Dec. 21, 2022

This paid piece is sponsored by Silencer Central.

For firearms owners, barrel threading doesn’t get any easier than this.

“We try and make it a hassle-free process, no matter where you live throughout the country,” said Lukas VanLaecken, director of supply chain and engineering for Silencer Central.

“We want to maintain very good communication throughout the process to get their guns turned around and shipped back to them as quickly as possible.”

Often, gun owners recently have purchased a suppressor from Sioux Falls-based Silencer and need the gun prepared to use it.

But no matter if it is a common hunting rifle or a custom match grade piece, the team is ready to take on your barrel-threading project.

The Silencer team threads barrels to meet guidelines supplied by the suppressor manufacturer to ensure each rifle has the proper shoulder to support the silencer. The team will thread to caliber and then cross-check diameter to ensure stability.

“It’s part of the sales process for us to talk through this option,” VanLaecken said. “Some people don’t know they need threading or what it entails, so part of our process talks through what suppressor is right for the customer’s firearm and how to ensure the firearm is compatible with the suppressor.”

It’s best to work with a professional gunsmith to ensure the gun is threaded properly, he added.

“Some people have the machines at home and are capable of doing it, but in the majority of cases, it’s really best to work with a professional gunsmith to make sure there’s no damage to the gun or the suppressor.”

At Silencer’s Sioux Falls headquarters, barrel threading is done by a professional team of gunsmiths who love their work.

Wyatt Knudson has worked at Silencer Central just over a year. He’s an armor officer in the South Dakota Army National Guard and was attracted by the chance to work in the industry.

“We work on some pretty cool projects, as well as the guns we work on and send out,” he said. “We’ll see repeat customers or work on multiple guns for one customer, so it’s nice to see people come back and ask for the service because they like the work you did.”

Mark Finnesand enjoys the work so much that the machinist works part time at Silencer in addition to another manufacturing job.

“It’s just a different kind of work,” he said. “I took the knowledge from machining and applied it to work here. Once we put a project on our CNC lathe, we usually can have the work done in a matter of minutes.”

The team works on about 5,000 firearms annually – a number that continues to increase.

“It’s hunting season, so we’re busy, and we expect it to pick up further in January,” VanLaecken said. “We continue to see year-over-year increases, and it’s not just Silencer suppressor customers coming to us to do the work. We work with customers who aren’t necessarily purchasing a silencer but just want to have their rifle threaded.”

Silencer Central prides itself on quick turnaround and a seamless process.

“We outline the approach to removing accessories and properly packaging the gun in a provided box, and we include all the information in terms of what we need to know about the gun in order to thread it,” VanLaecken said. “We send a gun case along with a return label to send the gun to us at no cost, and once we receive it, our gunsmith will break it down to the barrel that needs to be threaded, and then it goes into our lathe to be threaded by our machinist. Once it’s threaded, we gauge-check and check alignment with the suppressor, and from there, we’ll do a quality inspection and ship it back to the customer’s front door.”

Outside of shipping the gun, the actual time at Silencer is as efficient as possible, he added.

“We’re typically getting them turned around in two days,” he said. “We try to be the most competitive in terms of pricing, and turnaround time is critical.”

To learn more about barrel threading at Silencer Center, click here.