How Arrows Are Made - exclusive EASTON Factory Tour

So Dan Hasn't been to easton in what 10 years? Or longer 10 years longer. Yeah, and what'd you do yesterday factory tour? What'd you think? You finally let me into the part of the building. I've been wanting to see forever Uh, my mind was blown the dungeon the carbon dungeon. Yeah, there you go. We call that process Accucarbon first aluminum alloy 1938. Yep. That's crazy Yep, it's still always has my interest. I mean killed more elk with an fmj than any arrow. Yep I've been pretty partial to the parallel pros the last couple years, but dude, it's been over 10 years I'm excited and riley's a history buff, dude. You're gonna enjoy this museum. Oh, yeah, we're here for it Yeah, take it to aluminum So I might have to put some headphones in because it gets kind of loud back out there But um, you'll be able to hear me talking about our process and how the aluminum is made how it starts in a coil Gets to a tube and either makes its way inside of an x10 parallel pro or it stays in aluminum shaft So yeah, we'll go there But this is how it all starts out So we're going to take one of these steel core one of these aluminum coils And we're going to put it On this guy so you can see it's going to get put on this And the next thing it's going to do is get fed through these little rollers So after it's fed on this hopper, it's going to roll through here and what we're going to do They're just doing some maintenance on it. This is just all getting Basically put into a tube. It's going to get rolled into like a burrito you could say the next step into that is we're actually We're forming it and it's getting basically it's getting its uniformity its stiffness. It needs uh without a seam Through a process that we have over here and then it's going to get kicked into this big blue box And it's going to get cut and the chopping is about every eight seconds Well, actually it's about every second we get a six foot pole as you can see right here oil of aluminum. Yep Burrito, we're basically passing it down and we're folding it and welding it without a seam. No seam. No seam No seam very proprietary and how we built that. Yeah, we're not going to show you guys that Can't do that. It happened. That's the secret sauce secret sauce Next we're going to go in here. So So you can see these stacks of aluminum that we just made these tubes They're going to get ready to go in these ovens and these ovens are a newman oven So we're going to play around with how soft we can make it and malleable Whenever they go through there, they're going to come through here So they're going to after the annulment they're going to go in these different tanks. So we got an acid bath Yeah, we got an acid bath like a hot water bath. All this does is cleanse it Like a hot tub Yep. Yep Oh, yeah, I wouldn't put your hand in there Not a not a good place to wash your hands. They'll be clean. That's for sure Um after that you're seeing a process right here. They're getting taken out They're going to get ready to go in this tank. The tank's actually closed right now They'll lift that up what that is is molten salt And what that's going to do is lock in those properties those chemical properties that we got for the manufacturing process It's going to allow it to age the aluminum Make it harder essentially. So what we're doing here is cleansing these we're going to get them ready for a next draw cycle Let it hang several hundred degrees Molten salt designed to age the aluminum get it to the the actual property. We need it to for the next stage Let's see what happens here. So there's an iterative process of annealing cleaning swaging And drawing the tube down and basically what it does is lapse they go through a different number through this process And then the salt pot what you just saw is basically heat treated. That's what's happening all through here Basically, the salt pot is to enhance mechanical properties is what we're seeing here. What we've got here. This is rotary straightening We're making sure those tubes of aluminum after they've been welded without a seam they're coming here and they're getting made straight So you see how small That end it started out like that It gets worked into that So this area is what we call the draw bench area what we're doing with that aluminum that we just made and Wedged on the end. We're getting ready to stretch it and expand it. We're going to pull it through a single die It's going to make it grow essentially so You can see the size that he's got right there See, they're not too large He's got to pull it through this die You're going to see it come down And watch how long they get they probably grew a foot in size they just got smaller in diameter First draw second draw third draw fourth. This is what's inside of an x10 That little guy right there So it's going to start out On its first draw it's going to start out this big So that's the tube size. It starts as That is as small as it will finish. So we're taking it from this guy To this guy so aqueous carbon super proprietary We didn't really start showing the carbon side of the factory Seven or eight years ago, I believe maybe nine but uh, we had a lot of people that didn't believe that we're actually making, you know arrows here in the u.s and Greg said unleash the hounds. Let's show them how it's done so This is the aqueous carbon station All right Oh, yeah, you're getting set up Here we go, we got a live one How's it going, man? Going well going well You're good, brother. You're good This is the this is where This is where the magic happens So what we're doing here is we're working with spindle fibers and their own rollers They're going to go through a single die and a single mandrel through here and they're going to come out in a tube so This piece up here. You won't be able to film. It's just super project. You can film this part. Yeah We're just putting them in a good better best we're getting laser engraved work orders on there you can see it firing This is a hopper. We're just feeding the arrows in getting ready for it to go for the next time and It's just uh makes it easier for sorting and stuff So where we're going next, unfortunately, you can't see that's the x10 process And we have content with Dan So we're just gonna do one conversation and you're gonna cover i'm just gonna run through it all man and kind of dive i'll You'll be able to easily split it up with kind of how I transition from one question to the next one It's a seamless process in which carbon gets wrapped over a mandrel instead of around it Um, it creates, you know, a very uniform stiffness in an arrow The coolest part is the part we wanted to film. Yeah that you did not let us but i'm here to tell you I can verify Um, one of the coolest things i've ever seen Um, it's like almost like magic. Yep, and it really is made here in the states