Does anyone here genuinely know approximately how much it costs to develop a firearm?

[SofaGeorge]

I work in public relations and marketing. During my career, I've launched more than 100 products... almost all in the health supplement or infomercial sector. This gives me a modest amount of insight into manufacture, R&D, etc... for product development in general... but it doesn't remotely let me understand what it takes to develope a firearm.

Does anyone here have any background in manufacture or development of firearms? And if so - can you ball park any costs related to developing a prototype?

I know this can be all over the board. We once developed a new bike tire for Wal-Mart... and it cost us $2 million to get our first two tires made. Similarly, we once marketed a flashlight and because it was able to use existing machinery... it only cost $10,000 to get a sample product run of 500 made... and that included packaging.

I've always had an idea for a simple drilling I would like to design that uses two 12 gauge barrels with a 308 third barrel... and the buttstock held inserts that allowed the 308 to be converted to 22lr and the 12 gauge to either 223 or 20 gauge (or whatever other choice a user would make of adapter.)

The thing I don't have a clue about is what it would really cost to get to:

1: A prototype
2: A factory set up

Typically, seed investors and Angel investors will come in on projects we can do under $250,000. Is it feasable to get something like this designed and brought to factory set up on that kind of budget?

And please... don't laugh. I'm being as upfront as possible that I have ZERO experience in this end of the retail market for new product development. I design vitamin supplements, and market FDA approved drugs and medical devices... and place consumer products in Big Box distribution. I've NEVER tried to get a firearm prototype produced and am only in the begining phase of even trying to see if this is doable.

It just seems to me that drillings were once very popular firearms, and for the simple reason that so many great semi-autos came to markt after the design of the M1... and their exhorbitant expense... they pretty much dropped off the map. While some manufactures do make combo rifles... I know that I personally would much rather have a drilling... and I think there is a market out there for them.

Can anyone provide me with any investigational leads for looking into this deeper? Or give me their background experience in what it took their company to develop a prototype?

[caoboy]

So a drilling is a type of long gun?

[CSACANNONEER]

I'd suggest doing a little more market research first. It sounds like a real nitch gun that would not take today's market by storm. Is the nitch big enough? That's for you to determine. The interchangeable multi barrel thing sounds like it'll take some serious R&D to make it safe and be able to have close to repeatable zeros. I ould suggest looking for an 07FFL who has the proper equipment and knowledge and asking for an approximate bid on the project.

[mjsweims]

Austrian gunmakers are still making drillings, but this is a highly custom market. Try contacting some of them, or their trade delegation in the US

[Peter.Steele]

So a drilling is a type of long gun?

3 barrels. Usually 2 SG / 1 rifle. "Drei" in German means 3, "drilling" is an anglicization.

[G-forceJunkie]

I agree with CSA, I don't see the market being there. But since you asked, I think the costs would be reasonable. You are not re-inventing the wheel, instead reproducing something that could be made on 100 year old machines. The vast bulk of a firearm is steel machined with typical machine shop equiptment and practices. With the exception of rifeling a barrel, no special equiptment would need to be made or developed. Barrels can be bought as blanks so you really don't need to riffle your own barrels. Unlike tires or plastic items that require complex and expensive molds, machining is done with raw blocks of steel that is cheap. Your greater expenses I think would be in the design phase. You would need to have a pretty firm idea of what you wanted to end up with, then let the engineers and machinist do their thing. Once you have what you want, its not too expensive to prototype out of solid material. Later, once the design is finalized, cost cutting/ease of manufacturing measures could be looked into such as forging parts to rough shape, MIM, etc.

[Norsemen308]

right now as a Gun manufactor entering the market its a GREAT time, and a HORRIBLE TIME, the market is highly saturated, its a buyer's market, not a seller's. There is 25 other manufactures making the same style gun, look at glock... they revolutionized the industry 30 years ago... now sig, s&w, taurus, springfield, rugar? and i know other's have the same striker fire style gun..

Personally i dont know of a nitch to fill in the industry, if you look in any direction theres atleast 3 manufactors that make that style gun..

DONT EVEN look at ar's, ak's, if you were to find a nitch the only thing I could see is picking up where other manufactures wont... building CA legal products, CA okay galil's that you can pick up, or mp5's, CALI is #1 gun buying state next to TEXAS..... thats a strong pull right there... if you could pull something like that, that would be a sizable nitch...... But its gonna be a uphill battle.

[SofaGeorge]

First step of market research is always cost of entry. Second step is size of market.

Then a SWOT to see if it is even worth trying.

Next, if you have an original concept you look at barriers of entry for competition. (I'm not kidding when I say I've launched products in the health supplement arena only to see 40 knockoffs within 2 months.)

It's much much harder to do anything today than it was 20 years ago. Now sku is so owned by just a few major corporations there almost isn't even a point in trying.

I'm not trying to launch a new firearm. I'm simply trying to do the first steps of research to see if it would even be feasible to try to produce a product for a niche market.

There are so many restrictions tieing up importation that actually its moot even asking. Even if I had a CPU of $15... it'd be a headache.

[CRTguns]

(rumored...)
Cost Magpul upwards of $250,000 for the molds and development of the PLASTICS on the masada, later becoming the ACR.

Today, there's no real "development (very little anyway) most "new" guns are rehashed old guns with tactical rails and new high performance finishes.

Something the world NEEDS- a more powerful rimfire to skirt the laws. You make a big rimfire that makes in excess of centerfire pistol performance, anywhere from a 6mm-up to maybe a 30 cal , you'd have something.

[orangeusa]

There are exceptions - ignore AR's for the moment - look at the CCW market - Ruger hit it hard with the LCR/LCP combination. Kahr has been there for a while. Beretta is rolling out the Nano. These are all completely new designs.

To OP, Ruger has had quite a few articles written about it and the manhours it took to get the LCR to fruition.

.

[7x57]

It just seems to me that drillings were once very popular firearms, and for the simple reason that so many great semi-autos came to markt after the design of the M1... and their exhorbitant expense... they pretty much dropped off the map. While some manufactures do make combo rifles... I know that I personally would much rather have a drilling... and I think there is a market out there for them.

Were they ever popular in the US? My understanding is that drillings and other combination guns (nice hand-made vierling, anyone?) were popular in certain European countries, mostly German-speaking, which had strict limits on how many guns one could own, or sometimes a point system where a three-barreled long gun counted as fewer points than, say, a double-barreled shotgun and a rifle. In other words, they were just as much rules-cheats and just as little representative of the true market desire as all the 18.5" barreled shotguns and 16.5" barreled rifles in the US--in most cases those aren't really the barrel length that would be made without severe market distortion from the NFA. In the US, where gun control has never had such limits except in certain corner cases (such as Chicago playing chicken with SCOTUS by saying you can have *one* handgun, neener neener neener), I think generally the market chose, um, "einlings" because a rifle and a shotgun are lighter and better guns for their respective purposes than the combination gun can be.

The other thing is that so far as I know they were/are mainly a handmade proposition, pricing them out of the mass market, though maybe that isn't *necessary*. A two-smoothbore/one-rifle barrel drilling presumably doesn't require the kind of barrel regulation that makes a double rifle not a suitable production gun.

I'd be glad to be education otherwise, but that was my understanding, and it makes me suspect the market is both small and extremely demanding in terms of fit-and-finish. I would not want to start a double-rifle business in which, say, Holland & Holland and Rigby were my major competitors, because their name would be worth more than God's Own Perfect Rifle that didn't have that kind of name. Is the drilling market the same?

7x57

[SofaGeorge]

It's actually getting very interesting seeing the limitations on just even trying to get bids on prototypes. Because there are so many import/export regulatons, so many considerations re materials, etc... so far not one single contract manufacturer (these are the companies in India, China, etc.. that take bids on new toasters... lamps, etc...) will even give a bid on a firearm design.

It's a topic completely scratched off the list.

[zhyla]

Seems like the easiest path to a prototype would be to have a custom gun made by someone who specializes in that sort of thing. I read an article a while back on a guy who builds double barrel rifles for a living. Probably costs $10k-ish.

I'd be more concerned about your marginal cost. 3 barrels is going to be hard to get right. Your competition is existing companies selling a double barrel shotgun and a rifle for a fraction of what you can sell a drilling for.