LOOK at any successful business and you’ll find an owner who is passionate about what he does. Those fortunate enough to make a living doing what they truly love are indeed lucky. Tony Autry, the owner of Del-Ton, is such an individual.
“It started as a way to finance my shooting hobby. Before I knew it I had a full-scale business.” says Autry. “We started selling parts out of the house and we’ve been in business 10 years now.”
Growing the business meant the opportunity to enjoy more and more different items, and as Del-Ton grew more opportunities presented themselves. “It ruined a perfectly good hobby,” chuckled Autry. “I thought the AR was pretty cool, and a decade ago they weren’t as popular as they are now. I wanted something that I liked to do and this was another way to play in the hobby.”
Giving officers and agencies the opportunity to design their very own AR, Del-Ton lets the end-user dictate the mission requirements to
assemble the exact gun they need.
Del-Ton hasn’t always offered complete rifles. Says Autry, “We started building complete rifles 3 or 4 years ago, but before that we sold mostly rifle kits. Customers could actually build their rifle kit online, using parts that we had available. We were one of the first companies to offer this feature. Now we have some generic rifles on the website but we’ll build anything you want us to from parts that we stock.”
With 16- and 20-inch barrels and coming in a variety of overall lengths with customizable options, Del-Ton’s DTI-15 carbines are adaptable to mission/user specifications for law enforcement units and officers.
The sample that I received from Del-Ton is an A3, flat top 16-inch carbine with a free-floating 4-rail handguard and M4 collapsing stock. It is great carbine for any officer as a cruiser or patrol rifle.
They use 7075-T6 aluminum forgings for both the upper and lower receivers and they are finished with a mil-spec anodize. Autry told me that he machines his own barrels in-house. My test sample was outfitted with a chrome moly 16-inch tube with 1-in-9-inch rifling with a fixed front sight tower and A2 flash suppressor.
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