American Made – in Dayton

DAYTON - As a young man living near San Fran­cisco in the 1960s, Bill Free­man worked as a machinist and trained horses on the side. In 1965, he got a job helping build Little Goose Dam. He lived in Dayton for a year and continued to train horses on the side - this time, at the Columbia County Fairgrounds.

Nearly 50 years later, Freeman has returned to Dayton, along with his son Dan, and their families. Bill and Dan run Bill Feeman Bits, which they've relo­cated from Rainier, Wash., southeast of Olympia, to a space in the industrial park at the Port of Columbia.

"I've been coming to Dayton for Dayton Days for many years," Freeman Said. "We decided it was time to make the move."

After returning to Cali­fornia from his stint at Little Goose, Freeman worked at a machine shop in San Francisco and started ex­perimenting with horse bits - the metal mouthpieces that connect a horse's reins to its head.

"I've always been a horse trainer and I started fixing bits for people when they broke," he said. "I saw what worked and what didn't." Soon Freeman was building his own bits in his garage.

In 1980, Freeman moved his family to Rainier, where he opened his own fab­rication shop. Dan soon joined the business. Be­sides equine hardware, his company made a variety of other products, including doors and antenna brackets for military Humvees. The Freemans opened a hard­ware store in Rainier in 2008, which they recently closed.

Through all the evolution of those businesses, Bill Freeman Bits remained a constant. It's one of only two or three major manufac­turers of horse bits that are 100% American made.

"Most bits come from China now," Dan Free­man said. "They just don't hold up. And you don't know what's in the metal. We're very proud that all of our products are American made."

The metallic content of a bit's mouthpiece is impor­tant. Freeman bits are made of an alloy of stainless steel and copper called "Ever­sweet." "The copper keeps the horse's mouth moist," Freeman said. Other metals, such as aluminum, can dry out the horse's mouth.

Freeman bits come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. "We probably sell more than fifty combina­tions of mouthpieces and cheeks," Bill said.

At one end of the spec­trum are snaffle bits, in which the rein is connected directly to the side of the mouthpiece, for use with unbroken horses.

"With these bits, the rider holds the rein with both hands," Freemen said. "You kind of steer the horse, by pulling its head sideways."

As Freeman explained some basics of horse train­ing, he described how, as a horse develops, bits with cheek pieces can be used. Longer cheek pieces pro­vide more leverage, and therefore lighter pressure on the reins is needed.

"The goal is to be able to hold the reins in one hand and use a very light touch," Freeman said. A well-trained horse using a bit with longer cheeks can accomplish this.

Mouthpieces come in even more varieties than cheeks. They range from "low port" to "high port". The port is a loop that press­es against the roof of the mouth and is used for "cor­rection."

More highly trained horses will tend to need more correction, Freeman said. "A broke horse will get away with what it can," he said.

Bill and Dan Freeman take great pride in the qual­ity and finish of their bits. Each stainless steel part is cast by a company in Spokane, using one of Free­man's designs. Back in the Dayton shop, it goes through a process of tum­bling and polishing that makes it shine like chrome, though there's no chrome involved. The aluminum cheeks are machined, and then also polished to a high shine.

Bill Freeman Bits are prized by horse trainers and owners around the world. When The Times first vis­ited, a shipment of bits was waiting to be shipped to The Netherlands. "We have a regular customer in Italy also," said Bill Freeman.

Freeman's bits are sold to dealers throughout the United States. They have a particularly strong presence in California and Texas.

"Most of our dealers are mobile," Bill said. "They travel around to shows and gatherings. They have a trailer all set up."

Bill and Dan both stressed that they work closely with their wholesale customers to improve their bit designs. "Sometimes I'll try to get a customer to try something new and they'll say 'nah,'" Bill said. "But once they try it, they come back and say 'we'll take more of those.'"

Bill Freeman bits is lo­cated at 3 Port Way, in the former Cabinetree space at the Port of Columbia industrial park. They can be reached at (509) 382-3152. More information about the company and their products can be found at billfreeman­bits.com.