Aa barrels

[bwaites]

I ordered mine the beginning of March. I am getting tired of waiting and being told there is no way to verify the delivery date. If I told my customers this, I wouldn't be selling too much of my product. As a side note, when I spoke with the girl that answered the phone, she got rude with me and told me there was no way of telling if the 25 barrels they just received from their vendor would be used to fill my order. Thats right guys, if you just received your barrels, they were outsourced, as are most of alexanders barrels. Apparently they have 300 currently on order, which is what the company employees told me. This doesn't sound like a manufacturing or production problem, but more of a procurement issue. Time to start demanding more from your outsource companies. Maybe its time to contact Satern.

Squid, almost every AR manufacturer outsources their barrels, with the notable exceptions who have barrel manufacturing facilities in house, like FN, Colt, Ruger, and the Cerberus group of companies.

Procurement of barrels from outside sources creates many problems.

1) Actually getting someone to supply barrels in the quantity you need. If you don't order large quantities at one time, your order gets pushed down the order chain behind bigger orders. Try to order a lot of barrels, and you may have plenty for now, but find that when you try to reorder, you are at the back of the line because you don't order regularly; its a major Catch 22.

2) If the barrels don't meet your QC, you are faced with having to decide whether you will use them anyway, or send them back and wait for the barrels to be remade. If I recall correctly, the military spec for uppers/barrels is 5 MOA at 100 yards. Are you willing to accept that in your upper? Most aren't, so the barrels civilians get may actually be a higher quality than the military standard. To top that off, the M4 life spec is only 6000 rounds. You ready to trade yours in at that point? Some tactical rifle classes use 2000 rounds in a weekend, 3 classes, time for a new barrel!

3) You are right, it IS a procurement issue, and its going to get worse before it gets better, I suspect. There are only a certain number of barrel makers, much less barrel makers who will build barrels to the quality that Bill Alexander demands.

Bill Alexander has never forgotten something that many may not realize....Its not the action that is the heart of the rifle and the final arbiter of accuracy, its the barrel. This is especially true of AR's where all the important stuff actually happens in the barrel (and barrel extension). He is almost obnoxiously stubborn about the quality of the barrels he uses. (I say almost because he protects his customers, not his suppliers, when it comes to that quality.)

I know it takes a while to get an AA barrel, but very few people aren't happy once they do!