History

ZTOL Precision Barrels are manufactured by Tri-State Precision, at the Northfield, Massachusetts facility.

Tri-State is a 50+ year old company founded by Frank and Elsie Bordner in the 60’s. Frank Bordner worked for a number of companies prior to starting Tri-State as specialist in precision manufacturing and grinding. Prior to staring the company he excelled as the engineer who developed production manufacturing of the guidance systems (gyros) for heat seeking missiles.

His notable efforts to the firearms industry by Tri-State were the creation of fixtures and tooling for companies such as Sturm Ruger and Smith & Wesson.

Production manufacturing of rifle barrels is a departure from the past business efforts of the company.

For the previous decades Tri-State was a high precision R&D and custom projects shop specializing in difficult machining and welding operations. Tri-State designed and then fabricate nuclear filtration systems, complex pressure vessels for high tech companies and custom machinery for the paper and plastics industry.

In the 1990’s company engineers designed the product line of Alpine Valve Reseaters. This equipment repaired leaking gate and globe valves without removal the valve from the piping installation. This equipment is purchased by the nuclear, power generation and shipping industries.

The decision to change focus from past operations to production manufacture of competition AR 15 rifle barrels came in 2012. From that time to early 2016 there was a gradual transformation in addition of specialized equipment and construction of our own designed manufacturing platforms.

In March of 2016, we dedicated full time to completing our research and development cycle of our rifle barrel manufacturing processes.

We received out Federal Firearms License from the BATF in October 2016.

Sales of our rifle barrels for the popular AR 15 platform begins in the Spring of 2017.