This is the second part of the Remington Tour. This is the Ilion, Ny plant in Herkimer Co. Let me start by sharing some statistical information on the area, the employees and the plant itself.

The Ilion plant was founded in 1816 and currently occupies 34 acres within Ilion which is located in Herkimer County, NY. Total employees at the Ilion plant numbers 1300 with 100 being salaried and 1200 union employees. Remington is the largest employer in the county. The plant takes up 1,000,000 square feet of floor space. Remington runs a 5–7 day shift with a total of three shifts daily. This is a vertically integrated facility utilizing 3000 machine tools and 3700 pieces of equipment. Also uses a State of the art cold forged barrel process.

Early view of the Remington plant showing the Erie canal running beside the plant. Today it’s a driveway by the front entrance to the plant. Underneath the road running a long distance is the rifle range.

The current guns manufactured at the Ilion plant:

Bolt action M700
Pump action M870
Pump action rifle M7600
Autoloading shotguns M1100, M V3, M 1187
.22 Rimfire rifles 552/572
Police
DOD
Marlin Lever action production line

In the third installment at the Huntsville plant I’ll list the guns made there.

The group chosen for the tour of all of Remington’s production facilities was kept very small with approx 10 writers and editors attending. I can understand why the group was kept small we had a million square feet to cover in one day and all of the activities in those departments to photograph and ask questions about.

First let’s take a look at the Remington armorer’s school. Local, state and federal agencies have been sending officers to this school for many years. The wall in the classroom contains a cork board with department patches from hundreds of agencies that have attended the school.

One from my PD.

Each student has a workstation with supplied gunsmith tools, rifles and shotguns to perform repairs on. Multiple instructors work the classroom and assist the students with the repairs.

Weapons used in the armorers school.

Gunsmith tools for each student.

Display trigger for the study of function and repair.

Instructors station

Complete workstation

Next we moved on to the Marlin assembly area. You’ll notice the walnut buttstocks have orange/yellow spray paint on them. The reason for this is the workers use defective or damaged stocks so the new ones that are shipped out with the completed gun isn’t damaged in the assembly process.

Temporary stock

Limited edition Marlin engraved with a gold inlaid cowboy.

A lever action Marlin blank below and a nearly finished receiver pictured at the top.

A lever action (red) template for the first cuts making it ready for the CNC machine.

The left side of the limited edition Marlin lever action

Almost completed Marlin 30-30s. The rifle is waiting to have the defective buttstock exchanged for the one that it will ship with.

defective work stock removed waiting on the new stock to be installed.

This completes part two. Tomorrow I’ll have part three with the remainder of the Ilion plant. This will show the shotgun and Model 700 lines. The last part will post Friday with the Hunstville plant tour.