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Smith and Wesson Museum and Factory Tour

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2100 Roosevelt Ave

Springfield, MA 01104

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Email reply to factory tour: We would like to thank you for your e-mail and for contacting Smith & Wesson / Thompson Center. I am sorry we no longer allow factory tours. Due to the nature of our business Smith & Wesson does not offer factory tours to the public.

My husband and I went to the Smith and Wesson factory and Museum tour while in Massachusetts. I have to say that these were some of the nicest, most accommodating professionals I've ever met. Although we had intended to visit the location, my husband didn't know you had to make an appointment to have a volunteer give you a tour of the actual gun factory. But when we told them our situation that we would only be in Springfield for 24 hours, they made room for us to tour the next day. This was quite the tour and the museum is pretty interesting as well. We also had the best tour guide, Ray, who had worked at the factory for some 30 years then came back as a tour guide. You actually get to see every step of the gun making process in their HUGE warehouse. It was pretty amazing.

A special Marquee welcome from Smith and Wesson to us.

Called Smith and Wesson today since I was in the area. I was informed they do not have tours

Never took the official tour but I used to be a vendor to S&W and got to see most of it. Amazing to see the work and craftsmanship behind such fine working machinery. Everyone that I met was extremely nice, humble and proud of what they do. You will get to see how they hand carve the custom revolver etching. Just amazing. I also suggest visiting the Springfield Armory Museum like 10 minutes away. Funny story, a co worker once tried to take a scrap piece of a loading cylinder. The employee escorting us a while later sat down in front of us and said," you know you're not leaving with that right? Not even for a friend." He said.

Called Smith & Wesson customer service. Mark was very courteous and knowledgeable. He solved my problem in mere minutes and is sending replacement parts, at no cost to me. This is a great company. I have owned their products for almost sixty years.

My family and I have several Smith and Wesson Performance Center weapons. I have had zero problems with any of the pistols or rifle and would highly recommend the Performance Center.

I just bought a performance center 1911 from a Massachusetts dealer 1 week ago. Out of the box, the gun failed and refused to go back into battery. What a piece of junk!!! And to make matters worse, customer service which just received the gun said it'll take 5 weeks to have the brand new gun repaired!!! Don't buy smith and Wesson products!! Junk junk junk!! Go with h&k, sig, or colt!

they suck treat there temps like shit i talk to one and he said he been a temp for 2 years getting paid $10 im and the building was cold it would suck to work there im not buying there guns

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This looks like fun... the S&W Factory Tour

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Video from a few years ago, touring the S&W factory in Springfield, Mass:  

Hey M, Way Kool! For any that would head up to Springfield. Budget a week. Springfield is a small town with three Great Attractions. The Indian Motorcycle Museum. Springfield Armory. The S&W Facility. HAVE FUN! Later, Mark  

Don't S&W have a facility and Range in Maybe Houlton, Maine?  

Hey D Man, That may be? Last time I was there, they had the Indoor Range right in front/beside? the Factory. Had just hosted the IDPA WINTER NATIONALS .... 10? 12? yrs back? The Springfield Museum is FANTASTIK! The Indian Motorcycle Museum is small, but very interesting....(I ran a '48 Chief for 20yrs) Later, Mark  

It's interesting to compare S&W's factory to SIG's operation in New Hampshire: Automation is remarkable in this light manufacturing... Precision and repeatability. This further points to the value of our collectible S&W revolvers - which embody the hand work and precision of some very experienced gunsmiths. They literally don't make 'em like that anymore...  

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Perm: Lord of the Northern Urals

Perm. Sergei Gribushin House. Built at turn of 20th century by Alexander Turchasov. Referred to in Boris Pasternak's Doctor Zhivago as the "house with statues". August 23, 1999

Located just on the European side of the Ural Mountains, the metropolis of Perm is both an industrial powerhouse and one of Russia’s cultural centers. The main part of the city extends for miles along the high east bank of the Kama River.

In summer 1909, the Russian photographer and chemist Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky made his first trip to Perm as part of his project to document the diversity of the Russian Empire in the early 20th century. Prokudin-Gorsky’s panoramas of Perm included detailed vistas of the riverfront. My first visit to the Perm region occurred nine decades late, in the summer of 1999. Return trips ln 2014 and 2017 revealed a city in the midst of a building boom.

View up left bank of Kama River (taken from railroad bridge). Beneath the smoke plume: bell tower & Cathedral of the Transfiguration. Smoke is multicolored because of motion during the three sequential exposures of the negative. Summer 1909

A history entertwined with industry

The name “Perm” (apparently derived from Finno-Ugric words pera ma, meaning "distant land") is documented as early as the 12th-century chronicle “Tale of Bygone Years”. At that time "Perm" was variously used to include territory in the northern Urals that was nominally controlled by the economic power of Novgorod, whose hunters and traders reaped the bounty of its valuable furs.    

Bell tower of the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Savior. June 15, 2014

The settlement of Perm, however, originated in the early 18th century as part of the quest by Peter the Great to exploit the vast ore deposits of the Ural Mountains. These raw materials provided secure sources of essential industrial-grade metals needed above all for the army.

As with other Urals towns such as Yekaterinburg , the guiding force in developing this area was Vasily Tatishchev (1686-1750), one of Russia's early professional historians. A scholar with a gift for practical activity, Tatishchev had boundless admiration for Peter the Great and was an influential proponent of the central role of autocrat and state in Russian history, of the view that Russians are a "state people."

Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Savior, northwest view. August 23, 1999

During the 1720s, Tatishchev established settlements at mines, smelters, and metal-working plants throughout the Ural Mountains. In 1720, he chose the 17th-century village of Egoshikha, located near the small Egoshikha River, a tributary of the Kama. With nearby sources of copper ore, dense forests and ample water supplies, the site was considered ideal for a large smelter. The project was entrusted to Georg Wilhelm Henning (de Gennin; 1676-1750), a military engineer of German origins who worked closely with Tatishchev. 

Construction began on the main Egoshikha factory on May 4, 1723, which is considered the city’s founding date. The name “Perm” was officially adopted only in 1781 after a command by Catherine the Great that transformed the large factory settlement into an administrative center for the Urals.          

Meshkov House, main facade. August 23, 1999

Since its origins, Perm has been associated with heavy industry, and by the 1860s it became one of the most important arms producing areas in Russia. The cannon works at Motovilikha — a factory town founded in the 18th century near the copper​ plant at Egoshikha — became a key component in the Russian military-industrial complex. 

A transport hub

View of central Perm from City Hills. In distant background from left: minaret of Main Mosque, bell tower of Trinity Cathedral. Center: Transfiguration Cathedral. Center far right: side & back of Meshkov House. All buildings linked by Monastery Street. Summer 1909.

Because of its favorable location within the Volga River basin, Perm during the 19th century developed into a transportation center for salt and other minerals, ​as well as ​metal ore​ and the products of metal factories throughout the western Ural Mountains. In 1846, regular steamboat service appeared on the Kama.

In 1863, Perm was included in the main Siberian highway, and in 1878, construction was completed on the first phase of the Urals Railroad from Perm to Ekaterinburg, part of a railroad construction boom that culminated in the early 20th century with the completion of the TransSiberian Railway. Perm’s growth in the 19th century was reflected in Prokudin-Gorsky’s overviews of the central city, with its belching smokestacks.

Meshkov House, view from Monastery (formerly Ordzhonikidze) Street. June 15, 2014

Distinctive landmarks

Among the landmarks in his photographs is the Cathedral of the Transfiguration of the Savior, overlooking the Kama. The shrine was originally part of the Transfiguration Monastery, founded in 1560 by the Stroganovs for their settlement up the Kama River at Pyskor. In 1781, the monastery moved to Perm, recently elevated to the status of town and the seat of a diocese. Begun at the end of the 18th century, construction of the Perm cathedral lasted until 1819. Thereafter, work began on ​its majestic neoclassical bell tower, designed by Ivan Sviyazev and finished in 1832.        

Bell tower of Trinity Cathedral on Sludka Hill. June 15, 2014

Much of Perm burned during a fire in 1842, but the town quickly recovered. During the half century before the First World War, rapid growth led to the construction of brick buildings in eclectic ornamental styles.

Trinity Cathedral, southeast view. June 15, 2014

Despite sweeping changes in the century following Prokudin-Gorsky’s visit, many of the buildings captured in his photographs remain, Prominent among them are the Ascension-St. Feodosy Church (1903-10) and the Trinity Cathedral (1846-49).

Main mosque & minaret. August 22, 1999 11.

One of the most distinctive landmarks in his panoramas is the towering minaret of Perm’s main mosque, endowed by local merchants and designed in a Moorish style by Aleksandr Ozhegov. Completed in 1903, its tall minaret soars above wooden houses and century-old brick buildings in what was once a Tatar district. The area is now overshadowed by a skyscraper apartment complex and by the nearby office tower of energy giant Lukoil.

Main moscue & minaret in evening light. August 23, 1999.

Civil war prize

Like other industrial and railroad towns in the Urals, Perm was hotly contested during the Russian Civil War. For a few months, it appeared that Admiral Alexander Kolchak's White forces, which captured Perm on Christmas Eve in 1918, would prevail in their drive westward. Yet the energetic strategy of the Red commanders such as Mikhail Frunze and Vasily Bliukher drove Kolchak back from Perm and the Urals in what proved to be a disastrous retreat for White forces. In a further twist of fate, the victorious Red commander Bliukher fell victim to Stalin's purges in 1938. Perm during the Civil War is generally considered to be portrayed under the name “Yuriatin” in Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago .

Perm old & new. Late 19th-century house, Monastery Street 83. Right: Lukoil Building. June 15, 2014

 Despite extensive damage in the wake of the Civil War, Perm regained its industrial power in the 1930s. In March 1940 the city was renamed Molotov in honor of Vyacheslav Molotov (1890-1986), a member of Stalin’s inner circle. The name “Perm” was restored in October 1957 in the wake of Nikita Khrushchev’s campaign of de-Stalinization.          

With slightly over a million inhabitants, Perm belongs to a cluster of cities (Krasnoyarsk, Voronezh, Ufa) that falls just under Russia’s top 10. The city's economy rests on the viability of local industry, which includes not only metal working and engine production but also major oil refineries and chemical plants.

Prokudin-Gorsky’s photographs of Perm superbly convey the sense of this bustling industrial and transportation nexus.

View of Kama River northwest from Transfiguration Cathedral. August 21, 1999

In the early 20th century the Russian photographer Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky devised a complex process for color photography. Between 1903 and 1916 he traveled through the Russian Empire and took over 2,000 photographs with the process, which involved three exposures on a glass plate. In August 1918, he left Russia and ultimately resettled in France with a large part of his collection of glass negatives. After his death in Paris in 1944, his heirs sold the collection to the Library of Congress. In the early 21st century the Library digitized the Prokudin-Gorsky Collection and made it freely available to the global public. A number of Russian websites now have versions of the collection. In 1986 the architectural historian and photographer William Brumfield organized the first exhibit of Prokudin-Gorsky photographs at the Library of Congress. Over a period of work in Russia beginning in 1970, Brumfield has photographed most of the sites visited by Prokudin-Gorsky. This series of articles will juxtapose Prokudin-Gorsky’s views of architectural monuments with photographs taken by Brumfield decades later.

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Middleswarth potato chip factory – middleburg pa, get 'em where they make 'em, retro roadmap writeup.

Love potato chips like Mod Betty does? Go to where they make'em!

Middleswarth Potato Chips was founded in 1942, and have had their factory at this location since 1961.

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Perm vodka distillery "PermAlko" excursion Vodka... probably there is no stronger Russian cliche than the country's most adored drink. Ever since the spirit appeared over a millenium ago, there has been a quarrel between the Russians and the Polish about who invented vodka first. Some say that the Polish started producing vodka using potato whereas the Russians used grain. Nevertheless, it is a fact that nowhere in the world more vodka is produced and consumed than in Russia. There are over a thousand registered brands of vodka in Russia, not taking into account the probably even larger number of "samagon" - the notorious home-made version, which is illegally sold everywhere. Although, during its long history of consumption, vodka has probably brought as much grief (alcoholism) as it brought joy, it has undeniniably integrated with Russian culture in many ways. Even today, no celebration goes without it... There are a few leading distilleries in Russia of which PermAlko, Perm's largest distillery, is one. Apart from local brands such as "Great Perm", "Old Ural", "Permskiy Krai", "Dimidovskaya" and "Permskaya Luxe", PermAlko also produces vodka for export among which are "Moskovskaya", "Smirnoff" and "Stolichnaya". The factory started producing vodka since 1895. Later, PermAlko also started producing a number of variations on plain vodka, for example: cranberry vodka, honey vodka, peppered vodka and several balzams. Balzam is a spirit varying from 25 to 50 percent alcohol, which is made using a large number of herbs and spices as a main ingredient for taste. During the 2-hour excursion at PermAlko, you are told about the factory and its products. The guide explains you about the distillation process of vodka - from water, sugar and grain until the bottled product - as he/she takes you past the different sections of the distillery. At the end of the tour, you are invited to the 'tasting room' to sense the flavours and aromas of different vodkas. There, in the form of a small lunch, you will be offered the typical snacks that Russians traditionally take with consuming vodka. And naturally you will not leave the distillery without a big souvenir...! Excursion possible Monday-Thursday, apart from national holidays PermAlko excursion Persons 1 2 3 4 5 6 Duration: 2 hours 212 122 104 86 76 70 Prices p.p. in euro (€), subject to change       Back to excursion page