Industry News: Cor-Bon Ammo Sold

According to a Farnam's Quips post yesterday, Cor-Bon Ammunition of Sturgis, SD has been sold to a new ownership group. Founder and CEO Peter Pi and his family will no longer be affiliated with the company.

Cor-Bon ammunition has been a family-owned company since its inception. The only CEO the company ever had was Peter Pi, my good friend and colleague. I was just on the phone with him yesterday.

At the end of 2017, Cor-Bon was sold to new owners. The Pi family is no longer involved!

I don’t know any of the details of the sale, and I know nothing about the new owners other than that they are new to the ammunition industry. I’m looking forward to meeting them at the SHOT Show later this month.

Right now, nothing is being produced at the Cor-Bon factory in Sturgis, SD, and no one can tell me when production will be resumed, nor what products will be retained and what will be dropped.

John Farnam goes on to report that Peter Pi's oldest son Peter is starting his own ammunition company called Defiant Munitions. They expect to be shipping by mid-year 2018.

I've never used Cor-Bon ammo but it has always had great recommendations from people I know and trust like Marty Hayes and Michael Bane.

John Farnam's Observations On Coatings And Acidic Sweat

If you don't subscribe to Farnam's Quips then you are missing out on a lot of good information and astute observations.

Today's edition is no exception. In it John talks about the second day of the gun writer's conference being held at Gunsite. The day, from what I can tell, was devoted to coatings and metal treatments for firearms among other things.

I'll let John tell what he learned about coatings and metal treatments:

Observations:

All metal treatments, even high-tech ones, have “side-effects.” Nothing is perfect!

For external guns surfaces, polymer is a good choice. Robar’s version is Roguard or Poly-T-Two. Both are very acceptable, and can be an any color.

Also suitable for external surfaces is QPQ, otherwise known as Tennifer or Melonite. Very hard. Also very suitable for rifle bores. However, it is so hard that subsequent machining is nearly impossible!

For internal parts, NP3 is the way to go. NP3 has integral teflon, which gives it natural lubricity. However, it is slick and thus not the best choice for slides. And, it has a silver/grey color. Other colors are not possible.

“Hard chrome” plating is obsolete. There are superior choices for surface treatment today. Hard-chrome barrels are notoriously inaccurate, because of inherent unevenness of the plating.

Nickel plating is also mostly obsolete. It is of interest only by those who want “shiny” guns.

Ceramic coating (Cerakoat) has excellent high-heat tolerance and are thus suitable for some parts of full-auto guns. However, ceramic has no inherent lubricity.

Smoking and coffee-drinking lowers blood PH, making bodily fluids, particularly sweat, acidic and thus corrosive to pistols worn close to the skin. Smokers and coffee-drinkers typically have to deal with rusty guns, even in dry climates! They will particularly benefit from modern, high-tech metal treatments.

While I don't smoke and never have I do drink coffee. I didn't realize that coffee drinking would make sweat acidic. Actually, I never thought about it one way or another but it make sense that acidic sweat is more corrosive to handguns.

If you want to subscribe to Farnam's Quips, shoot John an email at dtiquips@clouds.com .