Has anyone here used Retro Arms Works to cut, crown and thread their barrel? What are your thoughts, pleased with the work, turn around time and price?


Thank you!




Post pics if you have them!


 

You mean Retro Arms Works, yes John Thomas does top notch work, I have no photos to share but if you look through the past threads you will see his name and praises mentioned about 1,000 times.

Yes, exactly! Thank you. I edited my post. I saw on another post that he charges $50 for the cutting, crowning and threading service. This seem about right to you? What was your turn around like?

 

The $50 price is correct as of 7/31/2015. That is when he sent me his list of prices for me to add to my spreadsheet.
I have not had any work done by him (yet),  but I can safely say that if/when I do need work done, my rifles will be going to him.

His turn around time is OUTSTANDING!!!!

He did my 605 barrel cut / rethread / FSB lug removal with re-park in 5 days. But the times vary with his work load, give him a call, he usually answers the phone, he will give you his current time frame.
Real nice person to deal with.

John does excellent work. I initially spent some time on the phone with him talking about an idea I had for a prototype carbine build. He was willing to take on the project which was taking an old Beretta BM59  7.62mm muzzle brake/FH combo and grafting it to a 16 in carbine barrel. The hard part was cutting down the barrel, reducing the diameter so as to slip onto the muzzle brake and retain as much of the original barrel length for velocity sakes and then threading a portion of it in front of the fsb to screw the muzzle brake  on. All this while still keeping as close to 16" as possible. He also removed the bayo lug from the fsb since the combo came with one built into it. He had to keep the new combo timed just right with the new threads he cut. It came out perfect. I don't have any current pictures but John took several that he sent in an email showing the progress which I'm sure he would be willing to share with you if you ask him.

I plan on sending him a barrel in the next week or so.  He is a VERY NICE guy.  Takes time to really help a guy out too.

John fixed this one up for me although I have not shot it yet. It was 1.2" too long and had a HELL of a time trying to get the sight base off the barrel

So I was reading down through the posts in this thread, and I noticed the post count of most of the posters...........and I realized that most of you guys are relatively newcomers to the retro forum. Let it be known that John can be your "go to guy" without worry. There's a couple other, well............several at least............guys that you can count on to do good work on your retro builds. John Thomas, Braceman, NoDakSlud, HeatnBeat,Brick,..............several others........that are longtime retro guys that do excellent work. If you are looking for particular work, and their name is mentioned, you can rest assured that you can trust their work to be some of the best available.................with no worries.

^^^^^^^^^^^ This ^^^^^^^^^^^^^       Just stay away from Boywonder777 - he's like the crack dealer of retro!  

first hit's free

No its not

shhhh

Well, give him a little credit.  You can't run a retro business on charity, after all.

Here's where he started out:

....and then some of us don't post just anything to add up posts either, Hell I was lurking here for 3 years before I decided this year to finally join! LOL  You can learn an awful lot just by reading and gleaning from others escapades. There are a lot of fellas in here that have taken a large step into what they offer. All depends how far into this you want to get. I TRY and do everything myself but some things ya just don't mess with if you don't have the tools to do it.  The local "gunsmiths" here where I am at said oh that's too old why don't you just buy a new barrel? or I don't know how to accomplish that for you. Its was cutting an inch off the barrel and threading it to the sight post! Good lord...so I went to RAW and had John accomplish it for me.

OP good luck in your adventure, every build becomes a new fun monster to play with!

Hmmmm. I notice that Stoner modestly left his own name of of that list.

I vote to add it to the list
.f4enut

He was avoiding work!