Morgan: So, you’re saying at first Glock was not pleased when your book came out.
JR: That’s right. Until they realized how many more guns they were selling because of it.
M: Tell me more about that.
JR: Well we started with their book…
M: The Armorer’s Manual
JR: … as a base to start from. Because Glock, Inc. teaches an eight-hour Armorer’s Course and over that eight hours there is so much verbal communication injected in addition to what’s in their manual.
M: You’re saying it’s undocumented information.
JR: Undocumented, that’s correct. So we decided to bring that into the foreground so that we would have the complete Armorer’s Course in one resource. And even then, what was our first draft?
Rob: Two hundred pages.
JR: Couple hundred pages, maybe. Then we taught the Armorer’s Course in Front Sight Nevada. And then I took notes for a year about what we needed to put on top of that.
M: So first-hand experience….
JR: Personal experience had a lot to do with it.
M: So you saw a need, because the Armorer’s Course as we know was only available to law enforcement and stocking dealers.
JR: Correct.
M: You’re in the business already. People are asking you questions all the time.
JR: Exactly.
R: We wanted to produce a good reference for the average user who doesn’t have access to those programs.
JR: That’s what it was built for.
M: And then there’s so much more. The whole second half is a real torture test with a brand-new Glock 23. How did you guys dream up something like the cannon shot and stuff like that? It’s crazy.
R: We have a friend who builds cannons.
JR: We didn’t have a helicopter. We talked about getting a helicopter, but it cost way more money to get a helicopter to drop the gun out of so we talked to our friend with a cannon and he goes, “Hell, I can shoot it higher than a helicopter.”
R: And he had a range basically at his house where we got to do the whole thing. Which was great. He just happens to build mortars, so you know.
JR: Yeah, the gun was strapped on top of a bowling ball. That gun is actually still at one of the other guys in PTOOMA, Don Ellis, he still has the gun and he’s a reserve law enforcement officer and he qualifies with that gun every year. That gun, beat up the way it is, bulged barrel and everything and he qualifies with it every year.
M: There’s a hole in the slide where you shot it.
JR: Yeah, where we shot it with a rifle. That test came along because I know a lot of gun-fight statistics show that people are shot in the hand.
M: That’s right.
JR: In the gun hand.
M: Because the bad guy shoots at the threat.
JR: Right. So they’re looking at the gun.
R: So we wanted to see what would happen.
JR: What would happen if you were shot in the gun? Would it still function. It took three shots and it was out. A couple more because we shot a full magazine at it. A couple more and I saw it rip open, and I said, “OK, that gun’s dead.” You see, when we started our Glock torture test, it was pretty funny because we started out with the intention of killing that Glock 23.
M: You started easy and got harder and more brutal.
JR: We had no plans to recover that gun.
R: Our plan was to destroy it. That was the purpose.
JR: Literally to destroy it.
M: It wasn’t a test it was just destruction.
JR: We were going to destroy the gun. What’d it cost us?
R: A thousand dollars.
JR: We had a thousand dollars. Ok, let’s blow up a gun. So, the gun, the ammunition and half a day and we’ll ruin a gun. Let’s do it. That’s how it came around.
M: But it didn’t happen.
JR: We didn’t plan for it to survive. At all.
R: We couldn’t believe it at the end of the day that is was still working.
JR: We had a train conductor friend who had a train. We were going to have him run it over. We took that out because that’s obvious that going to destroy it.
M: Maybe!
JR: So that’s how that all came about.
JR: That’s right. Until they realized how many more guns they were selling because of it.
M: Tell me more about that.
JR: Well we started with their book…
M: The Armorer’s Manual
JR: … as a base to start from. Because Glock, Inc. teaches an eight-hour Armorer’s Course and over that eight hours there is so much verbal communication injected in addition to what’s in their manual.
M: You’re saying it’s undocumented information.
JR: Undocumented, that’s correct. So we decided to bring that into the foreground so that we would have the complete Armorer’s Course in one resource. And even then, what was our first draft?
Rob: Two hundred pages.
JR: Couple hundred pages, maybe. Then we taught the Armorer’s Course in Front Sight Nevada. And then I took notes for a year about what we needed to put on top of that.
M: So first-hand experience….
JR: Personal experience had a lot to do with it.
M: So you saw a need, because the Armorer’s Course as we know was only available to law enforcement and stocking dealers.
JR: Correct.
M: You’re in the business already. People are asking you questions all the time.
JR: Exactly.
R: We wanted to produce a good reference for the average user who doesn’t have access to those programs.
JR: That’s what it was built for.
M: And then there’s so much more. The whole second half is a real torture test with a brand-new Glock 23. How did you guys dream up something like the cannon shot and stuff like that? It’s crazy.
R: We have a friend who builds cannons.
JR: We didn’t have a helicopter. We talked about getting a helicopter, but it cost way more money to get a helicopter to drop the gun out of so we talked to our friend with a cannon and he goes, “Hell, I can shoot it higher than a helicopter.”
R: And he had a range basically at his house where we got to do the whole thing. Which was great. He just happens to build mortars, so you know.
JR: Yeah, the gun was strapped on top of a bowling ball. That gun is actually still at one of the other guys in PTOOMA, Don Ellis, he still has the gun and he’s a reserve law enforcement officer and he qualifies with that gun every year. That gun, beat up the way it is, bulged barrel and everything and he qualifies with it every year.
M: There’s a hole in the slide where you shot it.
JR: Yeah, where we shot it with a rifle. That test came along because I know a lot of gun-fight statistics show that people are shot in the hand.
M: That’s right.
JR: In the gun hand.
M: Because the bad guy shoots at the threat.
JR: Right. So they’re looking at the gun.
R: So we wanted to see what would happen.
JR: What would happen if you were shot in the gun? Would it still function. It took three shots and it was out. A couple more because we shot a full magazine at it. A couple more and I saw it rip open, and I said, “OK, that gun’s dead.” You see, when we started our Glock torture test, it was pretty funny because we started out with the intention of killing that Glock 23.
M: You started easy and got harder and more brutal.
JR: We had no plans to recover that gun.
R: Our plan was to destroy it. That was the purpose.
JR: Literally to destroy it.
M: It wasn’t a test it was just destruction.
JR: We were going to destroy the gun. What’d it cost us?
R: A thousand dollars.
JR: We had a thousand dollars. Ok, let’s blow up a gun. So, the gun, the ammunition and half a day and we’ll ruin a gun. Let’s do it. That’s how it came around.
M: But it didn’t happen.
JR: We didn’t plan for it to survive. At all.
R: We couldn’t believe it at the end of the day that is was still working.
JR: We had a train conductor friend who had a train. We were going to have him run it over. We took that out because that’s obvious that going to destroy it.
M: Maybe!
JR: So that’s how that all came about.
J. R. Shepard
The Complete Glock Reference Guide
I must tell you that I was a little nervous about approaching JR Shepard for the first time. He’s a man who has almost as much history and knowledge of the Glock pistol as Gaston himself. He’s the driving force behind the largest and most-successful Glock business besides Glock, Inc. itself. He’s a teacher, a shooter, an inventor, a businessman and even a television host (as you’ll find out in the interview below). In short, he and his Lone Wolf Distributors are pretty much what keeps Glock, Inc. in business in the US.
JR is also the un-credited mastermind behind the most popular Glock book ever: The Complete Glock Reference Guide. Along with Rob Hansel, Don Ellis, Robert Bland and Paul Muehlhausen, JR brainstormed and wrote the book that has guided countless Glock shooters to successfully customize, modify and repair their favorite pistols without paying a cent to an armorer.
Despite my apprehension, I found this entrepreneur extraordinaire friendly and open to talking about the inception and development of his business and The Complete Glock Reference Guide. It was fun and I found out some important information and heard some hilarious stories from JR and his friend and co-author, Rob Hansel.
Right away, I was amazed to hear that Glock, Inc. was initially very upset about JR’s project.
JR is also the un-credited mastermind behind the most popular Glock book ever: The Complete Glock Reference Guide. Along with Rob Hansel, Don Ellis, Robert Bland and Paul Muehlhausen, JR brainstormed and wrote the book that has guided countless Glock shooters to successfully customize, modify and repair their favorite pistols without paying a cent to an armorer.
Despite my apprehension, I found this entrepreneur extraordinaire friendly and open to talking about the inception and development of his business and The Complete Glock Reference Guide. It was fun and I found out some important information and heard some hilarious stories from JR and his friend and co-author, Rob Hansel.
Right away, I was amazed to hear that Glock, Inc. was initially very upset about JR’s project.
M: Lone Wolf as a business was around before the book, but it gave you the material for the project.
JR: Actually it goes way back before that. I don’t know how far you want to go back but originally I had a tv show in the Northwest, it was called The Sportsman of the Northwest. It was a cable access show that went from north Idaho over to Seattle. We ran weekly shows kind of like Bill and Ted’s wild adventures of shooting. Our motto was, “We’ll go fishin’ when we’re out of ammunition.” We never did any fishing shows. But I ran into a company called Aro-Tek. The Glock was a brand-new gun. And at that time I was a pretty decent shooter in my own way. I mean I made a good representation on the USPSA. I hooked up with a guy at Aro-Tek named Mike Stanley, I got to know the owner of Aro-Tek, Morris Dagley. And the Glock GSSF was just starting and I hooked up with John Westerfield and we helped him out at the first one over in Shelton, Washington. We were at the original GSSF shoots. I know Bob Smith out of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. The next GSSF tournament was going to be at Coeur d’Alene, so I hooked up with a Glock crew, Brian James, etc. So we toured and shot with them promoting Aro-Tek products and launching GSSF. So I’ve seen different things that could be done with the gun from really early on. Actually for the first ten years of the Glock’s life, I was behind the scenes with the Glock guys and Aro-Tek. So that’s basically how we got started. Then I broke off from Aro-Tek, not in direct competition with Morris Dagley, but bringing in other products. I saw that there were a lot of people out there that had good products for the Glock besides just what Aro-Tek offered. There’s a lot of animosity from Glock, Inc. because they feel they built the perfect gun. That’s where it all started. Gaston never appreciated anything that was done; he built the perfect gun and actually took offense when anyone did anything to it. And I’m the kind of that did it. Well, there’s all kinds of other guys. Look at Dale Rhea from GSSF. Ever shoot a tournament with him?
M: No.
JR: See that guy, he takes a grinder to it right there at the match. These guys, they like to experiment. A gun to him is nothing. Like a gun to us was nothing. A thousand bucks, so what. Let’s see what we can do and pull and glean a lot of information from it.
M: So Rob, what was your role in the book project?
R: I’m a technical guy, a software developer by trade. I also shoot. I did a lot of the typesetting and put everything together and build the websites…
JR: Rob was a perfect test subject on the project. He had an armorer’s background from the military.
R: But not on the Glocks.
JR: So he knew nothing about the Glock.
M: A fresh set of eyes.
JR: Yeah, exactly. So Rob would look at it and go, “You know in the military this is how we did these, so we need to expand it in this direction…” Everyone who came to PTOOMA had something to offer. In fact when we had our meeting that’s what we said, “Everyone here at this table brings something different and we can all do this. We can get what’s in here on paper, so we’ll never lack for beer money again.
R: It was kind of a pet project that turned out really well and has been immensely popular.
JR: Actually it goes way back before that. I don’t know how far you want to go back but originally I had a tv show in the Northwest, it was called The Sportsman of the Northwest. It was a cable access show that went from north Idaho over to Seattle. We ran weekly shows kind of like Bill and Ted’s wild adventures of shooting. Our motto was, “We’ll go fishin’ when we’re out of ammunition.” We never did any fishing shows. But I ran into a company called Aro-Tek. The Glock was a brand-new gun. And at that time I was a pretty decent shooter in my own way. I mean I made a good representation on the USPSA. I hooked up with a guy at Aro-Tek named Mike Stanley, I got to know the owner of Aro-Tek, Morris Dagley. And the Glock GSSF was just starting and I hooked up with John Westerfield and we helped him out at the first one over in Shelton, Washington. We were at the original GSSF shoots. I know Bob Smith out of Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. The next GSSF tournament was going to be at Coeur d’Alene, so I hooked up with a Glock crew, Brian James, etc. So we toured and shot with them promoting Aro-Tek products and launching GSSF. So I’ve seen different things that could be done with the gun from really early on. Actually for the first ten years of the Glock’s life, I was behind the scenes with the Glock guys and Aro-Tek. So that’s basically how we got started. Then I broke off from Aro-Tek, not in direct competition with Morris Dagley, but bringing in other products. I saw that there were a lot of people out there that had good products for the Glock besides just what Aro-Tek offered. There’s a lot of animosity from Glock, Inc. because they feel they built the perfect gun. That’s where it all started. Gaston never appreciated anything that was done; he built the perfect gun and actually took offense when anyone did anything to it. And I’m the kind of that did it. Well, there’s all kinds of other guys. Look at Dale Rhea from GSSF. Ever shoot a tournament with him?
M: No.
JR: See that guy, he takes a grinder to it right there at the match. These guys, they like to experiment. A gun to him is nothing. Like a gun to us was nothing. A thousand bucks, so what. Let’s see what we can do and pull and glean a lot of information from it.
M: So Rob, what was your role in the book project?
R: I’m a technical guy, a software developer by trade. I also shoot. I did a lot of the typesetting and put everything together and build the websites…
JR: Rob was a perfect test subject on the project. He had an armorer’s background from the military.
R: But not on the Glocks.
JR: So he knew nothing about the Glock.
M: A fresh set of eyes.
JR: Yeah, exactly. So Rob would look at it and go, “You know in the military this is how we did these, so we need to expand it in this direction…” Everyone who came to PTOOMA had something to offer. In fact when we had our meeting that’s what we said, “Everyone here at this table brings something different and we can all do this. We can get what’s in here on paper, so we’ll never lack for beer money again.
R: It was kind of a pet project that turned out really well and has been immensely popular.
M: What makes the Glock such a great platform for modification and customization and to experiment with?
JR: Because of the way it’s built. It’s mass-produced. Gaston took Henry Ford’s idea and applied it to the gun. Nobody had done that before. There’s no fitting. You can take a hundred Glocks, blow them up and build a hundred more and pull them apart and make a hundred more. You can literally take a box of Glocks and shake parts all over and rebuild them out of any of those parts. It’s the perfect idea. And his machining ability and repeatability allows the gun to do that. And once you get anything truly modular it’s easy to change because I know that this is going to be the standard right here.
M: That also makes it great for third-party guys who invent stuff. Even though Glock may not like it, there’s a huge industry based on the success of that modularity.
R: Just look at this show and see how big that is.
M: Right.
JR: OK, here’s the marketing deal, and I know this from being a gun shop owner myself: You can buy a Glock anywhere, and that’s just the foundation. You can literally make more money off the accessory line, double, triple, quadruple than what you can off the gun itself. They could give the guns away and recoup all their money on the accessories, because people want it customized.
R: It’s like a car.
JR: Yeah. The guy that’s our customer or anybody else that’s in the accessory line is the guy with chrome wheels, he’s got headers on his car, custom valve covers, whatever. That’s the way it works.
M: And now people are making slides and CCF Raceframes is making receivers and I mean you can build a Glock without using any Glock parts. You think that’s actually possible?
JR: Yes. It will be. Actually, there’s quite a few people making about eight of the 32 parts in a Glock pistol. And there are several other making 10. Nobody’s making them all except for Lone Wolf. That’s the difference. So we’re making spring-loaded bearings. You may ask, why would you make those? Well in availability of parts, Glock has always owned the world. So we’re going to make everything. That way we have all non-Glock parts and we’re not beholden to Glock anymore.
M: So what’s next for Lone Wolf? (2008)
JR: Well we’ve go the new G20 and 21 in standard-length slides 5.5 and the six-inch. So that will take care of all the hunting guys. We’ve got an Open Class slide that will go directly into USPSA competition and an IDPA slide.
M: Now you can’t do the Tenifer here in the US, right?
JR: We’re not even interested, we don’t need it.
M: What kind of finish are you putting on these?
JR: Well, with stainless steel, we’re wide-open. I mean you can polish it, you can leave it the way it is, you can Cerakote it. We have a new black stainless. Black stainless Para has been using forever, if you want a black slide. This is as good as any finish out there.
M: Oh, that’s nice.
JR: This is the bull-nose, forward serrations. When we built these we started with the standard slide and we added what most shooters want, the number-one features they want like lowered ejection port, so we added that in, the bull-nose, so we added that in, the forward serrations, then we beveled the slide rails so when you shoot you actually won’t get any cuts. See this won’t cut you where a regular Glock will. Now all these features normally cost from 35 to 75 dollars apiece. I found if I do them in-mass they cost a buck each. So I add four dollars to the cost of the slide and I just pass the savings on to the customer.
M: That’s nice. That’s great.
JR: Well, it’s not about nice, it’s about building a superior product. I’ll get our sales off of returning customers rather than gouging.
M: So you can put that slide on a CCF receiver or a Glock frame.
JR: Absolutely. It’s built to Glock specs. We build all our slides to Glock specification and everything else we did to it is cosmetic.
M: Which people do to Glock factory parts anyway.
JR: Right. So if CCF tells you it should be a Glock part, it can be our part.
Our parts fit. That’s why our barrels and our slides drop right in.
M: So your barrels don’t even have to be fitted.
JR: No, ours go right in. We have a top-notch CNC machine.
M: What’s your most popular item?
JR: Barrels.
M: Conversion barrels?
JR: Right. Take the .40 down to the 9. That’s the other reason we stepped up on the slides because now we can take a 9 up to a .40. You could always go down, but now you can go up. At the same time we introduced the 19L and 19XL where you take a 17 slide and put it on your Glock 19 frame. Because what a lot of guys are doing like Robar is taking Glock 17s and chopping the frame down to the size of the Glock 19. And I said, ‘Why do that when we can just drop a slide on it?’ So we built a dust cover and extended the 19 barrel and now you can have a 19L or you can drop a Glock 34 slide on there and that only cost you a little over 100 bucks.
M: And you don’t have to butcher the gun.
JR: Right. You’ve got all the original equipment, but with a long barrel and slide because let’s face it, the length of the barrel is nothing to conceal, it’s the size of the handle. We just do our best to do things better.
M: Not only that, you’re looking at it from a different angle. Not a lot of people have the capability to manufacture their own slides.
JR: Well, the project was about $50,000, but you know where it’s going to go so it’s not a big deal.
M: There’s plenty of market.
JR: Right.
JR: Because of the way it’s built. It’s mass-produced. Gaston took Henry Ford’s idea and applied it to the gun. Nobody had done that before. There’s no fitting. You can take a hundred Glocks, blow them up and build a hundred more and pull them apart and make a hundred more. You can literally take a box of Glocks and shake parts all over and rebuild them out of any of those parts. It’s the perfect idea. And his machining ability and repeatability allows the gun to do that. And once you get anything truly modular it’s easy to change because I know that this is going to be the standard right here.
M: That also makes it great for third-party guys who invent stuff. Even though Glock may not like it, there’s a huge industry based on the success of that modularity.
R: Just look at this show and see how big that is.
M: Right.
JR: OK, here’s the marketing deal, and I know this from being a gun shop owner myself: You can buy a Glock anywhere, and that’s just the foundation. You can literally make more money off the accessory line, double, triple, quadruple than what you can off the gun itself. They could give the guns away and recoup all their money on the accessories, because people want it customized.
R: It’s like a car.
JR: Yeah. The guy that’s our customer or anybody else that’s in the accessory line is the guy with chrome wheels, he’s got headers on his car, custom valve covers, whatever. That’s the way it works.
M: And now people are making slides and CCF Raceframes is making receivers and I mean you can build a Glock without using any Glock parts. You think that’s actually possible?
JR: Yes. It will be. Actually, there’s quite a few people making about eight of the 32 parts in a Glock pistol. And there are several other making 10. Nobody’s making them all except for Lone Wolf. That’s the difference. So we’re making spring-loaded bearings. You may ask, why would you make those? Well in availability of parts, Glock has always owned the world. So we’re going to make everything. That way we have all non-Glock parts and we’re not beholden to Glock anymore.
M: So what’s next for Lone Wolf? (2008)
JR: Well we’ve go the new G20 and 21 in standard-length slides 5.5 and the six-inch. So that will take care of all the hunting guys. We’ve got an Open Class slide that will go directly into USPSA competition and an IDPA slide.
M: Now you can’t do the Tenifer here in the US, right?
JR: We’re not even interested, we don’t need it.
M: What kind of finish are you putting on these?
JR: Well, with stainless steel, we’re wide-open. I mean you can polish it, you can leave it the way it is, you can Cerakote it. We have a new black stainless. Black stainless Para has been using forever, if you want a black slide. This is as good as any finish out there.
M: Oh, that’s nice.
JR: This is the bull-nose, forward serrations. When we built these we started with the standard slide and we added what most shooters want, the number-one features they want like lowered ejection port, so we added that in, the bull-nose, so we added that in, the forward serrations, then we beveled the slide rails so when you shoot you actually won’t get any cuts. See this won’t cut you where a regular Glock will. Now all these features normally cost from 35 to 75 dollars apiece. I found if I do them in-mass they cost a buck each. So I add four dollars to the cost of the slide and I just pass the savings on to the customer.
M: That’s nice. That’s great.
JR: Well, it’s not about nice, it’s about building a superior product. I’ll get our sales off of returning customers rather than gouging.
M: So you can put that slide on a CCF receiver or a Glock frame.
JR: Absolutely. It’s built to Glock specs. We build all our slides to Glock specification and everything else we did to it is cosmetic.
M: Which people do to Glock factory parts anyway.
JR: Right. So if CCF tells you it should be a Glock part, it can be our part.
Our parts fit. That’s why our barrels and our slides drop right in.
M: So your barrels don’t even have to be fitted.
JR: No, ours go right in. We have a top-notch CNC machine.
M: What’s your most popular item?
JR: Barrels.
M: Conversion barrels?
JR: Right. Take the .40 down to the 9. That’s the other reason we stepped up on the slides because now we can take a 9 up to a .40. You could always go down, but now you can go up. At the same time we introduced the 19L and 19XL where you take a 17 slide and put it on your Glock 19 frame. Because what a lot of guys are doing like Robar is taking Glock 17s and chopping the frame down to the size of the Glock 19. And I said, ‘Why do that when we can just drop a slide on it?’ So we built a dust cover and extended the 19 barrel and now you can have a 19L or you can drop a Glock 34 slide on there and that only cost you a little over 100 bucks.
M: And you don’t have to butcher the gun.
JR: Right. You’ve got all the original equipment, but with a long barrel and slide because let’s face it, the length of the barrel is nothing to conceal, it’s the size of the handle. We just do our best to do things better.
M: Not only that, you’re looking at it from a different angle. Not a lot of people have the capability to manufacture their own slides.
JR: Well, the project was about $50,000, but you know where it’s going to go so it’s not a big deal.
M: There’s plenty of market.
JR: Right.
M: It’s your perspective that allows you to solve problems in a different way.
JR: But I’ve got a myriad of people behind me and around me and that’s the way it goes. We come up with ideas. Like Rob. I don’t do anything electronically unless it goes through Rob. For marketing I’ve got another guy named Randy Harrigan. For shooting I rely on Pat Kelly, Bill Shalburg and others. These are master-class shooters that are involved in the community. When I do these things, I call them immediately and I ask them, ‘what do you think about this?’ I get their input and they give it to me because they know I’ll produce it. So it’s a network of people behind me. Let’s face it, I’m a high school dropout.
M: Most of the best businessmen are.
JR: High school was boring and I needed something else to do. Even Morris Dagley from Aro-Tek, what an inspiration. The guy is just phenomenal. What he aspires to do and create. He’s good at what he does. Morris was actually a driving force behind what I was doing. Just being surrounded by good people, that’s what it’s all about. There’s a lot of truth about the guy who talks about his wife. I wouldn’t be here without my wife.
M: So even though it’s called Lone Wolf, it’s a team.
JR: Well, I’m the guy who takes all the punches. I may be on top, but I pack the water a lot. CEO means top toilet-cleaner, dishwasher, whatever. All this came around just from having a love of gun and liking what we’re doing and running into the right people. If it wasn’t for the original Glock crew I would never have been riding with them. I remember when Chris Edwards started. Now Chris is the only guy left out of all the original guys. I can’t think of anybody else there. Except for Bob, he’s in Glock accounting. I can’t believe he’s still there. It’s a good gun.
In response to my questions about the origin of the name “PTOOMA,” Rob Hansel filled me in.
Rob: I heard when I was in the military that there was an intelligence unit in the Army that didn’t have a name, you know one of those secretive organizations and a general had called in and demanded to know the name of the organization so they said, “It’s PTOOMA.” Which stands for, “Pulled This Out Of My Ass.” So that’s what PTOOMA stands for because we couldn’t think of anything else and I remembered this story. So it’s kind of a joke. Of course we don’t list that anywhere. It’s not a secret, but it’s not really public knowledge either.
Morgan: Who are the other guys in the PTOOMA group?
R: There are three others: Don Ellis, Bob Bland and Paul Muehlhausen. And again, we’re all from different backgrounds. Paul worked with me in the computer industry and he does a lot of paintball manufacturing. So he’s go experience on that side. Don was a cop.
JR: Don called in a lot of law-enforcement contacts that we used all throughout. A ton of them.
M: They have real experience in the field.
JR: Well, he’s a snake-eater. He’s not a cop-cop, he’s a snake-eater. Those guys have a lot of friends. And people tell them what they want because their afraid they’ll kill them.
R: It’s an interesting group of guys. Basically we wrote the book at my house eating pizza and drinking beer over the course of about 12 months.
JR: We ordered two extra-large pizzas and a case of beer…
R: …then we’d sit down and write.
JR: It was one day a week and as we got to crunch-time, it went to two, two days; Tuesdays and Thursdays.
R: Then when it was done, Paul and I did all the prepress work and put everything together. We did everything except for the actual printing. We did all the graphics design, all the typesetting, we did everything.
JR: It’s been very successful.
R: Well-received.
M: It builds your authority too. You guys are the Glock experts.
R: That’s why we haven’t done any other books. I get at least five emails a week that say, “When are you going to do a book on the AR-15?” “When are you going to do a book on the 1911?” Our area of expertise were Glocks, so that’s what we did. We don’t want to cheapen ourselves by doing something where we don’t consider ourselves experts, we don’t have that field of knowledge.
JR: I never billed myself as an expert anyway. It was other people who said, “Yeah, he’s a Glock expert.” There’s a lot more authority from that. When you get the other guys who are recognized experts out there and they pull you up on an even keel or on that platform, then you’re not a self-anointed expert. There are hundreds of thousands self-anointed Glock experts out there. I never did that. That is what was handed to me by another Glock expert.
M: The proof is in the book, though.
R: That’s also the reason the style of the book is so different, because none of us are writers.
M: The style is like the reader is in on that meeting with you guys and the pizza.
R: The style of the book is very casual.
JR: We kept it that way on purpose not to get over-technical.
R: It’s a layman’s reference.
M: It communicates better that way. Well thank you for talking to me and good luck on all your endeavors.
JR: Good luck to you too.
M: Thank you.
JR: But I’ve got a myriad of people behind me and around me and that’s the way it goes. We come up with ideas. Like Rob. I don’t do anything electronically unless it goes through Rob. For marketing I’ve got another guy named Randy Harrigan. For shooting I rely on Pat Kelly, Bill Shalburg and others. These are master-class shooters that are involved in the community. When I do these things, I call them immediately and I ask them, ‘what do you think about this?’ I get their input and they give it to me because they know I’ll produce it. So it’s a network of people behind me. Let’s face it, I’m a high school dropout.
M: Most of the best businessmen are.
JR: High school was boring and I needed something else to do. Even Morris Dagley from Aro-Tek, what an inspiration. The guy is just phenomenal. What he aspires to do and create. He’s good at what he does. Morris was actually a driving force behind what I was doing. Just being surrounded by good people, that’s what it’s all about. There’s a lot of truth about the guy who talks about his wife. I wouldn’t be here without my wife.
M: So even though it’s called Lone Wolf, it’s a team.
JR: Well, I’m the guy who takes all the punches. I may be on top, but I pack the water a lot. CEO means top toilet-cleaner, dishwasher, whatever. All this came around just from having a love of gun and liking what we’re doing and running into the right people. If it wasn’t for the original Glock crew I would never have been riding with them. I remember when Chris Edwards started. Now Chris is the only guy left out of all the original guys. I can’t think of anybody else there. Except for Bob, he’s in Glock accounting. I can’t believe he’s still there. It’s a good gun.
In response to my questions about the origin of the name “PTOOMA,” Rob Hansel filled me in.
Rob: I heard when I was in the military that there was an intelligence unit in the Army that didn’t have a name, you know one of those secretive organizations and a general had called in and demanded to know the name of the organization so they said, “It’s PTOOMA.” Which stands for, “Pulled This Out Of My Ass.” So that’s what PTOOMA stands for because we couldn’t think of anything else and I remembered this story. So it’s kind of a joke. Of course we don’t list that anywhere. It’s not a secret, but it’s not really public knowledge either.
Morgan: Who are the other guys in the PTOOMA group?
R: There are three others: Don Ellis, Bob Bland and Paul Muehlhausen. And again, we’re all from different backgrounds. Paul worked with me in the computer industry and he does a lot of paintball manufacturing. So he’s go experience on that side. Don was a cop.
JR: Don called in a lot of law-enforcement contacts that we used all throughout. A ton of them.
M: They have real experience in the field.
JR: Well, he’s a snake-eater. He’s not a cop-cop, he’s a snake-eater. Those guys have a lot of friends. And people tell them what they want because their afraid they’ll kill them.
R: It’s an interesting group of guys. Basically we wrote the book at my house eating pizza and drinking beer over the course of about 12 months.
JR: We ordered two extra-large pizzas and a case of beer…
R: …then we’d sit down and write.
JR: It was one day a week and as we got to crunch-time, it went to two, two days; Tuesdays and Thursdays.
R: Then when it was done, Paul and I did all the prepress work and put everything together. We did everything except for the actual printing. We did all the graphics design, all the typesetting, we did everything.
JR: It’s been very successful.
R: Well-received.
M: It builds your authority too. You guys are the Glock experts.
R: That’s why we haven’t done any other books. I get at least five emails a week that say, “When are you going to do a book on the AR-15?” “When are you going to do a book on the 1911?” Our area of expertise were Glocks, so that’s what we did. We don’t want to cheapen ourselves by doing something where we don’t consider ourselves experts, we don’t have that field of knowledge.
JR: I never billed myself as an expert anyway. It was other people who said, “Yeah, he’s a Glock expert.” There’s a lot more authority from that. When you get the other guys who are recognized experts out there and they pull you up on an even keel or on that platform, then you’re not a self-anointed expert. There are hundreds of thousands self-anointed Glock experts out there. I never did that. That is what was handed to me by another Glock expert.
M: The proof is in the book, though.
R: That’s also the reason the style of the book is so different, because none of us are writers.
M: The style is like the reader is in on that meeting with you guys and the pizza.
R: The style of the book is very casual.
JR: We kept it that way on purpose not to get over-technical.
R: It’s a layman’s reference.
M: It communicates better that way. Well thank you for talking to me and good luck on all your endeavors.
JR: Good luck to you too.
M: Thank you.
I, Morgan Boatman, "Glock Books" and GlockBooks.com, BoatmanBooks.com and Winter Communication, LLC are not associated in any way with GLOCK, Inc. or GLOCK GmbH.
Copyright 2010 Winter Communication, LLC
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Full-House
Tinkerer
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Full-House
Tinkerer
Quick-Start
Historian
Reference