FUBAR times 6!

Frank Green

Sergeant
Full Member
Minuteman
Oct 27, 2006
2,892
7,136
wisconsin
www.bartleinbarrels.com
So three weeks ago I get a call from PD not to far away from us. They are calling asking for help. I asked, "whats up?" Well we had our 7 dept rifles rebuilt by a gunsmith/shop all with your barrels and out of the 7.... only one shoots! That one just shoots small silly groups! I said really.... 1 out of 7 shoot? The officer says yes. Then he says... can I bring the worst two to you and have you guys look them over? I asked... didn't you call the shop that did the work and talk to them? Answer was yes and they took them back once already and had stuff fixed but they still don't shoot!

I said bring the worst two guns to me and will look them over for ya. He said thanks... the one rifle actually shoots 4moa!

So far we have fixed 4 out of the 6 rifles. They're suppose to bring the next two rifles in next week. Here are some of the things we found that where wrong.

Two rifles the bolt was hitting the back of the barrel. The other two the clearance at best was .004" which still isn't enough.

NV mounts installed backwards (yes doesn't effect accuracy but it's attn. to detail is my bitch there)

One rifle the trigger retaining pins where installed incorrectly. The pin that is suppose to be in the rear was in the front location which if there isn't enough stock clearance it would cause a fit issue between the barreled action and the stock.

One rifle actually had a burr or a piece of metal sandwiched between the recoil lug and the receiver face at the 6 o'clock position. When we took the barrel of to fix the bolt clearance and the muzzle crown... that small piece of metal actually left a small indent in the receiver face. Again goes back to paying attention to detail and what the hell your doing.

We had to fix all of the muzzle crowns on all of the first 4 rifles and rethread the muzzles.

I asked who's scope mounts are these? He said they where custom made! I'll get back to this further down in the reading but the mounts all had a negative MOA taper to them. Also two of the rifles the front screw was hitting the barrel threads. So we had a couple of decent not really expensive EGW 20moa bases and installed them for the first two rifles and ordered two more for the 2nd batch of guns. He said they knew they had issues with the mounts and had to use a shim on one of the rifles so they could get it on paper and have some adjustment to the scope. No more shims needed.

I would say not including range time or ammo cost... just in terms of inspection time and repair time we are averaging 7 hours for each pair of rifles.

When we got the first two rifles reworked (we actually didn't notice at first the scope mounts where messed up) I took them out to my range to test fire them. Figured better test fire them before we give them back to make sure they shoot good! I didn't want to mess with they're scopes and the focus etc... so I mounted my 8-32NXS scope. Scope was on a previous Rem. 700 in 308win so I skipped bore sighting it. That was a mistake! I sent the first round down range and no impact on the target. Said... crap... then I went to a 50 yard target... still no impact! WTF! So I pull the bolt out and to bore sight it had to remove the cheek piece as well. I look down the bore and the gun is pointed like 6" (best guess) below the target at 50 yards. So I start cranking on the elevation knob while looking down the bore and I see the cross hair coming up and then boom... the elevation knob stopped! I max'd out the adjustment and it's still really low on the target. I'm like WTF!!! So I pick the gun up and look at it from the side. That's when I noticed the neg. MOA on the scope mount. So with the scope max'd out at 65moa for travel... I held on the 18moa hash mark of the reticle and that gave me a .75" above center on the target for a zero. That's how I shot the first gun. Needed a total of 83moa just to be in the center of the target at a 100 yards. Then I/we changed all they're mounts out for something that was proper.

I did bring up with the Officer... I said, "hey were not bitching at all but we're not getting paid for any of this and I'll go on a limb and say you guys blew your budget request to get these 7 guns rebuilt but the next time I'm cruising thru your town headed to Marty's Pizza for dinner and you guys pull me over for speeding... tell your boss to give me a get out of jail free card please. He said... got ya covered!

I know the shop that did the work and bent isn't the word for it. As we worked on the first two guns I was actually pacing the floor at one point in time I was so mad.

Enjoy some of the pic's I took.

Later, Frank
Bartlein Barrels

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Sounds like there should be a suit against the shop by the PD! If nothing else it would put them on notice. Never even heard of a Negative cant base. How did you fix the mark on the receiver from the chip? Whole thing sounds kind of Bubba!
 
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HO



LEE



SCHIT!


How could anybody in their right mind allow something that looks like that or shoots like that out of their shop? ! ! It's bad enough that they would allow ANY rifle out of there like that but sending out WORK guns like that. . . . . somebody needs their nuts cut off.

And if that agency had 7 rifles built, they are not a small agency! Milwaukee PD or whoever accepted those rifles must have a clueless person running their show. I cringe at the thought of that team leader actually issuing the rifles to his PMOs. If I was the Crisis Management coordinator, I would threaten to replace the TL due to questionable judgement.

To heck with Get out of Jail Free card. Tell them you want to go to their pursuit track and practice Pit maneuvers all day and after tearing their cars up be sure to insist on Tasing somebody before you go home!

Good on you Frank for handling that.
 
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Sounds like a shop who no longer gets a Bartlein blank….

And maybe pass the word to the other WI barrel makers.

Burn that other shop.
They should never work on another rifle again.
Insane!!



I have friends, hillbillies who are self taught machinists, building rifles that easily shoot 0.5 MOa or better.
6BR to big 375’s


These guys related to that tacticalrifles.net guy from years back?

Bet that dept can find a weird link between the decision maker at the PD and the shop if they look a little bit…..
 
“rebuilt by a gunsmith/shop…”

Are we sure about the “gunsmith part?” It seems only a shop that has no clue about guns and optics would build such a negative moa base! I mean… you do need to aim higher to make hits farther away…. 🤷🏼‍♂️🤣
 
Sounds like there should be a suit against the shop by the PD! If nothing else it would put them on notice. Never even heard of a Negative cant base. How did you fix the mark on the receiver from the chip? Whole thing sounds kind of Bubba!
PD actually told me they were getting ready to put a suit in to get some of the money back but the shop is ordering them suppressors at n/c to make up for it. Still didn't fix the guns though. The small detent in the receiver ( I know I took a pic of it but can't find it right now) wasn't horrible but it was there. We cleaned the receiver face up to make sure no issues with that. This was the gun that shot 4moa as well. Box ammo and handloads after we went thru it shot .5 with box Hornady ammo and .4xx" with handloads I whipped together for testing with 175SMK's.
 
Hopefully all their shots were inside of 7 yards with those before they got "re-tuned." Never mind...not re-tuned...those were re-built.

Keep it up Frank!
Thanks!

On the first two rifles brought in the one gun had like 200 rounds thru it. Including after the initial rework by the shop and still didn't shoot. The other gun had 100 rounds on it and didn't shoot. It got fixed supposedly but the PD basically had no confidence in the rifles anymore and didn't get shot any further. Gun #2 the officer of that gun had to leave in like 2-3 weeks for training and needed the gun. So we pretty much dropped what were doing to work on those rifles and test them so the guy had something to use.

After they got the the first two guns back they sent me a pic of a target from #2 gun with the first rounds down range and the guy shoots like a 1/3moa group and sent me a text saying THANKS!
 
Never even heard of a Negative cant base.
Me neither. My guess is (also sounds like a different place made the mounts) when they made the mounts they had them in the mill backwards and it came out with a neg. MOA.

Just goes back to though the place doing all the finish work and assy just wasn't paying attn to detail.

The only thing we seen that was good was the headspace was good on all 4 rifles. Must have been luck on that.
 
PD actually told me they were getting ready to put a suit in to get some of the money back but the shop is ordering them suppressors at n/c to make up for it. Still didn't fix the guns though. The small detent in the receiver ( I know I took a pic of it but can't find it right now) wasn't horrible but it was there. We cleaned the receiver face up to make sure no issues with that. This was the gun that shot 4moa as well. Box ammo and handloads after we went thru it shot .5 with box Hornady ammo and .4xx" with handloads I whipped together for testing with 175SMK's.
free silencers arent worth ever dealing with that business again. id pay full retail before i did that.
 
It seems only a shop that has no clue about guns and optics would build such a negative moa base! I mean… you do need to aim higher to make hits farther away…. 🤷🏼‍♂️🤣
Pretty high speed stuff actually.
It's the only way to simulate dialing and shooting at 1,400 yds on a 100yd range!.
The DeltaSealSOC units all run that setup for their snipers.

#verysnipery
#IcouldtellyoubutI'dhavetokillyou.
 
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HO



LEE



SCHIT!


How could anybody in their right mind allow something that looks like that or shoots like that out of their shop? ! ! It's bad enough that they would allow ANY rifle out of there like that but sending out WORK guns like that. . . . . somebody needs their nuts cut off.

And if that agency had 7 rifles built, they are not a small agency! Milwaukee PD or whoever accepted those rifles must have a clueless person running their show. I cringe at the thought of that team leader actually issuing the rifles to his PMOs. If I was the Crisis Management coordinator, I would threaten to replace the TL due to questionable judgement.

To heck with Get out of Jail Free card. Tell them you want to go to their pursuit track and practice Pit maneuvers all day and after tearing their cars up be sure to insist on Tasing somebody before you go home!

Good on you Frank for handling that.

It's the horror stories like this that lead to idiotic policies like we had:
"Only the OEM can rebarrel your gun"
 
Sorry, my sarcasm didnt come through on that.

Just seems a lot like that old deal where Spartan Rifles took apart a tacticalrifles.net rig and fixed it.
So many things wrong.


Good on ya for fixing them up

I can do better work on a rifle than those clowns with my ballpeen hammer and a Dremel! :ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO::ROFLMAO:
It's cool brother! I didn't take any offense to it.
 
I am without words - this has to be the exception and not the norm, right?
I'm hoping it was a hiccup with the shop and as you said not the norm.

It does bring to light at times though when someone tells us... " gun doesn't shoot! The barrel is bad!"

Not necessarily.

I go back to what I tell people... every month we are shipping a few hundred ammunition test barrels. Accuracy and pressure test barrels. If there is a problem with the barrels or the steel.... I'm going to be hearing it way faster from one of these places than from anyone else. I can literally count on one hand that in the last 26 or so years.... where there was two maybe three barrels that just shot o.k./not great.

So how does one place get 7 of them... and 6 don't shoot? Something else is going on.

Other than the one gun that was shooting 4moa as they received it they told me the other 5 wouldn't even shoot 1moa. Didn't shoot 4moa but wouldn't even shoot 1moa.
 
Was this the result of work going to the lowest bidder by the city?
No.

I asked the pd... if you can't tell me it's cool but what did the shop charge you? He looked up the invoice and told me.

I said we just rebuilt 10 guns for the MPD Swat team guys. Our price to them for 10 guns was the basically what you guys paid for 7 (we didn't do any cerakote work though for the MPD guns being one difference) but we did install all new oversize recoil lugs and trued up the receiver faces and anything else we seen needing attention. Oh... not to mention take the bolts all apart and clean everything. All 10 MPD guns are pounding for them.
 
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Ahhhhh, I see the problem now... They're using MOA.

You don't know the half of it man...
Willing to bet the 'ol "I think in inches" wins the day again. Had a guy on my team pick up a Leupy 2.5-8x36 and waited for MOA turrets simply because...and I quote: "That's what the Corps issues".

You wouldn't believe the kit and shitty ideas some agencies have.
 
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Not for nothing but any armorer or swat sniper who cant do basic maintenance nor diagnostic and see what is clearly wrong with this rifles:

HAS
ZERO
FUCKING
BUSINESS

using them in the line of duty. That is some retard next level shit. You imagine these clowns taking a shot that could mean life or death?

I blame the people who accepted them and couldn't understand the issues as much as the idiot who built it. A competent Armorer/ Sniper section team leader should know better.

Frank you are a great man and service to the community. You should Bill them, In fact most States and the Federal government, its illegal to accept free work outside of some special circumstances. Maybe then the dept leadership will hold the idiot accountable for wasting taxpayer dollars.
 
Not for nothing but any armorer or swat sniper who cant do basic maintenance nor diagnostic and see what is clearly wrong with this rifles:

HAS
ZERO
FUCKING
BUSINESS

using them in the line of duty. That is some retard next level shit. You imagine these clowns taking a shot that could mean life or death?

I blame the people who accepted them and couldn't understand the issues as much as the idiot who built it. A competent Armorer/ Sniper section team leader should know better.

Frank you are a great man and service to the community. You should Bill them, In fact most States and the Federal government, its illegal to accept free work outside of some special circumstances. Maybe then the dept leadership will hold the idiot accountable for wasting taxpayer dollars.
Here is part of the problem and its not just LE but applies to mil as well. A lot of these guys get zero training on maintenance or building rifles etc...

When something like this hits us... I have to use it as an opportunity to teach them something that helps them. Just on the muzzle crowns alone they acknowledged it didn't look good to them and it was done twice before it was brought to us.

The batch of 10 guns we did just a short time ago. The first batch of 5 was brought up and they asked if we could look at one gun in particular. I said sure. What's up? It shoots no better than like 4 or 5moa. I said o.k. without taking the gun apart let's go measure the barrel and bore scope the chamber, bore and crown etc...

I asked.. how many rounds on it? They said not sure. I said guys put data books together and keep a log on rounds fired etc.. O.K. I'll give you my best guess with looking at the bore. These guns had been in service since like early 2000's time frame. I said... O.K. maybe 2500 rounds on this barrel/gun but if you want a hard number from me... I'm going to say this one isn't past 1500 rounds. The crown looks good, chamber work looks good but what are you guys using to clean the guns/barrels with? I get told... the previous guy in charge wouldn't let them clean them at all! Only a oil patch down the bore if they got caught out in the rain. I said....WHAT? So in like 20 or so years they've never been cleaned! He said affirmative. I said no... you can't do that. The previous guy in charge was worried about the cold bore shot. I said guys... even if there is a slight shift in cold bore on the first shot at 300 yards if it's an honest rifle you can knock the guys lights out.

I said, "I bet you my next paycheck that if I cleaned the barrel really good... it would shoot sub moa." Everyone one was quiet. These were all Obermeyer barrels on these other guns.

So we got into cleaning and maintenance and it was an opportunity to teach and for people to learn.
 
Not for nothing but any armorer or swat sniper who cant do basic maintenance nor diagnostic and see what is clearly wrong with this rifles:

HAS
ZERO
FUCKING
BUSINESS

using them in the line of duty. That is some retard next level shit. You imagine these clowns taking a shot that could mean life or death?

I blame the people who accepted them and couldn't understand the issues as much as the idiot who built it. A competent Armorer/ Sniper section team leader should know better.

A fair point. Finding these people isnt easy and neither is the training (40 hours to cert to be a "sniper" is a joke to say the least). Not trying to validate the fuckery; I more or less agree with you. As I said before, most don't know the half of the shit that goes on and how much of a paper tiger most teams are.
 
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Here is part of the problem and its not just LE but applies to mil as well. A lot of these guys get zero training on maintenance or building rifles etc...

When something like this hits us... I have to use it as an opportunity to teach them something that helps them. Just on the muzzle crowns alone they acknowledged it didn't look good to them and it was done twice before it was brought to us.

The batch of 10 guns we did just a short time ago. The first batch of 5 was brought up and they asked if we could look at one gun in particular. I said sure. What's up? It shoots no better than like 4 or 5moa. I said o.k. without taking the gun apart let's go measure the barrel and bore scope the chamber, bore and crown etc...

I asked.. how many rounds on it? They said not sure. I said guys put data books together and keep a log on rounds fired etc.. O.K. I'll give you my best guess with looking at the bore. These guns had been in service since like early 2000's time frame. I said... O.K. maybe 2500 rounds on this barrel/gun but if you want a hard number from me... I'm going to say this one isn't past 1500 rounds. The crown looks good, chamber work looks good but what are you guys using to clean the guns/barrels with? I get told... the previous guy in charge wouldn't let them clean them at all! Only a oil patch down the bore if they got caught out in the rain. I said....WHAT? So in like 20 or so years they've never been cleaned! He said affirmative. I said no... you can't do that. The previous guy in charge was worried about the cold bore shot. I said guys... even if there is a slight shift in cold bore on the first shot at 300 yards if it's an honest rifle you can knock the guys lights out.

I said, "I bet you my next paycheck that if I cleaned the barrel really good... it would shoot sub moa." Everyone one was quiet. These were all Obermeyer barrels on these other guns.

So we got into cleaning and maintenance and it was an opportunity to teach and for people to learn.
Also due to lawyers the shooters can’t touch their own rifles. Only an armorer can which is dumb.
 
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If the American Public knew how under trained and under experienced most police snipers are, they wouldn't allow it.

Take a 4 day class where you barely learn which end the bullets come out, Now you are a certified LE Sniper.

Absolute fucking insanity. At least in the Military you have Sniper school which is about 2 months long, and hopefully a few of those school trained guys who can pass down knowledge to the young guys waiting for school slots. Military snipers are also not taking high risk shots with civilians for the most part. Shooting is a small part of the job but there is at least standards, selection and the threat of being kicked back to a line unit if you cant perform.

I know LE snipers who cannot even do basic shit like mount a scope or boresight a rifle. At the end of the day if you don't have a passion or "NEED" to understand the ways of the long rifle, then there is not much hope. I have tried to help them out , invite them to matches, training days but they just dont care. Its a Job to them. And not a full time job so they really don't give a shit. Its sad and pathetic.


Personally I would rather LE snipers be relegated to Full Time/ Higher End regional teams who atleast have a training/selection criteria and continuous training. Every department doesn't need a team. With FBI regional teams , Large metro teams and most states police having a full time team, there is little need for it anyway IMO. Just because you can do it, doesnt mean you should.

/rant off