Quoted: Quoted: ORF sold me a M70 receiver that looks damn nice. Trial fitting is perfect but I am waiting on a NO-DAK SPUD to compare. Maybe I got lucky. WTF is a NO-DAK SPUD?

Don't know much about AKs do you?  NDS builds the best stamped AK receivers on the market right now.

At my shop we use them to build AKs that turn out like this:






I won't touch anything made by Hesse or Vulcan.  Its not worth my time to even work on it, nor your money to ship it to me and pay me to look at it.

I can't believe that this thread has gone 3 pages already.  Vulcan guns are the biggest pieces of crap on the market and everyone knows it.  There is no reason to argue because the proof is in the pudding, as they say.  

Quoted:

See sigline.

I've only had 1 mishap of even touching a Vulcan Armament rifle. It was at some private dealer's residence, way out in the fucking boonies, and it was a "special" item he said. He said he needed to get it out from the back, because they've been having a lot of break-ins around the area (fucking CORNFIELDS) and he didn't want that "special" baby to get taken. So, he pulls out a VA-15, M4 stylish.

The front sight post was canted so far to the right, you could've turned it sideways and done it homeboy style.

The flashhider had some white resin that looked like carpenters glue leaked up the barrel.

The handguards were extremely loose. (like, almost fell out of the holding rings)

The rear sight aperature had the same white resin, glue-like substance all around it, and it didn't look like it was actually attatched to the carrying handle. I wiggled it, and the guy nearly snatched it out of my hands before I "broke" it.

When I slid the charging handle back and slid it back home... It felt like I was rubbing two pieces of sandpaper together.

The whole thing was fucking attrocious and I don't ever want to even SMELL a Vulcan Armament/Hesse weapon near me ever again.


ETA: He offered it to let me walk out with it for $1150, and that'd be a steal... I laughed and showed him my Colt 6700 in the trunk that I got for a hell of a lot cheaper than that and got the hell out of there.

Jesus...

IT TAKES 3 pages to say they are JUNK


Gun shop in IN   what TOWN was it??

I sure miss my Gun shop in IND. I had store credit

no good shops in my town here in punta gorda

Quoted: IT TAKES 3 pages to say they are JUNK Gun shop in IN   what TOWN was it?? I sure miss my Gun shop in IND. I had store credit no good shops in my town here in punta gorda

I don't think it really had a name (that I remember of anyways), but it was in Henry County if I'm not mistaken.

Quoted: Quoted: Quoted: If Colt is filet mignon, and Olympic Arms is Spam, then Vulcan would reside as ground up cow anus stuck to the inside of the dumpster at the Spam factory. DAMN ! That's just wrong !

I think it really is wrong.  It would more likely be pig anus.  I don't think they use that many beef parts in spam, mostly pig.

vulcan/hesse is junk

its like asking what is the matter w/ chicom crap or why fire burns or why the sky is blue

it just is

Quoted: IT TAKES 3 pages to say they are JUNK Gun shop in IN   what TOWN was it?? I sure miss my Gun shop in IND. I had store credit no good shops in my town here in punta gorda

And that's just this one thread.

Do a search and find out how many times the words Hesse, Vulcan, Joeken, Blackthorne, or akpartskits.com pop up in thread titles.

I suspect it is mainly due to the victims being in denial and having to read it being said one more time.

Sadly they just pass on the garbage to some other layman down the road rather than destroy it.

Only three pages ??

Quoted:He offered it to let me walk out with it for $1150, and that'd be a steal... I laughed and showed him my Colt 6700 in the trunk that I got for a hell of a lot cheaper than that and got the hell out of there.

Whats that saying about a fool and his money?
Those are the worst gun owners, the ones with total crap but are so convinced their stuff is the best on the market...


To contribute to the thread, I was looking at Vulcan stuff when I was building. The prices looked good, but when you realize that the pieces are LITERALLY likely to break from using it, you start to appreciate RRA and Bushmaster alot more.

I hope you got a good deal, and I hope you aren't banking your life on it.

The truth is more along the lines of it depends on the rifle model being purchased.

I have seen several Vulcan V50' come through the local shop and each and every one has been absolutely unacceptable by my standards.  Two of them were actually locking up on the bolt handle, one of which resulted in a cracked receiver tang.  Both, when the bolt handle was relieved to allow them to properly engage the locking lugs were then between 30 and 40 thousanths over the allowable headspace limit.  The good news is that the headspace issue is easy to fix with the surplus M2 barrels that are used.

But basically, based on what I have seen, I would never buy a V50, even if the price was exceptional - and if I had a weak moment and did so, I would do so with the understanding it would need some fairly expensive gunsmithing to get it properly set up.  

Similarly, Hesse built FAL's had a horrible reputation and I'd pass on those as well, unless I could get it very cheap with the expectation that it would be a project gun in need of lots of TLC.  And quite frankly, Century's equally bad FAL's burned me out on ever wanting another project gun for the rest of my life.    

On the other hand I have purchased a couple of AR kits as well as an upper half from the newest Blackthorn incarnation of Hesse/Vulcan and have found them to be equal in quality to the DPMS factory rifles I have purchased.  They have all went together with absolutely no issues with fit, finish or tolerances.  And all of the resulting rifles have proven to be accurate, reliable, and durable in use.  

In my experience, the parts have mostly been DPMS with others thrown in, at least for kits and upper half I have purchased.  I cannot speak to smaller accessory parts such as carry handles sights etc, but I have no reservations about buying barrels, upper halves, bolt/bolt carriers and kits from them as the quality has been great.

In addition, one of my best freinds is a former military armourer with 23 years of experience in building arms for US Army marksmanship units as well as rebuilding and upgrading various AR variants.  His opinion of the parts and fit on the Blackthorn kits was that they were fine and were not something he would have been concerned with using in a service rifle. And this comes from an armourer who was a picky SOB who in the course of his career had a reputation for teaching arsenals a thing or two about achieving and maintaining quality control in the arms they produced.

I respect his experience and his opinon infintiely more than I do the opinions of keyboard commandos who jump on the bandwagon to bash Vulcan/Blackthorn AR's when most of them have probably not actually owed one, let alone shot one or even seen one. An opinion based in ignorance is totally worthless and one based on the experience of a friend's cousin's sister's brother-in law who knew someone who owned one is only very slightly better than worthless.          

In short, I have another Blackthorn upper half on the little brown truck enroute to my house as we speak.    

Quoted: The truth is more along the lines of it depends on the rifle model being purchased. I have seen several Vulcan V50' come through the local shop and each and every one has been absolutely unacceptable by my standards.  Two of them were actually locking up on the bolt handle, one of which resulted in a cracked receiver tang.  Both, when the bolt handle was relieved to allow them to properly engage the locking lugs were then between 30 and 40 thousanths over the allowable headspace limit.  The good news is that the headspace issue is easy to fix with the surplus M2 barrels that are used. But basically, based on what I have seen, I would never buy a V50, even if the price was exceptional - and if I had a weak moment and did so, I would do so with the understanding it would need some fairly expensive gunsmithing to get it properly set up.   Similarly, Hesse built FAL's had a horrible reputation and I'd pass on those as well, unless I could get it very cheap with the expectation that it would be a project gun in need of lots of TLC.  And quite frankly, Century's equally bad FAL's burned me out on ever wanting another project gun for the rest of my life.     On the other hand I have purchased a couple of AR kits as well as an upper half from the newest Blackthorn incarnation of Hesse/Vulcan and have found them to be equal in quality to the DPMS factory rifles I have purchased.  They have all went together with absolutely no issues with fit, finish or tolerances.  And all of the resulting rifles have proven to be accurate, reliable, and durable in use.   In my experience, the parts have mostly been DPMS with others thrown in, at least for kits and upper half I have purchased.  I cannot speak to smaller accessory parts such as carry handles sights etc, but I have no reservations about buying barrels, upper halves, bolt/bolt carriers and kits from them as the quality has been great. In addition, one of my best freinds is a former military armourer with 23 years of experience in building arms for US Army marksmanship units as well as rebuilding and upgrading various AR variants.  His opinion of the parts and fit on the Blackthorn kits was that they were fine and were not something he would have been concerned with using in a service rifle. And this comes from an armourer who was a picky SOB who in the course of his career had a reputation for teaching arsenals a thing or two about achieving and maintaining quality control in the arms they produced. I respect his experience and his opinon infintiely more than I do the opinions of keyboard commandos who jump on the bandwagon to bash Vulcan/Blackthorn AR's when most of them have probably not actually owed one, let alone shot one or even seen one. An opinion based in ignorance is totally worthless and one based on the experience of a friend's cousin's sister's brother-in law who knew someone who owned one is only very slightly better than worthless.           In short, I have another Blackthorn upper half on the little brown truck enroute to my house as we speak.

Do I need to actually eat dog shit to know that it tastes like crap?
reference this linky:ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=3&f=12&t=329225&page=1

and just in case you are lazy like this land whale:

here is a pic of your rifle in a few range session:

Quoted: I thought there were some open & experienced minds here but looks like i was wrong

Nope, just brand snobs.

My Vulcan's all work fine.

Quoted: Quoted: I thought there were some open & experienced minds here but looks like i was wrong Nope, just brand snobs. My Vulcan's all work fine.

I can see calling a Colt owner who bashes Bushmaster a brand snob.
But Vulcan is shit...pure grade A, freshly squeezed through the sphincter, pieces of corn in it SHIT.

Quoted: Quoted: I thought there were some open & experienced minds here but looks like i was wrong Nope, just brand snobs. My Vulcan's all work fine.

For now...then when it breaks, and it will, I bet you will whine and blame everyone but yourself for buying from the crappiest, cheapest, downright worst POS AR dealer ever to appear on the market.
Guess we are all just intraweb commando's  posting  photochopped pics of broken equipment made by Vulcan/Hesse/"enter-next-bankruptcy-dodging-name-here"

How can you literally look at all of the evidence and supporting materials and still procede to say we are brand snobs for saying they are junk?
I bet you have bought a Deaths Head Rune M98k from Mitchells Mausers too and think you got the deal of a lifetime

the only vulcan i've ever seen had to be manually cycled on all 30 rounds after that the fellow sheepishly put it back in his rifle case and quit talking smack about my overpriced rock river

Dam, ya'll chill http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v610/hossfly692000/ARR1.jpg

you may have gotten lucky. now if you have a problem with it good luck getting their customer service to help you out. i had a 50 cal from them, it was crap right out of the box, and they would not help. i sent them the nastiest letter i have ever written.

I have *heard* from a *reliable* source that Vulcan/Hesse essentially buys out of spec scrap parts from other manufacturers, and pieces together rifles with them. I have no personal experience with Vulcan/Hesse, but I have never heard anything good about them (save for a comment or two in this thread).

I looked at the Vulcan V94 once. One look was all it took. It was welded just as shotty at the AK picture in this thread if not worse. I still don't know how they stay in business selling pieces of junk like the one I saw. It looks like they would have either been sued or forced out of business by the ATF.

Just a quick bump to say that there is no excuse to buy Vulcan, Hesse, Blackthorne, etc. Just read some advice on another board where someone was propogating the idea of using a Vulcan lower and I was luckily able to refer to this thread for a summary of the info about Vulcan.

I am not standing up for Vulcan at all I just thought I would post on here how one of my good friends got lucky on getting one of the few Vulcan's that works.
He bought a Vulcan AR and has put 5000 rounds through it so far with out a single problem. It's the 20" A3 model.
He bought it just to see how bad it really was, he has used it to hunt with as well, he once put it thru a 500 round trial as fast as he could pull the trigger, he didn't have any jam's of any kind.
He got lucky. He sayes he is going to buy more Vulcan's.
Me I'm going to stick with my bushMaster they did good with me.

Quoted: Quoted: Read bad things about the Vulcan Arms AR15 but i got one on trade & don't see nothing wrong with it  Opererates great, very accurate, other parts fit, wats the down side to them you Must Have got a good one..

As the owner of a Hesse Carbon Fiber lower (circa 2000) ..... which is now a dedicated .22lr... I feel I TOO got a lucky one..... but that's why I made it the .22, just in case.  It's in spec, all the parts fit, functions fine... but when I saw the pics and read the problems people were having, I made it into a less "stressed" configuration.

No Expert

My good friend has a V-15 that his dad gave him. It was brand new. He hasn't had any problems, but he has only put around 90 rounds through it. I told him that he should trade it in at a pawn shop and use it towards a better AR. He must be dumber than shit because he said his dad's boss, the police chief, uses a Vulcan. I about fell over. He said he uses it because "it's light". Fucking tard!

Back to the rifle. When I compared it to my RRA Midlength, it looked wrong. The gun looked like the Lighthouse for the Blind put it together. He always refuses to go shooting now. I guess when I sent him a few of these links here, he realized he has a Piece of Shit. He still defends it though. He always talks about his stupid Surefire 2 piece quadrail. Poor guy, living in denial.....

height=8

Quoted: My good friend has a V-15 that his dad gave him. It was brand new. He hasn't had any problems, but he has only put around 90 rounds through it. I told him that he should trade it in at a pawn shop and use it towards a better AR. He must be dumber than shit because he said his dad's boss, the police chief, uses a Vulcan. I about fell over. He said he uses it because "it's light". Fucking tard! Back to the rifle. When I compared it to my RRA Midlength, it looked wrong. The gun looked like the Lighthouse for the Blind put it together. He always refuses to go shooting now. I guess when I sent him a few of these links here, he realized he has a Piece of Shit. He still defends it though. He always talks about his stupid Surefire 2 piece quadrail. Poor guy, living in denial.....

Why not tell us how you really feel had
If your "good freind" is dumber than shit wat does that make you?
Foul mouth asshole IMHO

Quoted: When they were Hexxe (Hesse) they lost a money order I sent them and I went through a six month ordeal to get their damn upper which was made post ban compliant by grinding off the bayonet lug and putting on a permanent brake.  It is easier to list what is right with them.

That and the rat bastards cashed my check and lost my order for months.  I had to send them a copy of the cashed check for THEM to research.  Robert Hexxe is a tool.

Quoted: Quoted: snip Why not tell us how you really feel If my Dad had ever give me anything i'd most like'ly defend it too & not want to run to the first pawn shop & trade it off If your "good freind" is dumber than shit wat does that make you? Foul mouth asshole IMHO

ETA:
This guy isn't a good friend anymore, in fact, he ain't a friend anymore. I forgot to do the strike through!

First off, this guy talks shit about anything that isn't a 350Z! It could be a nice Mustang GT or something else, but it's still a POS! Second, his Dad helped God create the Heavens and the Earth! His Dad is a small town cop according to his wife, but to him, he is Dick Fucking Tracy! When I first got my Taurus, he made some shitty little comment. Now that he got the Vulcan from his Dad, he won't admit that it's shit. I'm sorry, but if my Dad gave me a Vulcan, I would trade it off quick, fast, and in a hurry. I would then show my Dad these posts and let him know why I did it.

I'm not going to go into any more detail because you've already made your opnion and I won't change it. You would have to be here and see exactly what I'm talking about. I can shoot you an email or PM if you want. Just let me know!

But the main point is that Vulcan sucks.