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Posted: 9/10/2005 7:41:41 PM EDT
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$510 plus shipping $100 for cheap lower receiver including shipping and x-fer fee. $610 AR with unknown parts You can build or buy an AR for the same amount of money and know exactly what going into by buying quality parts. $100 lower (Superior Arms, Stag, etc) $50 lower parts kit (numerous ones, Del Ton, CMT, ETC) $55 6 position collapsible stock (from TheTic) $95 flattop upper (CMT from various vendors) $105 bolt/carrier/charging handle (from eagle firearms, or get a CMT one for $120 from Teknic) $200 compelte barrel (there are a number of places to get a new barrel for $200) $605 - $620 AR with quality parts that you know will work well and last. Just my opinion. |
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With anything, you get what you pay for. That's the honest truth. I think if you want an AR just to beat and abuse, then all means put down as little money as possible. But if you want quality you have to put out $$ for it. I recommend RRA or Bushy. Both make quality rifles and parts that take abuse and keep performing. my .02 |
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My first build was a Model 1 bought on price and did not know any better ( hadn't found AR15.com yet). Lower internals soft and sub-standard been replaced with RRA. Firing pin tip chipped first outing.  Finish on upper chipped off case delector right away, upper ok other than that.  Stainless fluted 16in. bbl and ff tube I am happy with.  Welcomed to the broken bolt club yesterday at a local 3 gun match, kept reading here about bolt failures and thought I must have gotten a good one, WRONG again!  Pay a little more now or a little more later plus some. I have since bought a few SELECT parts from them. Firing pin a few $. RRA lower parts kit $50. CMT MP tested bolt $50. What I learned from this gun PRICELESS!  |
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I've only had one experience with them so I can't really give a fair assessment. I bought a complete 16" Heavy Barrel (chromed-line) upper from them & had a lot of extraction problems. Even had to install a heavy duty extrator spring to reduce the extration problems. I never had any problems with my Colt or Bushmaster uppers. |
| When I bought an upper from them, they forgot to drill the gas port, which was a bad inconvience since I had to send it back. However, their service was exellent and recieved my upper WITH the optional gas port in no time. Now it shoots very well. I would say model 1 has some problems in making their parts. I would not buy from them again. |
Anyway, I've seen mixed reviews on M1S. If you're an experienced AR tinkerer and know what you're looking for, you should be OK looking just about anywhere. If you're new to the Black Rifle, tread lightly and avoid anybody that doesn't have a spotless record. |
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M1S is messed up. I e-mail them for a quote and they gave me a price including military discount. When I am ready to order, they deny the discount saying they never offered it. I even sent them the e-mail and nothing. I guess I'll pay a bit more and buy here. Anyone have any CZ-V22 magazines? |
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I've bought a few kits from model one. A few years back , the quality and quality control was fair to bad. However, now they have improved and offer good quality kits. I just received an em4 kit and I'm very pleased with the quality. Note: the one thing they still have issues with is their lower parts set. They always seem to have missing parts in the bag. I had that happen in the past and again with the kit I just got. Therefore, check to make sure you have all your parts. herwise, |
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Some of you guys crack me up. There are only 3 companies making upper receivers. Model 1 get their upper receivers from the SAME places everyone else does. Model 1 also does not make their own barrels so they did not "forget" to drill the gas hole, the barrel manufacturer did. Once again, like the upper receivers, Model 1 uses the same barrel manufacturers that everyone else does. I think they're curretnly using Shaw. I have no idea where they get their small parts from. I'm not fan but let's at least get the facts straight. Bomber |
| I have read all the bad views about them, with only a few being actual reviews. I bought a barrel from them not long ago, they had it in stock when no one else did. They were pleasant when I called, reponded to email and quick to ship, cant say I have any complaints. All I ordered was a barrel and gas tube but it all works like its supposed to. There are lots of places to choose from if you don't want to risk it with them. I wouldnt have a problem going back based on what experience I have so far. |
I have been very pleased with thier upper. I have over 2000 rounds through it with no problems at all. I have heard of problems with weakend bolts but I'm using and Oly Bolt and carrier. Here is a pic. As you can see, I have added alot of aftermarket stuff but I don't think that has anything to do with the reliability.
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model 1 sucks!!! I Bought 24" SS bull barrel from them..good price..only paid $320 2 years ago.. my upper camed..after 3 months of waiting.... upper shoot great and accurate..but my sling stud on my front handguard hole was not stright..off center to right..so when i attached my harris bipod..it was off center..did very poor job drilling hole..... |
I'm confused  Didn't you just post THIS a little while ago (like about an hour ago)?
In this thread: www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=3&f=118&t=254151 WTF, Over? 
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It's almost...as if....he's trying to speak english to us....  Bomber |
too funny that happened to someone else here too, think it was mongo |
What's even funnier....Model 1 doesn't make their parts. They buy their barrels from Shaw, their upper receivers from the big 3 that everyone else uses and so on. They are basically a parts distributor. Shame on them for sending out a barrel without a gas hole. I think their standard kits have the FSB already assembled. Maybe they buy it that way. Who knows. Bomber |
| no, I got it, but sending out a barrel (or two) without gas ports is pretty lousy, tells me they didn't inspect the articles they bought and never looked down the bore (ports are pretty obvious) just because you sell someone else's parts doesn't mean your reputation is free of being tarnished when the OEM messes up. Happens in lots of industries. You're backing that product with your name when you sell it, sell junk and your name gets muddy. |
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I agree with everything you said. My point is Model 1 sells a lot of stuff and yes they do have their fair share of issues. The point is they use a lot of suppliers common to the so called big names who also have a fair share of problems. Colt, Bushmaster, RR all have their own problems but they are not as easy of a target for criticism. I'm no M1 fan but I find it funny when folks say my upper receiver was not as good as Bushmasters when in fact it came from the same place. Bomber |
Did I ever tell you about when my dad worked at a potato processing plant? Big one in Eastern WA, supplied all the big outfits with frozen fries, hash browns, etc. Seems they sold potato products to lots of competing brands, lets say Ore Ida and Wal Mart. No difference right? Same potatoes, same plant? Nope, the product gets graded along the way in an operation that big, and at the end of the day the best stuff goes to the people paying the most money, and the crap (edges of the potato, maybe a little mealy, short in length, broken) goes to the discount brands. I know from first hand experience that there are different grades of forgings (lowers in this case) and the better the grade of forging the more consistent each part. If your raw product starts out consistent your end product is more consistent all else being equal and that's not even getting into metallurgy, certifications, or materials. The cheaper brands are cheaper for a reason, they cut corners. You never know what corner got cut until the part fails. Maybe it's a poor surface finish because some minimum wage slave didn't take his time and do it right or maybe the part has hidden voids because it wasn't properly inspected or certified. I've seen the purchasing end of that conversation and it starts out with, "Hey I need 30 uppers, what kind of deal can we do?" In a real company the parts come in steady and the bills are budgeted, they don't wait for an order to build rifles, they're building rifles to fill contracts they already have and bringing in replacement material as they use it because the demand can be predicted One reason a lot of these small companies use "the same parts" is that they're trading what they've got (let's say handguard caps) for what they need (say extractor springs in one case I'm very familiar with). The problem with your arguement as stated is that these little outfits produce duds far out of proportion to their market share. Yes COLT, RRA, and BFI can produce lemons, but given the tremendous amount of parts they move the percentages are pretty miniscule. ASA, M&A, (and the rest of the old Drasen gang) are bit players in the industry and yet the majority of the problems resolved here revolve around their products. I'm all for everyone having an AR if they want one, I think there should be a couple in every house. I also know that given the way that most folks use their AR and the amount it won't be shot crappy parts won't matter. The worst thing that can happen is you miss out on some shooting time at the range maybe you miss a shot on a prairie dog. But what I don't want is someone with a legitimate need for an AR, someone who will actually use, or plans to use, an AR for its intended purpose thinking that out of the box they can get a champagne rifle on a on a PBR budget and losing their life (or failing to protect someone else's) because someone lied to them. |
I don't think you are going to enlighten me about manufacturing. I have a degree in manufacturing engineering, 20 years in industry including Process Control Engineer, Purchasing Manager, Supplier Quality Engineer and General Manager of a very large company. In addition, I published a book on SPC while working on GE Aerospace's "Dock to Stock" program. Potatoes and castings are apples and oranges. They get their barrels from Shaw, so do a lot of other people including folks on the list you metioned. Shaw would not be in the business they are in if they produced a lot of "seconds". Any self respecting company in the barrel manufacturing business creates processes where the UCL/LCL are inside the USL/LSL. In addition, it would be an unacceptable risk to sell "seconds". The same would be true for castings. Can you imagine a catastrophic failure and your company has to admit it sold "seconds". I have no idea where they get their small parts from but the barrels and upper receivers are from REPUTABLE manufacturers who aren't in the business of creating enough seconds to feed a company the size of M1. And that assumes they want to accept the liability of selling off a few rejects that are probably built into their standard costs anyway. Bomber |
We see those catastrophic failures here every week, these aren't airplanes, they don't fall out of the sky, they crack, they split, they wear too fast, they jam, and they malfunction. A catastrophic failure at 8,000 RPM is pretty impressive compared to one at 10 RPM, guns are 10 RPM. An automobile fails and drives off the road into a bridge abutment, a firearm fails and you get click when it should have been a bang.
and that's the point, these little companies have almost no employees, OAI is one of the biggest and they average around 50, the parts assembly places average less than 10. They don't produce enough rifles to consume enough parts to make a difference and they could easily subsist on the scraps made by "reputable" manufacturers, they've subsisted on scrap customers for longer. Your background is impressive but lacks one component vital to this conversation and this is experience in low rent firearms manufacturing. It is not like "any other business" you may want to believe that but it's not. These aren't airplanes, there is no regulatory agency, the numbers produced are miniscule and the market is very limited. If you have a 20% failure rate and a 40% return rate you're still doing good. Where I used to work we'd routinely scrap 3/4 to ALL of a run of barrels for bad chambers or stupid things like a RF bore in a .223 profiled barrel. And at some point some distributor would call looking for a "good deal" on some barrels and some of the scapped pieces would get recycled or we'd run out of parts and HAVE TO use them. It happens bomber, just because shooters are by and large an ethical population does not mean that firearms manufacturers are, we want it to be that way but it's not, we want to believe it because we can't stand to think of the implications of it. You talk to any person in the industry (some one who hires and fires, not some slob) and you'll hear nothing but stories of back stabbing and double dealing. We only get a taste of that here on this board but even here we've seen it. I'm not here to convince you, just trying to show you where I'm coming from. Just because some one tells me what they think I want to hear doesn't mean they're my buddy but a lot of vendors think that is all there is to it because for the majority of the population that's all it takes. Sales isn't about convincing someone to buy your product, it's about having the product they've already decided to buy. I'm going to sign off this thread now bc I have real questions to answer elsewhere and more to add to the site so I don't get involved in cyclical threads but you seem like a good guy and definitely a a good dad so I tell you these things in the hope that you can hear some of what I'm saying. I guarantee that with your background if you moved into a job with one of these low rent makers you'd be severely disappointed, I've seen it before with everyone from former Boeing QA/QC inspectors to former employees of reputable gun manufacturers and mech engs fresh from school. There are a lot of us on here, some worked the low rent district (as I did) others worked in companies that cared about the product (like the former Barrett guy). |
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Match grade kit from model 1 sales - $535.00 RRA lower reciever - $170.00 3 boxes of walmart val-u ammo - $21.00 Shooting better than thier bushmasters , armalites , and everything else - Priceless As of today , i haven't had any problems with my M1S kit build , it got to my house in 3 days , everything has worked well , no premature parts wear, no extraction problems , and absolutely amazing accuracy. |
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