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Posted: 9/5/2012 5:38:27 PM EDT
So I purchased a Red X Arms stainless steel fluted barrel. Did a little research and most people had good luck from what I could see. I went ahead and bought one. BIG mistake. I had Reaper Tactical which is a local guy build the rifle for me. When he went to head space it he said it was tight but should be fine. I was having a problem with the rifle stove piping the shells. So I went to a shoot that Reaper Tactical put on at a local gun range. I had the owner shoot my rifle and he experienced the problem. We tried swapping everything over from a different AR he had there. It came down to the barrel. He took the rifle back and tried to contact Red X Arms via email and phone with out any luck. They replied to him by email finally asking what ammo we were using. I really was hoping they would stand behind there product as it was a new barrel. So Reaper Tactical reamed the chamber to spec with a Reamer trying to solve the problem. When fired it was over gassing now due to the gas port in the barrel being to large. This barrel was either a screw up one off or this is simply just a poor product. But seeing as RED X ARMS is not helping us at all I am guessing that the barrels they make are just plain crap. So people be aware. This company will NOT stand behind there product at all. I am forced to buy another barrel now.
PS, we could get the rifle to cycle properly by clocking the gas block to lower the amount of gas pushing the bolt back. The repair is obvioulsly an adjustable gas block or buy a descent barrel. I don't like band aid fixes so I'm buying a new barrel. 
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Posted: 9/5/2012 6:38:46 PM EDT
[#1]
Maybe try contacting your credit card company? They sent me the wrong rail once and absolutely refused to refund me until I threatened to contact my CC company. That worked pretty easily.
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Posted: 9/5/2012 7:27:03 PM EDT
[#2]
I had never heard of this outfit, after your post I googled them and I found a 14 page thread on another AR board on them.
I have NEVER seen so many first time posters come out of the woodwork praising a company 
There is enough smoke floating around on Red X to scream FIRE! They are in Minnesota, and even though they are quite a distance from St. Paul, my guess is...BLACKTHORNE! Look around, there is info out there. |
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Posted: 9/5/2012 8:13:53 PM EDT
[#3]
Dude, you live in WI, you bought a No name stainless, hmm.. I wonder if there are any awesome barrel makers in WI. Sorry,couldn't help it.
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Posted: 9/5/2012 8:29:28 PM EDT
[#4]
dude they are called RED X.... alarms should have been going off.
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Posted: 9/6/2012 3:15:54 AM EDT
[#5]
if the gas port is too big try an adj gasblock to lessen the gas.
It should work, and call it a paid lesson. |
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Posted: 9/6/2012 5:28:48 AM EDT
[#6]
Buddy of mine picked up an upper made by them at a gun show couple weeks back from a third party. Same issue.
Had the bolt shatter at a shoot this past weekend as well, literally shatter. Luckily the 3rd party he bought it from was nice enough to warranty the parts for life, sounds like its gonna be a big mistake on his end. |
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Posted: 9/6/2012 6:04:23 AM EDT
[#7]
Quoted:
Buddy of mine picked up an upper made by them at a gun show couple weeks back from a third party. Same issue. Had the bolt shatter at a shoot this past weekend as well, literally shatter. Luckily the 3rd party he bought it from was nice enough to warranty the parts for life, sounds like its gonna be a big mistake on his end. If it looks like a Duck, Walks like a Duck, Quacks like a Duck, Swims like a Duck, then it must be a Duck Blackthorne! |
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Posted: 9/6/2012 7:41:54 AM EDT
[#8]
Quoted:
If it looks like a Duck, Walks like a Duck, Quacks like a Duck, Swims like a Duck, then it must be a Duck Blackthorne! ^Touche to that. Buddy figured if the seller is gonna back it for life what harm could there be in trying an unknown, twas not a good judgement on his part. |
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Posted: 9/6/2012 3:55:25 PM EDT
[#9]
Yeah, I emailed them again today and they assure me that the barrel is not the problem. But they can't do anything anyway because we rechambered the barrel. Go figure. They make 3000 barrels a month and it's impossible that is the cause. I emailed back stating I would let them know how my rifle shot with my new Barrel. Lol
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Posted: 9/6/2012 4:26:20 PM EDT
[#10]
Quoted:
Dude, you live in WI, you bought a No name stainless, hmm.. I wonder if there are any awesome barrel makers in WI. Sorry,couldn't help it. I am pretty new to the AR scene and fire arms in general. Is there a good AR company here in Wisconsin I could have used. I had Devin at Reaper Tactical help me with the build. I feel I got a very good deal on all the other parts on my rifle. The barrel was something I picked out myself. So I definitely can't blame Devin. I guess I should have done more research. I wanted a Wilson arms barrel or dpms but both had a long lead time. I believe I am going with a JSE barrel now. It's stainless steel but not fluted. Regardless Devin has done a bunch of work with JSE so he has a lot of faith in them. |
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Posted: 9/6/2012 4:33:57 PM EDT
[#11]
Their parent company is Deer County Archery, a company that is run out of a house with a husband and wife setup.
From Google Earth and Zwillow, it looks like a small farm. I do not think they manufacture anything. ETA: The above opinion might be wrong because they have a 07 FFL. |
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Posted: 9/6/2012 4:35:14 PM EDT
[#12]
Originally Posted By fastfive_ogt I am pretty new to the AR scene and fire arms in general. Is there a good AR company here in Wisconsin I could have used. I had Devin at Reaper Tactical help me with the build. I feel I got a very good deal on all the other parts on my rifle. The barrel was something I picked out myself. So I definitely can't blame Devin. I guess I should have done more research. I wanted a Wilson arms barrel or dpms but both had a long lead time. I believe I am going with a JSE barrel now. It's stainless steel but not fluted. Regardless Devin has done a bunch of work with JSE so he has a lot of faith in them. Why don't you look at the Industry section of this site? There are some awesome people to deal with on it. |
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Posted: 9/6/2012 4:46:27 PM EDT
[#13]
Quoted: I had never heard of this outfit, after your post I googled them and I found a 14 page thread on another AR board on them. I have NEVER seen so many first time posters come out of the woodwork praising a company There is enough smoke floating around on Red X to scream FIRE! They are in Minnesota, and even though they are quite a distance from St. Paul, my guess is...BLACKTHORNE! Look around, there is info out there. some guy selling stuff out of a shed out back I think, there was a thread about an out of spec upper he sold that kept breaking the plastic pins on an nfa lower |
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Posted: 9/6/2012 4:47:33 PM EDT
[#14]
Quoted: Their parent company is Deer County Archery, a company that is run out of a house with a husband and wife setup. From Google Earth and Zwillow, it looks like a small farm. I do not think they manufacture anything. ETA: The above opinion might be wrong because they have a 07 FFL. I think he makes barrels in his shed |
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Posted: 9/6/2012 5:01:47 PM EDT
[#15]
I had considered one of their 300 BLK uppers, they looked nice, but they were 1 in 10" twist. That made me wonder since 1 in 7 or 8 is the developers recommendation. Glad I went with SOTA. they were about the same price and I am very pleased with it so far.
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Posted: 9/6/2012 5:08:22 PM EDT
[#16]
Sorry for your bad luck but would you really expect ANY company to do anything for you once you rechamber their barrel.
Also, JSE doesn't make their own barrels (or parts). I have had all good expectancies with them except once they forgot my trigger guard in a LPK. They said they would send me a new one but never did. I'm not gonna get my undies in a bunch over a $3 part. I ordered a barrel directly from DPMS before and had it within 2 weeks. It actually was a pretty good price. |
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Posted: 9/7/2012 6:39:17 AM EDT
[#17]
I'm sorry you had to join my world. Yes their stuff is garbage and their customer service is without a doubt the worse i have ever had the mis-fortune to try to deal with. I also happen to be the one who posted about them blaming another company for the shit upper reciever of theirs that was so out of spec that it kept breaking pins, and yes the ss barrel was so tight that it took me about two months of polishing to make it work. You can find that thread over on predatormasters.com, do a search for "a tail of two companys" in the firearms or ar section.
You will never get any help from red-x without pulling your cc number and then if they do help you it will be someones elses crap they send you. You would be much better off with your time to spend it trying to tell others about red-x so they don't go there. I can only guess that red-x arms is trying to give blackthorn/hess a run for their money to see who is the biggest p.o.s. out there. Good luck, blue. |
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Posted: 9/8/2012 11:31:22 AM EDT
[#18]
I must have been lucky
 REDX 20" SS Varmint upper. RRA carrier group I had here.Stock trigger in lower
my 52 gr. handloads function fine. Accuracy so..so. 4 moa @ 200 yds of course it may prefer something around 68-69 gr. When I feel better I'll try some different handloads and swap lowers to an RRA match trigger lower. I can't bitch. I can't build an upper for this price. considering the 204 barrel I bought was $299.00. 
best 4 at 100 yds. to zero. at 10 shots it opens up a bit 
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Posted: 9/8/2012 11:54:55 AM EDT
[#19]
really your better off stepping up to a known manufacture on parts.
I'm old and like to goof around and try stuff, kinda just to see. Rainer Arms select barrels are priced very well along with a few others under $200.00 Fulton Armoury, WOA and are known shooters!
I've been very pleased with the wilson combat 204 barrel. it's not cheap though. 
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Posted: 9/15/2012 2:55:21 PM EDT
[#20]
I built the rifle for him. As a new manufacturer there is very little I do in house other than assemble rifles. Fastfive wanted a specific look to his rifle and I just wasn't able to get my hands on what he wanted. He found RedX on his own, so I went ahead and ordered him a barrel. I tried DEZ, she didn't have anything SS Fluted. The first sign of trouble should have come when the bolt was difficult to close on a 5.56NATO MIN gauge. I use Forster 5.56NATO MIN and MAX gauges to head space all of my builds. I also test fired the rifle putting 30 rounds through it. It seemed to cycle OK. Long story short, once the problem was verified we set to work replacing all suspect parts, and then moved on to parts you would normally not suspect. Nothing changed. I suspected the brass could be sticking in the chamber causing the erratic extraction. I ordered a 5.56 finish reamer and set about correcting the chamber. Once I got it to close cleanly on the MIN gauge, and verified it did not close on the MAX gauge, I took it back out to test fire. It was now plainly obvious that it was over gassed and the extremely over sized gas port proved it. During this time I contacted RedX 3 times, twice by email and once by phone. As Fastfive said, the only response was, "what kind of ammo". I feel pretty confident that three different boxes of American Eagle AR223 wasn't the culprit. I replaced the barrel with a Del-Ton SS M4 profiel barrel sourced through JSE. I have used Del-Ton parts in the past and have confidence in their product. Amazingly (not really) the rifle functions perfectly. Clean extraction, clean cycling, good shooter!!
Moral of the story, they might get a couple good barrels out but their product is not worth taking a chance on. I strongly suggest nobody purchase their product. If anybody is wondering, I ate some of the cost of the repair. While it could easily be argued he picked the barrel, blah, blah, blah. In the end it's my build with my name on it and I refuse to allow a poor product to become a thorn in my side. I feel I offered a fair solution, and I hope Fastfive agrees. |
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Posted: 9/16/2012 10:26:43 AM EDT
[#21]
Quoted:
I built the rifle for him. As a new manufacturer there is very little I do in house other than assemble rifles. Fastfive wanted a specific look to his rifle and I just wasn't able to get my hands on what he wanted. He found RedX on his own, so I went ahead and ordered him a barrel. I tried DEZ, she didn't have anything SS Fluted. The first sign of trouble should have come when the bolt was difficult to close on a 5.56NATO MIN gauge. I use Forster 5.56NATO MIN and MAX gauges to head space all of my builds. I also test fired the rifle putting 30 rounds through it. It seemed to cycle OK. Long story short, once the problem was verified we set to work replacing all suspect parts, and then moved on to parts you would normally not suspect. Nothing changed. I suspected the brass could be sticking in the chamber causing the erratic extraction. I ordered a 5.56 finish reamer and set about correcting the chamber. Once I got it to close cleanly on the MIN gauge, and verified it did not close on the MAX gauge, I took it back out to test fire. It was now plainly obvious that it was over gassed and the extremely over sized gas port proved it. During this time I contacted RedX 3 times, twice by email and once by phone. As Fastfive said, the only response was, "what kind of ammo". I feel pretty confident that three different boxes of American Eagle AR223 wasn't the culprit. I replaced the barrel with a Del-Ton SS M4 profiel barrel sourced through JSE. I have used Del-Ton parts in the past and have confidence in their product. Amazingly (not really) the rifle functions perfectly. Clean extraction, clean cycling, good shooter! ok oh I don't doubt ya fivonut. in low cost stuff they might have 2+ suppliers. they contract everthing to a low bid machine shop. I would guess? Basically sourcing changes ? I got lucky I guess. just a toy for me
Moral of the story, they might get a couple good barrels out but their product is not worth taking a chance on. I strongly suggest nobody purchase their product. If anybody is wondering, I ate some of the cost of the repair. While it could easily be argued he picked the barrel, blah, blah, blah. In the end it's my build with my name on it and I refuse to allow a poor product to become a thorn in my side. I feel I offered a fair solution, and I hope Fastfive agrees. |
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Posted: 10/13/2012 10:14:42 PM EDT
[#22]
Bought one of the ss m4 barrels and it too was stove piping every 3-5 rounds Carbine gas port should be drilled to .063. The red x barrel is drilled .093. Added an adjustable gas block and no more stove piping. U get what u pay for I guess. Lesson learned
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