BELIEVE IN THE AMERICAN WORKER AGAIN! Building Quality despite tough times!

hey there folks this is Josh Stoney Ridge farmer welcome back to the forum today we're in Warrensburg Missouri we're on our maiden America tour and we're at the Swisher factory we're gonna have a little bit of fun we're going to show you guys how the Swisher mowers are made and all sorts of stuff that Swisher makes right here in Warrensburg Missouri with American workers and American steel all right [Music] [Applause] [Music] these are the doors where the flat steel comes into the plant some flat steel meaning plate and sheets of steel this is all American steel right here and as you see back here there's a laser cutter you see that right there there's a huge punch there are breaks there's all sorts of basically machine shop type tools right here and a whole lot of assistive devices like this lift right here that help save people's backs in other words there doesn't take five people to move that sheet of steel they have equipment that picks up the steel moves it sets it on the punch and punches out the holes we'll get some cool footage of that this factory sources over a million pounds of American steel per year [Music] making mower parts right here now they use the bunch because they can elevate the ribs in this racer it brings the rigidity to the mower deck that's what's going on right here there's a huge break right here we're going to go to that break in just a minute and see them making the lunch open so Swisher not only makes mowers and other products with other companies whoops Wow let me get out of here so Swisher makes mowers they also make tow behind mowers they also they've been in business for 75 years so there's tons of stuff that they make they also have started a storm shelter line and that's where we're gonna go Laster don't go anywhere we're gonna go see a storm shelter that Swisher makes we're we're done and Don you've been here 20 years and you run the laser cutter awesome how long have been room the laser cutter and a half here awesome man like what you do here got a cat a cattle operations got a farm got a family I got a family family awesome feed miss kids let's watch this thing work [Music] alright guys this is a welding Department right here and you can see all these curtains to protect people's eyes as they go by we're gonna step in here and Jack is welding up the log on so they do contract manufacturing here - you guys have seen the log ox on my youtube channel and this is where they're made awesome that's a big pile of logs right there what I think really rings true about Swisher and the reason that we're here doing our American manufacturing video at Swisher is that most of the products they make are handmade just totally handmade so real American workers building real American products out of real American steel it just doesn't get any better than this guys guys this is Jack Jack is one of the welders that's been here the longest its wishes how long you've been here Felisa years 27 years can you imagine people just don't stay in places for 27 years anymore you know maybe 27 months you know it now jack says he has a cattle operation I'm a head of cattle you run it normally about 150 on the how many acres hundred fifty acres awesome good stuff this leads us into our next visit we're going to Greg Judy's place pretty cool you're building a log ox today right Jim oh the log ox is a four in one forestry tool thanks man you guys take that glove up we're working in all these individual stations inside these curtains are where they do the hand welding now we're going to go back here to where the programmer is actually programming a robot and they have a robot welder that's gonna put together a few little pieces for us this is Mastin Mastan is a weld supervisor you've been here for how many years almost 15 then almost 18 years now in your hand here you have the controller for the robot welder yes right and the robot welder is manned by person so in other words it doesn't take robots aren't taking the jobs no okay gotcha cool so that just helps with workflow here it helps you get things done faster and it does intricate details to I guess a more standard spec is that right yes it does cool so we're gonna watch it work good to meet you man good to meet you so what this robot welder is building is blade drivers the blade drivers get bearings in them then a shaft goes through and that's what the blade is mounted to underneath the mowing down with Mike and Mike you're getting ready to weld up a door for the storm shelter is that right right so before it comes to you it's tack weld as I see then you do the finish welding how long you been a welder thirty years thirty years here at Swisher forty two beers with twenty two it's swisherd awesome I want to get in your way man we'll let you get to work that's what's really impressive to me is that that is a storm shelter door and that door right there could potentially save the lives of a family during a tornado here's something that's really cool so Swisher was founded in 1945 this is called fixture rack and storage they are jigs for fixtures for making parts that date all the way back to the 60s so if you're an antique tractor guy if you restore tractors or restore lawn equipment you can still pick up parts for your 1960s Swisher mowers cool guys this is Cindy sending how long you been with swisherd going on 17 years 17 years so since about 2003 or 2004 awesome and you can basically run any of these machines in here but is your favorite the break right here so yeah it's kind of where I started out I've done everything even supervised and get back over here so oh all right well let's say you put it to work [Music] I'm les Richter I've been with swisher since 2017 getting ready to make a wall panel made out of seven gauge for storm shelter [Music] so all this material is raw steel until it's painted it goes in here and it gets washed these guys are loading up storm shelter doors it gets washed in an acid bath then it goes through a dryer and then it goes into the powder coat room that's where we're going to go next we're in the actual powder coating booth this is Terry Terry's a guy that does the powder coating so what you have here is a series of hooks with an electromagnetic charge on them basically the powder is spread upon the material here the steel and this is a 44 inch rough cut deck and then it goes through here to a room where it's cured in other words it's heated up and that powder is melted on so powder coating is a whole lot better than paint it's gonna last a whole lot longer and Terry's getting the job done here awesome once again expanding on the variety of products that Swisher makes this is the Swisher response it's a 54 inch cut it's a 24 horsepower Briggs & Stratton engine on there and it's towing a 60 inch cut so you could theoretically cut a hundred and fourteen inch swath with just a zero turn in a pull behind that makes mowing the yard quick man awesome stuff let's finish up here in the factory I want to show you guys the storm shelter so we've seen the door being welded up in the factory in the welding Department this is the ESP safety shelter it serves as a safety shelter for tornado it serves as a vault and it also serves as a panic room in case of intruder in your house let's go around here to check it out this thing is super duper impressive once we get our shop built on our farm this is going to be a must so let's take a quick look inside the storm shelter super duper impressive so this is verified by the national storm shelter association to meet and or exceed fema standards for a tornado shelter now if you look right here we've got a nice big sliding door this is 3/16 inch hot rolled steel that is an awesome panic room and awesome place to hide from a storm unbelievable how robust and how tough this is this is a commercial-grade lock you're going to need a plasma cutter to blast through that you can't shoot through it you can't beat through it this is the locking mechanism this door is really really heavy and you can see right here these are the locks so if we raise this up and down its the latch now the latch goes on here to a pin we're gonna go inside here real quick this is a 42 by 87 cover your ears this is gonna be loud so somebody breaks into your house or there's a storm out BAM you shut the door right here we have a pin system here so you can't get pinned in here in other words you've got a lock right down here and you can lock if they penetrate the lock then you have a pin system that holds this in place this thing is robust this is a six person setup right here it is 87 by 42 and it has been nation holds here basically all four corners on top to bottom pretty nifty there's a big handle right here we'll pull it from the door up man it's just a super-duper style again look for one of these to be on the Stoney Ridge farm we're going to try and work a deal out where we can get one of these in our shop building now they're putting together the four in one forestry multi-tool log ox and this is the forestry pack for log ox these guys manufacture this powder-coated everything is done right here and they actually ship from the factory right here so in other words they warehouse and build everything for log ox right here we have a log ox on the farm Austin and the log ox family they're just a great group of people right above me here is Gary Gary knew about me long before any of this right yes sir all you've been a fan of the channel about two years about two years awesome we've been at it about three and a half years so thanks a lot there thank you whoo all right folks that's a Swisher factory that's what's going on here in Warrensburg Missouri American workers building American products right here with American steel here in Warrensburg thanks a lot guys for joining me here on the Stoney Ridge farm Channel please pound that like button if you like this made in America series jump in here subscribe the channel we'd love to have you again I hope to see you back on the farm soon and we'll catch you next time on the Stoney Ridge farm all right [Applause]