Considering some version of lapping a Lee Enfield barrel?

[Rick]

All predicated on the fast buck and to hell with the company, the consequences and everyone else.

Societies can only survive with that kind of mentality if they are geographically and financially isolated from all competitors, and we ain't.

Possibly worse, the investor group that was the final owners of MRC as an operating entity never showed any indication they were actually motivated by profit and growing the business. I wasn't there while they were operating, but I did rummage through pretty much all their electronic files and paperwork they left laying around while trying to figure out how to resurrect the company.

About the only way I can generally describe what I saw was that it was a vanity project by the group - or at least the members steering the ship (perhaps one was a friend who came along for the ride).

It's going on five years now since that happened, so I'm probably forgetting some of the details already, but if there was any singular focus on turning a profit, I never saw any evidence of that. The way they mismanaged everything, with that mindset they couldn't have hit the water if they fell out of a boat.

Which is pretty weird, because from what I remember of who was in that investor group, they had the money to invest coming from building their own successful companies, not just a career in a high salaried job.

One of my tiny little dreams as we moved towards trying to meet the enormous demand for barrels was that perhaps one day with all that CNC machinery, we could one day do our own little vanity project and faithfully reproduce Lee Enfield and Ross Rifle barrels as close to the originals as possible. Unfortunately for that dream... my friend who bought the company then killed what should have been a millionaire-maker opportunity by veering off on his own vanity project. Rather than just making rifle barrel blanks as fast as possible to meet the enormous demand, he decided to ignore that with a dream of introducing his own line of AR-15 rifles with his name on it. Jumped over hundred dollar bills to grasp at quarters, etc.

The whole thing from beginning to end with MRC and then the new company was simply sad. The demand for barrel blanks is still huge... the three of us that helped him try to get it off the ground still get contacted about making barrel blanks.

But there have been almost four years of litigation since we walked away and he attempted to freeze out the investor who loaned him $1.5 million. Our former friend who we tried to help has been suing his investor, former customers, etc incessantly ever since then - losing every time. He's now down to living in his mom's basement suit with his wife and five kids, driving her vehicle... and still going back to court when he can find a lawyer willing to work for him. Madness.

The original Pratt & Whitney gun drills and reamers from the original Springfield Armory are gone. The Haas CNC machines are gone. A quarter million would probably be enough to purchase one machining cell and get running - but none of us have that kind of money and not sure about diving back into that pool, despite the people still beating on any door that could possibly provide them with barrel blanks.

I should probably post pictures of those vintage Pratt & Whitney gun drills and the cutoff machine - still running as it was when manufactured in 1902.