In early 2008, ahead of the United States presidential election between Barrack Obama and John McCain, political talk generated a rise in demand for AR15 platforms and their parts. From his home in Oregon, Josh Underwood was busy fulfilling contracts and crafting components in a few tech and manufacturing industries, including the firearm space. Sleep was scarce. Jobs were not. Work kept Underwood stirring in his shop day after day, late into the night, rarely able to break to stare at the back of his eyelids.

But that didn’t stop him from dreaming.

One of Underwood’s clients included Dave Johnson, the founder and owner of JFS/ Boonie Packer and designer of the Redi-Mag. Underwood helped Johnson dial in protypes ahead of production. A mutual respect and trust existed between the two. Behind the scenes, Underwood had been working on his own design for a lower receiver.

“Even when it was just machining, I always thought,” said Underwood, “I want to build something that goes beyond my lifetime.

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“I showed it to [Johnson],” said Underwood, “and he’s like, ‘Well, Josh, you just got a lower receiver. It looks really good, cosmetically, but it’s just a lower. And after the election happens and the craze dies down, you’re just going to be another lower guy out there without having a niche.’”

So, Underwood asked Johnson: What do I need? Johnson’s answer: A right-hand bolt catch, a way to quickly clear double-feed malfunctions.

“If you build that into the receiver, now you got something,” Johnson told Underwood.

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After that, Underwood went home, started tinkering, prototyping, and problem solving. “[To clear a double feed] you already got a finger on the mag release button,” he said. “What if you made the button somehow activate the bolt catch? And I was like, ‘I think I don’t see any downside to that. I didn’t think of mechanically how to do it.”

He visited Johnson the next morning, who agreed that a mag-release button that also activated the bolt catch would be the perfect solution, though Johnson expressed it was impossible. Johnson pulled a halved receiver from his workbench, pointed to the mag button channel. “There’s no room there,” Johnson told Underwood. Not enough space to insert any sort of mechanical device.

“But I was determined to figure it out,” said Underwood.
 
Underwood began to think back to his experience with plastic injection molds, where pins driving the mechanism run at an angle. “What if I took a pin like that, had a full radius on the end, just have a hole at an angle, because now that material being this tall is now effectively shorter.”

By adjusting pivot points, along with angles of the pins, while compounding motion, with a few more tweaks, which included a smaller spring for the mag-catch rod, Underwood was able to draw it all up, put together a 3D assembly.

Underwood faxed screenshots of the movement to Johnson the next morning, who was impressed but expressed concern that the solution could bind with the introduction of debris or grit.

At the time, Underwood—who grew up an avid hunter and target shooter, and a voracious reader of Jim Carmichael and Jack O’Connor—didn’t own an AR platform, had never even fired an AR, so he borrowed one from an employee and installed his prototype. The two put several magazines through the employee’s AR15, and Underwood’s first prototype of his A-DAC (Ambidextrous Dual Action Catch) worked flawlessly.

“And then I took powdered rock out of the driveway and put it in there, and it did all this other shit. No problem,” said Underwood. “The only thing that got it to bind up was getting soaking wet, and freezing it.

“So that was how I invented A-DAC,” said Underwood. “And then I filled a patent on it. Then around that time, the Army had sent out a note about how they wanted an ambi receiver. And so, I read that, and they wanted a left hand mag release, an ambi safety, and I believe a right-hand bolt drop. So, I thought, ‘Well, let’s design all this to the receiver.”

And he did.

The current Radian Weapons receiver is 95% the same as it was in 2008, according to Underwood. When finished, it had all the functionality the Army had requested plus a right-hand bolt catch, an addition for which they didn’t even ask.

“And I asked Dave about that, and he’s like, ‘Well that’s because no one’s ever been able to figure it out, so they stopped asking for a right-hand bolt catch.’”

Underwood’s lower receiver entered the market in 2009 under the company name AXTS (Arms of Extreme Tyranny Suppression). “At the time,” said Underwood, “there were a lot of companies with four-letter acronyms, and I thought that was cool. I wanted an acronym-type name that started with A so it would be the at top of lists.”

Due to working out of his home and pole barn, manufacturing capacity for new lowers was limited. Underwood kept machining parts on contract to pay the bills. However, one client failed to pay, leaving Underwood $50,000 in the hole. “At that time, that was a lot of money to me,” said Underwood. “And so I was on the verge of being out of business.”

He returned to an idea he referred to as his “Hail Mary,” something he had been sitting on for a couple of years while working to make ends meet.

“I went back to my charging handle concept,” said Underwood, “and I’m slow at really making a design because I’m such a perfectionist.”

He worked during the day on customer projects, then, for a several months, late into the night, drawing all the details of his charging handle in CAD, putting in 16 to 20 hours, seven days a week. His wife at the time was pregnant with their third child and managed the other two children and household. A misquote from Underwood on one particular job—an anomaly, as Underwood prided himself on getting quotes right—had him putting in 18 hours a day for 21 straight days.

“In the end, I calculated my hours,” said Underwood. “And I made $7 an hour on my own job.

“Yeah, so it was stressful,” said Underwood. “It was like, ‘I got to save my business.’”

After months of engineering and tweaking, once Underwood was content with the prototype for his ambidextrous charging handle, he contacted John Hwang, founder of Rainier Arms, who loved it. But Underwood continued to talk to other companies, including Magpul and BCM, offering to sell the design. “I just needed the money,” said Underwood. “Thank God no one wanted it.”

Over several talks with Hwang, Underwood agreed to terms where Rainier Arms would brand the charging handle and be the sole distributor until a certain volume was met. Underwood owned the patent and demanded the handle say, “Designed and manufactured by AXTS.”

Eventually, he started selling to dealers himself, simultaneously counting his lucky starts other companies had their reasons for turning him down years ago. “We’ve made a lot of money with the Raptor,” said Underwood.

In 2016, Underwood took the next logical step: building and selling complete rifles. He also worked with a marketing agency to rename the company to Radian Weapons. “I think of our company as an engineering company, engineering first,” said Underwood, “and then manufacturing, and so radian is related, as it’s a degree of measurement that’s kind of obscure.”

Two years later, Underwood moved Radian Weapons from his home in Salem, Oregon—where he and employees worked out of his pole barn and 2,300-square-foot home—to an 18,000-square-foot facility in Redmond, Oregon.

Since the very beginning, Underwood’s mission has been to improve upon existing platforms in the firearm space. One such example is the Afterburner + Ramjet micro compensator and match-grade barrel combo, which, when installed, reduces the recoil of a Glock 19 or Glock 45 by approximately 44%. “I highly doubt anybody’s ever put as much R &D money into a compensator in the industry,” said Underwood. “I think it obviously paid off. It was a huge success.”

“There’s so much more room to improve what exists in the market by doing products like we’re doing,” said Underwood. “Like the Raptor charging handle, the Talon safety, the lower if you want to build a rifle, the Afterburner, the compressor guide, all this stuff.

“So that’s where most of our focus is going to be over the next several years is just how do we keep innovating products that really improve platforms that already exist.”

Sourcing materials inside the United States also remains a priority. “If I can get the quality material in the US, I’m going to buy it in the US,” said Underwood.

But above all else, Underwood’s number one remains family. “I always thought I want to build something my kids can be a part of,” said Underwood.

Over the past several years, Underwood feels he has been able to stretch his mind, and merge together both the design and manufacturing processes to where he feels he is humming along and able to dial back the hours tinkering in the shop. Doing so means he can further focus his attention to family.

Underwood reads the Book of Proverbs every morning and will share insights with his kids when they are present. “And in there, Solomon’s talking about wisdom,” said Underwood, “and life and work ethic and integrity and wealth and poverty and all these things, you know, and the concept of a man’s glory, his sons and his children’s children.

“I didn’t have a great relationship with my own father and,” said Underwood. “It wasn’t it was horrible, but he was very busy working and not investing in his kids. I want to change that trajectory for my family and my kids.”

Reach out to me on Instagram (@WildGameJack) with any questions or comments.