it's crud. I'm going to do this full time. And Zach was doing tree work at the time. He wasn't even doing machine work, but, that when I did that, that was October. And then by the time it was like mid December, cause when I quit, I didn't even know if we had enough work, had enough sales to pay myself enough to live off of. And essentially by the time December rolled around, so about two months, I was like, I need help.

Bryan Koontz (09:00), Sure.

SRS (09:05), So then that's when Zach actually came on board full time. I mean, was in his backyard anyways. I had intentionally quit my good well-paid insurance day job as a machinist to go be one of those dumb guys that's climbing 120-foot trees and topping them down from the top down. I did it just for fun because I knew that this would blossom and get to where I want. I'd always done some tree work on the side. So this was a.

Bryan Koontz (09:08), That's when you called this guy. Yeah, right, right.

SRS (09:34), Time to leave and wait for the company to grow to a point where I could come join Ken full time in the backyard and make parts. Yeah, just happened a lot faster than either of us were expecting. Faster, yeah.

Bryan Koontz (09:44), No, that's what a great story. So if you're trying to describe the company that you have now and the company that you're you're you look forward to building in the future, how do you describe it? You know, what what what who are you guys like? Tell me tell me what you what do want this company to be? What is it now? You know, like describe it to my grandmother kind of thing, you know, like what what is what is salmon?

SRS (10:10), Think so like solutions is part of our name and I can't, think that's kind of driven behind like we make stuff that's specialized for, people to shoot factory rifles off of tripods. And I think that's a hugely overlooked thing. Tripods have gotten super popular over the last, five years. Lots of people carry them into the back country. They're glassing off of them. Very few of them actually can shoot off of a tripod.

Bryan Koontz (10:40), But by the way, we just signed two vets tripods. Super happy that we signed them. I know there's some really good, amazing high-end tripod brands out there. Two vets is amazing. Anyway, what's the product you have that plate that you gave us? The tack table with, we're close.

SRS (10:53), Yeah, I like two vets. He's one of our dealers, actually. Tack table, the tack table.

Bryan Koontz (11:07), Designing the other the bag company, you know, but what it would be like you guys two vets and The the bag that just fits perfectly on top of there it's gonna be like holy cow anyway, I I'm sorry to interrupt you but like I I did not really understand Tripod shooting until that event and my like all the lights went on so when you when you describe your company as we're gonna.

SRS (11:18), Mm-hmm.

Bryan Koontz (11:36), Factory rifle tripod shooting better. Boom. Like that's a very specific goal and I like.

SRS (11:42), Yeah. And then, mean, the other half of our company is kind of just focused on muzzle brakes. We make a ton of different products, but I think like we really got started focusing on ultralight, very well functioning muzzle brakes. Like we make the, used to be called the Typro tiny because it's like, it weighed like 0 .7 ounces, but it was a little tiny four port muzzle brake and just worked phenomenally well. So our muzzle brakes coupled with. Rails that they actually have a radius cut on the bottom. You know, traditional you go by a Bergara ridge or something like that. They have the fore end of the stock is is radius. It's not flat. It's round. At the time, we were the only people that were making a radius cut on the bottom of a rail. So instead of if you imagine, know, imagine like something flat on something round, it's going to want to.

Bryan Koontz (12:43), True.

SRS (12:43), Rock. So we put the radius on the bottom so you have two points of contact and all of a sudden the rail mounts stiffly instead of wanting to rock and coming loose. Two rounded stock and also a flat stock. Yeah, they work either, they work with either that way.

Bryan Koontz (12:43), Mm-hmm. Interesting. Okay. So where do you so where is this company going? You know, like what do you worry? Where do you think you are now? And what is it? You know, I hate that question. Like, where do you see yourself in five years? But you know, like, so for example, I was talking to we just had a good conversation with Justin from RASCO. Like he was at the he taught the bear course. And what's interesting about Justin's company? and what he's, you know, what he wants to do with his business. He's not a holster company. He's a bear defense company. Like he's like, no, we are we are a bear defense. We're all about bear defense. So when you talk to him about his roadmap, he's looking at things like they're going to build, you know, training sessions and more like subscription based services around bear defense. Right. And holsters are a piece of that. But I think that's very interesting that that's his mission and that's his goal and that's what he wants to be. It's not a holster company like anything about helping people be safe in bear country is his whole mindset. So with you guys, you know, I wonder what is that story? You know, what is that goal? Along those lines.

SRS (14:21), I mean, our, our product base is definitely growing. Think, I don't know, we've probably launched 20 new products so far this year. The nice thing about us being a small company is I can say, Hey, I got this idea and I think it'd probably make a good product. I can start doing some product research so that can slap a design together and, program it on our CAD cam software. And we can have like a functioning part if it's a simpler part that day. Then, so I think we have a lot of, good product ideas that are just driven from, Hey, I think this might make a good product. Can bang out some product research, figure out like pricing, see if it's an actual something that we can sell. And then Zach takes it and runs with it. And you know, all of a sudden a month later, we're doing a production run on.

Bryan Koontz (14:56), Wow. So that, let me.

Bryan Koontz (15:18), I mean, that's super cool. So Zach, you can take an idea that he has and literally maybe in a day whip up like a prototype.

SRS (15:27), Yeah, and that's a big reason that I think I enjoyed becoming a machinist is taking something intangible like in your head and being able to model it in some CAD software and then program it in CAM software and turn it from, you know, a thought to something physical you can see and hold and touch. So we're pretty cool because we're pretty light and we can see a gap in the market that could be pretty innovative and prototype it relatively quick compared to maybe some bigger companies. And then along with.

Bryan Koontz (15:42), That is super cool. Do you do, go ahead, sorry. No, no, go ahead.

SRS (15:58), Go ahead. Just along with, you know, really listening to customers and reading forums, Ken does a lot of research on kind of what people are wanting, what doesn't exist out there. And so we're a pretty good team for bringing some new product quickly to the market.

Bryan Koontz (16:16), That's awesome. Do you do you guys do any like 3D printing and stuff like that? I know that's like a rapid prototyping thing or do you just go right to the middle? Just bang it.

SRS (16:26), I don't think we've 3D printed any of our product ideas. We do a contract manufacturing for Unknown Munitions and they 3D print a lot of their product ideas just to kind of fit form function down to make sure everything's going to somewhat fit. But we don't do much with 3D printing at all really. We could probably do more, but pretty easy for us to just take a simple product, make the fixturing for it, program it, design it, and have a complete.

Bryan Koontz (17:02), Yeah, sure. Yeah. Well, that's that's awesome that you can just ideate. Think of these things and then you've got an amazing business partner. You can be like, hey, let's let's bang one of these out. Let's see what let's see if this actually works. You know, how cool is that? You know, that's.

SRS (17:18), Yeah, and that's like you were talking about the tack tables earlier. That's pretty much what happened with the tack tables. I have a buddy whose son was 10 years old at the time and was actually printing 3D tack tables. And I went out and shot a match in northern Montana and it was I think March and it was cold, cold. And we each had 3D printed tack tables. My tripod tipped over on the first stage and it broke in half. And then the next stage or two stages later, my buddies broke. So I got back to the shop and I was like, hey, Zach, we're making tack tables because I was like, we make them out of aluminum. They're obviously not going to break when they tip over a tripod. So we did that. I mean, we've I think I like to say that's like I think I've still given away as many tack tables as we've sold just because they're. They're a cool product. A lot of people don't know what they are, unless you know about tripod shooting, but they're a cool looking product and I think they show well. So that's like our favorite prize table thing. You took the Scout PhD course and so we sponsored that by putting a tack table essentially in the goody bag for everyone.

Bryan Koontz (18:35), I was surprised you did. It was in the goodie bag. It was the best thing in the goodie bag. Like, holy cow, this is a multi-hundred dollar product in our goodie bag. And then it was the... When I was seeing how everyone was using it, I didn't even know what it was when I opened up the goodie bag. Like, Yeah, I was like, what is this? But now I get it.

SRS (18:53), Yeah, a lot of people don't know what it is. That's a pretty looking piece of metal. Yeah, that's a good description. It's a pretty looking piece of metal.

Bryan Koontz (19:01), It's very true. So it's it's it's interesting that this theme of our conversation keeps coming back up. Tripod shooting, you know, I don't think anyone knows what that is. You know, I think again, once again, those who know know, but I think that. I just know Brian, the other Brian Worthington, who's been working with you guys who went to the scout training with with we were talking about it afterwards or like, we've never even shot off of tripod like this is this is like a new thing like, know, and all of the ways to use it where you're like, using it as a support on your you know, if you're leaning against something or like all the things that we learned in that in those sessions. So I think that you're you know, you guys promoting tripod shooting from factory rifles like that is a very specific goal. And. When it comes to, especially when comes to just like ethical harvesting of animals, Shooting animals. Why would you not? You know, like in I've hunted so many times with like wobbly bipods and sometimes the bipods aren't tall enough to get over the grass and then you're leaning against a, you know, a fence post or whatever. And it's just, it's terrible. And it's, and it's terrible for the animal. You know, so when you're really thinking about bringing that carbon fiber and now the technology with tripods is, you know, you can throw a carbon fiber tripod in your backpack and it's not going to kill you. And you've got, you know, great, like not mechanical wobble, all the things. And then the stuff that you guys are making, it just seems like that's something that every, especially Western hunter should just know how to use a tripod, you.

SRS (20:59), Yeah, and a lot of I think there's also a lot of people out there. They're like, hey, I can put an archer rail on my gun and shoot off a tripod. As you probably saw the scout course, it takes some practice. So just tell people like there's a lot of different positions. There's a ton of different ways to shoot off a tripod. Like you were saying, you can use this tripod rear to support the rear of the gun. Put like the front of the gun on a backpack or something. But most like our rails are meant.

Bryan Koontz (21:00), But anyway.

SRS (21:28), Actually clipping in and so you can leave the gun on the tripod and, know, just quickly get on target. Like, for example, last year elk hunting with one of my hunting buddies. He also shoots competition with me and he smacked his elk last year at 550 yards just kneeling off a tripod. And that's a shot that he can easily make because he does that out to 800, 900, 1000 yards.

Bryan Koontz (21:50), Wow.

SRS (21:58), In competition on the clock. So it just comes back to, you know, having that practice to where you practice in different shooting positions with tripods, standing, kneeling, seated, all that kind of stuff. So you can actually make that shot confidently. Obviously, you want to make a confident shot when you shoot in an animal.

Bryan Koontz (22:22), Yeah, no, 100%. And so tell me more about the plate that you guys built. Like, what is that? Like, why does it matter?

SRS (22:32), The tech table. So lots of different ways you can use it. Really the only way I use it, I use it a lot in interal hunter competitions. So those are like a four minute timer. You run up there, throw all your stuff out. Everything has to be like carried. So your tripod can't be deployed. So you throw your tripod out, deploy it, and then you put a shooting bag on top of it and you have to glass to find targets. So I. Slapping a shooting bag on top of that tack table and then putting my binoculars on there so I can glass and find targets. I like that a lot better than trying to have like a archiplate on there clipping the binoculars into there and then using that to glass because some of the shooting positions you can just essentially slap the gun right up there and shoot from that position after you're done glassing so you can shoot off the bag sitting on the tripod. It also has like, like 29 or 32 tapped quarter 20 holes, like accessory holes. What did Trevor put on his?

Bryan Koontz (23:46), You like Kestrel's on there and stuff like that or?

SRS (23:48), You can do kestrels, Kestrels, binomounts, anything you want. Yeah, you can put a Picatinny rail with like, I've seen guys will put a Picatinny rail, mount a Picatinny rail on there and actually mount a scope on there. So you can mill your targets. I don't know if you remember Kaylen talking about that, but you can mill your targets essentially with that. So you can say like, okay, I know at that distance. This animal's, you one mil wide. So, yeah. And then a lot of people will put like binoculars, but you could have a spotting scope on there and binoculars or a spotting scope and a rangefinder and you can put one on a ball head and hard mount one. So the hard mounted one, you get that like pinpointed to a certain position and then you get your rangefinder on a ball head and then you can get that to where the two match in the same position.

Bryan Koontz (24:21), Right.

SRS (24:46), So you can like spot an animal and then say, okay, hop over to the range finder and just turn it on and range it. Cause you know, it's going to be pretty much right.

Bryan Koontz (24:55), Right.

SRS (24:57), If you have a low tripod, they make a wonderful seat too. I can attest to that. I forgot about that. Yeah. You can actually sit on them. Yeah. Or stand. We did the stand test and yeah, we stood on. A buck 50, buck 55, but they support if you have a good tripod. Yeah, we did a Hunter's rail stress test where we had two tripods. One was clicked into the Picatinny on one and one was arc on the other end. And Zach's just standing on it, balancing on one foot.

Bryan Koontz (25:01), Ha ha I never would thought about that. That's funny. What's. That's hilarious. Sure, right.

SRS (25:26), Just to stress test it. I don't think anybody's gonna be standing on the rail, but they're strong.

Bryan Koontz (25:34), That's awesome. So what's the number one selling product from you guys? What's the go-to Salmon River product? Is it that or is it something else?

SRS (25:47), We don't really sell that many of those. That's kind of a limited market. Like you said, nobody even knows what they are. But I'd say our Arca plus Pick rails and then our Hunter's rails, which are Arca and Picatinny also. The long version? Yeah, just a full length version essentially. So you get, you know, seven or eight inches of Arca and then two inches of Picatinny. And then besides that, it's pretty much our.

Bryan Koontz (25:53), Hahaha.

SRS (26:17), Probably Typro 4, muzzle brakes, four-port titanium muzzle brakes. Have like 350 the sex over there laughing, because he's programmed at all. We have like 350 different skews for muzzle brakes.

Bryan Koontz (26:35), Well, I mean, yeah, that makes sense. So many different, yeah.

SRS (26:37), Yeah, when you think about it, so we make our entire lineup in titanium and stainless. So right there, if we had 10 options, that becomes 20. We have how many thread options do we have? Muzzle thread? Yeah. Five, six, maybe. At least six. Yeah, at least six. So different thread options, different bore options. So like a 6 .5 millimeter, 7 millimeter.

Bryan Koontz (26:46), Mm.

SRS (27:06), 308, 338. We have different port options. So we make one, two, three, four, five ports. And then we also have diameter options. Then you have self-timing, non-self-timing. So I think the last time we looked, it was 350. And I think we've come out with a good amount since then. So we're probably up under 400 different SKUs for muscle.

Bryan Koontz (27:26), So.

Bryan Koontz (27:26), So for someone who doesn't know what a muzzle brake is or does, how do you describe that? Why does someone need a muzzle brake? What does it do? What are the physics behind the gases and all the things? How would you describe that to someone?

SRS (27:47), Zach has this giant Russian buddy named Serge. Serge. Really big guy. I always compare that to like, OK, when you're shooting your gun, do you want Serge to hit you as hard as he can in the shoulder? Or do you want my six year old daughter to hit you in the shoulder? Because that's pretty much how it compares. So say you put one of our five port muzzle brakes on three in a wind mag.

Bryan Koontz (28:07), Okay, all.

SRS (28:16), You're going to shoot it without a muzzle brake and the recoil force on that is going to knock you super far off target. You can't see where your shots are going. You can't see bullet impacts. You can't make corrections based off of where the bullet went because you have no idea it you have so much recoil knocking off position. You put a muzzle brake on there and I mean even with like a 10 pound 300 win mag you could. Could free recoil it and free recoiling is like essentially your shoulders barely touching. You're not pushing into it at all. And then your cheek pressure is super light. So almost nothing. And then your hand pressure is really light. So you can pull that trigger. And if you're in a good position and you have a good setup, your guns on a bag, you're on a solid bipod, it's not super high or anything. You can free recoil like that and it still just barely hits.

Bryan Koontz (29:16), Really? Like that? Mean, that's, that's substantial. That's completely different.

SRS (29:22), Yeah, and like everybody at the Scout PhD course was shooting suppressed and suppressors are great, but they don't reduce as much recoil as as a muzzle break.

Bryan Koontz (29:31), That's what know. That's It's it's interesting you say that that was one of my takeaways from that class, which I always thought, suppressor is like the ultimate. And it was, know who it was, the rancher, Mr. Price, I think, you know, and he's like, no, no, I don't shoot suppressed. I shoot with a break and we got into that. And then I started talking to some other people at the at the class and and I learned that I'm like, no, if you want.

SRS (29:47), Yeah, yeah.

Bryan Koontz (30:01), The ultimate and reduced recoil because I was shooting at 300 PRC, which was like kicking the absolute crap out of me. You saw me, I think. And for like, my God, for like three weeks, I had like a giant deep purple bruise on my whole sternum. Like, my God, I was shooting that. I mean, it's a great I was shooting that 307 Weatherby, you know, great, great, awesome gun chassis gun,.

SRS (30:07), Yeah. I told you to get a six five PRC after that.

Bryan Koontz (30:29), Holy moly, that 300 PRC was killing me. But anyway, and so I started talking to the folks at the thing and they're like, yeah, if you really want to reduce recoil the most, you need a brake, not a suppressor. And there was a couple guys shooting suppressors that had brakes built into the suppressors, you know, I think it was SilencerCo, maybe some of the guys were shooting.

SRS (30:54), Yeah, I had my Magnus KRR there where it had like kind of looks like really big muzzle brake ports on the end of it. And that I'd say probably reduces the recoil a good amount more, but it's still not comparable to an actual brake. If you think about it, all a suppressor can do is elongate your recoil impulse. So a suppressor I look at as a plateau. So it goes. Plateaus while the gas is traveling through your baffles and then it drops off. A muzzle brake is just going to be.

Bryan Koontz (31:29), Stay.

SRS (31:33), It's because all that gas still has to come out of the end of the suppressor. So you can only reduce it a certain amount. So that's why having that little bit of break function on the end of the suppressor does reduce a little bit more recoil.

Bryan Koontz (31:49), So let's dive into that if you can. What does a break do? Why does a break break the recoil as much as it does? What happens there?

SRS (32:02), Redirecting that gas that's coming out of your barrel. I think a simple analogy is like, imagine like a SpaceX booster rocket going into space and all that gas is just pushing it off the earth, up into the atmosphere. If you put some geometry into that booster that redirected the gas back up towards where it's going to, that's going to reduce how much pressure it's putting on the ground. So think of like redirecting the gas from like a space engine back up kind of towards the way it's going. It's kind of a similar effect of what a breaks to it. It's taken all that gas that's pushing and traveling out and pushing it back out or back rather towards the shooter and not all the way out so.

Bryan Koontz (32:43), Just redirecting the gas. It's yeah, it's like pushing it out sideways instead of back on your shoulder.

SRS (32:46), Yeah, the simplest way. Sure, there's different degrees of the angle at which it pushes back. A radial brake that the gas just goes out will not do as much as one that pushes it more back towards the shooter. You're just redirecting the gas that's causing all that momentum in your rifle to not push it back so hard to the shooter.

Bryan Koontz (33:13), I got it. Yeah. Huh. Yeah, I mean, I know from shooting with people on the range, no one likes shooting beside someone who's got a break. Because you're you're getting all that gas in your face. You know what that means? It's doing something, you know, it's pushing it back. So.

SRS (33:25), Yeah. Yeah, when you knock your stuff off the shooting bench with a muzzle brake, you know your brakes working well.

Bryan Koontz (33:39), Thought about that. Sure. Yeah, that's true. Shoot near your your ammo box or whatever off the off the table. So so as you think about, you know, the next couple of years with the business you guys are building together, what do you you know, do you have in mind like a roadmap of some new things that are, you know, obviously you do, but like, are they along the same lines? Or is it like completely different? Like, what do. What are you getting into? And I'll say we I talked a couple of weeks ago to the founder of Hay Day. They make. Waterfowl targets and stuff, they make it out of the same material that like crocs are made out of so you can like shoot your duck decoy and it's not going to sink it. And, know, he had it was pretty cool. He's a really cool guy. I think we just published that one. But I asked him that question. He's like, well, we're going to make stuff.

SRS (34:27), Hm.

Bryan Koontz (34:39), For drinking. And it was and he couldn't tell me it was like a secret, you know, so I can't wait to see what they come up with. But so it was really and he he elaborated on why that's the case and all that kind of stuff, which was surprising direction. But anyway. Yeah, I'm curious, too, like he would he didn't want to go into it. He's like, I mean, human drinking, you know, it's it's different, you know, and it's not quite a cooler, but it's something I was like, my God, I'm so curious.

SRS (34:52), Like the ultimate waterfowl koozie or something. I'm curious. Floating beer koozie.

Bryan Koontz (35:09), So I don't know, we're gonna have to wait and see what Hay Day comes up with. But anyway, I'm curious with you guys, what do you have in mind? Where's the company going? And what could we expect, even if conceptually, what could we expect?

SRS (35:26), We just started getting into suppressor accessories. There might be some other stuff going on with that in the future with actual suppressors, but that wouldn't be internal muzzle brakes for suppressors and then also like hub adapters. Just trying to come up with a solution to cut a little bit of length and weight out.

Bryan Koontz (35:34), Like insulators and wraps kind of thing.

SRS (35:54), Suppressor adapters pretty much. And suppressor adapter effectiveness.

Bryan Koontz (35:59), Do you mean like a muzzle brake that you thread onto your barrel onto which you thread the suppressor, like those sorts of products? Okay.

SRS (36:09), Yeah, so we just launched, that was our first suppressor accessory. It's a CB slash Banish. So it works with a few different brands. But essentially that's just a muzzle brake that you can have on your gun. So if you shoot that gun without a suppressor, it's still, it's not smashing you in the shoulder super hard. And then it's a taper adapter. So you get really good solid lockup for your.

Bryan Koontz (36:25), Yeah.

Bryan Koontz (36:40), Is that when you when you put I've always wondered about that. Is that is that something you can calculate? Meaning when you when you mount the suppressor onto the brake, is it very measurable about how many .O .A. or mills that you lose in energy? You know what mean? Like if you if you shoot just with a break, boom, you're zero to 100. Throw out a suppressor on and what are you like two inches low? You know what I mean? Like how much energy does it take out like? Is that something that's just, just know, hey, if I'm gonna thread the suppressor on, I'm gonna mentally calculate my measured drop or whatever it would be in energy.

SRS (37:15), It's always consistent. You could technically have two different zeros. You're always going to see a POI shift, point of impact shift, when you're putting something on the end of the gun. So if you just, you're just shooting with a muzzle brake on there and you have your gun perfectly zeroed, you might thread that suppressor on and then be, like you said, two inches high, two inches right. But that is something like easily notable so that you throw that suppressor on, you move. Your turrets, reset them out and then you're, know, reset it.

Bryan Koontz (37:20), Mm.

Bryan Koontz (37:52), Yeah, right, right,.

SRS (37:53), But it varies with every barrel type because you have, it's the barrel harmonics that cause that point of impact shift.

Bryan Koontz (38:01), Sure, And I don't know anyone who practically, you know, uses their weapon that way. I mean, unless you're a competition shooter, but like for like the typical hunter, they're gonna hunt one way or the other, right? They're either gonna hunt with a suppressor or they're not. You know, I don't think it's that interesting, I guess, other than academically interesting. If you want to go out to the range, you know. But you know what I mean? Like if you're a back country hunter, you know, like you're gonna hunt suppressed, you're gonna hunt suppressed. Right? You know, this is how you hunt. But I've always been... I've just recently got into shooting suppressed. I will not ever not shoot suppressed anymore. Although I'm learning more talking to you guys about muzzle brakes. But you inevitably get into that as soon as you start getting into using suppressors. You know, it's a very. Common thing to get the threaded muzzle brake like Huxworks has like their standard threaded thing and you thread the suppressor onto that and I think it's what's the dead down wind I think those guys have like their whole muzzle brake solution so it's a common thing and so it just naturally makes me think is it to shoot suppressed and unsuppressed or is it just a convenient way to attach the suppressor to the firearm, you know.

SRS (39:48), Now, those guys, Kalen and those guys from modern day sniper, they were pretty big proponents of direct thread. You know, they don't like the. So let's talk about that, actually, like, I don't know if you have an opinion on that, but, know, I was surprised that they were just like, nope, direct thread right on the thing. Put a little bit of Loctite in your good. I was like, whoa, OK.

SRS (40:38), It adds a little bit of simplicity to it. The direct thread adapters are gonna be a little bit heavier than having, like, we're gonna come out with a new hub adapter, hub adapter direct thread pretty soon that'll have some cool features. Direct thread adds a little bit of simplicity. A lot of cans have direct thread, but that direct thread is just an adapter that threads into the back of the can. With that, you take that adapter and you rock set. Rockset is essentially something that's designed for suppressors mostly because rockset isn't as temperature sensitive as like Loctite. Like red Loctite 600 degrees. Somewhere around there. That's permanent. Yeah, you can get it loose. But once you hit 600 degrees with red Loctite,.

Bryan Koontz (40:56), Mean, that's pretty, red Loctite's permanent, right? Is that, like, that's permanent stuff. Yeah, okay, okay, okay.

SRS (40:56), Gone. It serves no purpose, essentially just evaporates out. Suppressors obviously get way hotter than 600 degrees. So a red Loctite doesn't really do much for a suppressor. That heat dissipates through your barrel also, but having a Rockset direct thread adapter on your can that lets you just direct thread it onto there. And then you're only worried. The direct thread adapter coming unthreaded, which would be the whole can. Because essentially once you rock set it, that really makes it like one. But the cool thing about rock set is you can just soak it in water for about 24 hours and then it just comes loose. It's like a high temp water soluble adhesive. Yeah. Thread locker.

Bryan Koontz (41:38), Okay. Okay. Interesting. Huh. Yeah, interesting. Okay. Very cool. Yeah, see, these are other things. It's interesting that as more and more states pass laws that allow suppressor hunting, this is happening very rapidly right now. It used to be, not very many years ago, you couldn't hunt with a suppressor anywhere. And it's really interesting. Several years ago, went to. The Ewha show in Nuremberg. It's like the big shot show of Europe. And one of the things I took away from that was their suppressor laws. And what I learned is in Germany, apparently years ago, a bunch of citizens got together and sued the government for hearing loss. And they're like, you know, we can't use suppressors to hunt.

SRS (42:23), Mm-hmm.

Bryan Koontz (42:46), But we're going deaf and so now it's required that you have to use a suppressor to hunt.

SRS (42:51), Yeah, there's a bunch of European countries that you're required to use a suppressor. It's like the complete opposite of here. I just spoke to Rob Gearing in the UK. They're going to make it so you don't need a text stamp. Yeah, it's going to be in the UK because they support that. You know, just stay quiet.

Bryan Koontz (42:54), Yes. Right?

Bryan Koontz (43:04), Really? There's some rumors about the ATF, why the ATF is like fast, you know, fast tracking all of the approvals now that we're about to get rid of the tax stamp as well. So it's sort of a money grab. I don't know. Have you guys heard anything about that? Like what's? Obviously. It's so weird. Like, why do we have it? Like, what are we going to? Well, I guess with the recent assassination attempt to Trump.

SRS (43:21), I'd love if they got rid of it, but I don't know. Who knows? It's the government. Turnaround time's nothing now.

Bryan Koontz (43:33), But, you know, it's like, come on guys, like what, the benefits of using it for hunting, we all know, like it's so amazing and for hearing and everything else, right? Why in the world is it this controlled? So, I don't know. Money, yeah, yeah, you're right about that, Zach, that's right. Someone's got a money grab somewhere, that's right. Yeah. Well, listen guys, this is a great talk.

SRS (43:50), Money? Yeah, money.

Bryan Koontz (44:02), I can sit here and talk to you guys all day long about shooting and cool stuff. I you guys are lucky that you have this business together that is, you know, in something that you both are very passionate about hunting and shooting. It's, you know, when I when I run into people that are like anti gun and like they don't get it right. I'm like, dude, like there are so many people like you guys. Right. This is literally your livelihood and also your passion. It's just so cool to see that you guys have come together and have built this business. You know, I mean, Ken from, you know, from when you were in a dark period and there, you know, like all the things that that grew out of that. And then you've, know, you have a friend in Zach that that knows how to make everything that's in your head and and the road map that you have in front of you. It's super cool. And, know, I know. Trust me, from starting a business, I know sometimes you want to beat your brains out against the wall and there's things that don't go your way and all that. it's very cool to see what you guys are building.

SRS (45:16), We appreciate it. Yeah, thank.

Bryan Koontz (45:18), Yeah, definitely. Well, I look forward to talking more and I'm super stoked to have met you both. And, you know, I look forward to seeing what's next.

SRS (45:29), Yeah, we're looking forward to see how being on Guidefitter works out for us too. Think we already got a bunch of people that are opting in on there.

Bryan Koontz (45:34), Yeah, yeah. That's right. Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, just to plug to plug you guys, you know, if you're listening to this, your guide fitter member, you know, join, jump in, opt in to salmon rivers program. And, you know, I know that there are a lot of people that don't really understand a lot of what we even talked about today, right, like muzzle brakes and suppress shooting and, you. Tripod shooting and like it's a whole new world for many many people I know because I grew I grew up in the East Coast and At the shooting school there were a couple guys actually from the town almost where I grew up McConnellsburg, Pennsylvania They were there. I don't know if you saw those guys. They they own a construction business that were there You know and and it's just different, you know when you when you come out West and you meet guys like. You learn so much and there's just so much that you don't know when you're a Pennsylvania whitetail hunter that shoots maybe 150 yards max, you know, and then you come out and you come out West and it's like, if you can't hit 450 yards, like, what are you doing, bro, you know, and so my point in all of this is there are people like you that I know would be more than willing to share what you know with folks. Who want to learn, they wanna get into long range shooting, know how to harvest animals ethically, and just have fun, just shooting. When you ring that steel at 1 ,100 yards, that's pretty freaking amazing. And they don't know how to do it. Just even the concept of you guys saying, you started off saying, we really wanna promote tripod shooting from manufactured rifles. There are a lot of people that are listening to this that are probably like, I don't even know what that means. What does that even mean? And I bet you guys would be more than willing to spend time talking to people as you're pursuing your business and your passion with all of this kind of stuff. I think it's really good. I think.

SRS (47:46), Yeah, Zach sees me walking around the shop all the time. I can't talk on the phone and not walk. So I just walk circles and pace in the shop while I'm talking to people, waving my hands around talking about shooting off tripods, you know, like, you set it up like this and you can shoot better seated. Like he's a crazy person.

Bryan Koontz (48:04), How many employees do you guys have now? Is it three of you or it ten?

SRS (48:09), We just added a couple guys. It's me and Zach. Think we're at six with one or two part-time guys. Yeah, some around there.

Bryan Koontz (48:15), Nice. Keep it as small as you can. That's my advice. As small as you can for as long as you can. I mean, we have a great crew at Guidefitter. We really do. Like, an amazing crew. You know, it's, yeah. So keep it as small as you can as long as you can. That's my advice. Awesome, guys. Well, thank you for talking to me today. And we'll get this decked up and posted up to Guidefitter. But...

SRS (48:22), Yeah, I agree.

Bryan Koontz (48:43), You know, I look forward to seeing your journey and where you guys take the business. And I learned so much on that shooting school. I can't even tell you. Brian and I pointing to his office over here. We still talk about how much we learned and I'm excited to do another one. Just, you know, it's like, wow, you just I think the school and the lessons you learn are great. But the people you hang out. Are kind of an unexpected benefit of the whole thing, like meeting you and all the things and just the little side ideas and bits of wisdom and all the things and just sort of the, I don't know, like the common thread that we all had from being there. It's super cool. Hopefully we can do that again soon. All right, guys. Hey, take care. Thank you again for all of this. And yeah.

SRS (49:32), Yeah, definitely.

Bryan Koontz (49:39), Look forward to talking again.

SRS (49:42), You as well, Brian. Thank you. Thanks.