Recently we had the opportunity to sit down with Garrett Landers, the owner of Landers Weapons Systems (LWS), who operates his own shop in Lumberton, Texas located in the southeast part of the state.
The company motto is “Modified to Conquer” and the company does some fantastic quality work in the firearms industry that will enhance your weapon with improved reliability, durability, and style.
Landers has always had a life-long passion for enhancing anything that he came across and began his life’s pursuits working in a custom airbrush company, which transitioned into a Cerakote company which naturally led into the firearms industry.
Cerakote is a specialized coating that is part sealant and part coating that can be applied to polymers, metals, and plastics that is composed of a polymer-ceramic compound. The ceramic coating benefits the firearm by:
- Improving the wear and tear over time
- Providing abrasion, corrosion, and chemical resistance
- Improving strength and durability
Landers’ goal, as he put it, was to provide enhancements to firearms to make the end-user a more proficient shooter. “We have never been a company that wanted to make “flashy” guns with rainbow parts…I despise that part of the industry, and frankly we weren’t after those clients,” he said.
“We were after the guys pulling triggers downrange and wanting to become more proficient with their weapons and it took some time for us to wedge into the SF community and through social media, we were able to do that through word of mouth and that is mission accomplished for us,” he added.
LWS does a myriad of custom work, from custom frame packages and custom slide work which can all be viewed on the company’s website. He is moving from a current 30×60 shop to a 9,000 square-foot facility with a 55×100 warehouse so the company is growing exponentially.
But one thing that won’t change with the company’s growth, he said, was the quality of his products. He’s most proud of his parts and components. He not only designs parts for his own company but also works with other companies and helps design parts for them.
“LWS guns can be shown off but when you get an LWS gun from the enhancements we make on them, you’re getting a really nice tool that you can go downrange and do some work with. That is what we strive to do,” Landers said.
LWS did some custom work for SOFX on a pair of Glocks, that are reverently referred to as the “Gray Ghosts” and as Landers remembers, “if you could throw the toolbox at what we do here at LWS, that’s what went into those two weapons,” he said.
LWS cerakoted the slide, the Recon frame package. And the slide, like all of the slides the company produces are machined by hand on 60-year-old Bridgeport machines. LWS slides will have anywhere from between 20-120 serrations, and if one serration is off the entire slide is botched. Which won’t do for the company.
The company is going to CNC machines in their new facility. And for those wanting something a little fancier, the company can cerakote a frame first and then do their modifications, grinding through the cerakote into the polymer which presents a nice two-tone effect.
Everything is hand-crafted, nothing is mass-produced or cheap. All of the parts are refined, polished, honed, so it is time-consuming but the ultimate product is worth it, especially when it is a tool that the end-user is going to take out and either enter into a shooting competition or by putting his life on the line with law enforcement or the miliary.
“One thing my company has always strived for is consistency and quality,” he said.
“I don’t like picking up someone’s weapon and it having crooked lines or any inconsistency to the texture applied to it…We have been able to wedge into the SF community because we produce a quality product that we can consistently replicate for our customers.”
The company is a small one (but growing) but as Landers said, has dedicated themselves to quality and consistency. And as he added, he’s passionate about the fact that an LWS weapon is, at the end of the day, a tool the user, being either a law enforcement or military member, can depend their lives on.
Visitors to the company’s website can sign up for their email list that will keep them up-to-date on the new parts and components that coming out soon.
Authored by SOFX Contributing Editor Steve Balestrieri
