Somebody mentioned earlier this week that someone from ARFCOM staff was having problems with a deal with Model 1 Sales.  I'm hoping to order a 6.8 barrel or complete upper soon, and I want to know if they should still be on the list for consideration.  

Please post your impressions of dealing with those guys, as well as any other 6.8 manufacturer/dealer experiences, particularly vendors on the EE.

I've had good experiences with ADCO, IIRC who sell 6.8 uppers.  

I'm posting this one everywhere:

www.ar15.com/forums/topic.html?b=1&f=5&t=277277

ETA:  I like J&T.

I ordered a 20" 6.8 Rem Model 1 Sales post ban barrel a few weeks ago.  After it didn't arrive a week or so after it was promised to ship, I called Model 1.  I could hear someone slappin' a computer keyboard and rustling through papers in the background before being put on hold.  A few minutes later someone picked up the line and said "Sorry, we must have lost your order."  So I ordered the barrel, bolt, and a few odd parts again and was told that it should ship by the end of the week.  Two days later I came home to a call on my answering machine -- we lost your credit card number.   So I had to make a third long distance call ( no toll free number -- hmmm, imagine that ) to get things squared away.  The barrel did ship as promised -- more or less -- and I assembled a new upper ( my first build ) a couple days ago using it, a Bushmaster varmint float tube, and a RRA flat top upper.

Here's my impressions of the barrel for what it's worth.  The finish looks good, but it isn't terribly durable.  I've already put two scratches on it and one was just the barrel rubbing lightly against the zipper of a gun case -- but I guess that's why they make flat black Krylon.  The barrel has a 11 degree target crown, but it's not as nicely cut as you'd expect on a "custom" barrel and it doesn't have the typical bevelled cut into the rifling to minimize dings to the muzzle.  It also appears to me that the bore wasn't plugged when it was immersed in the park/phosphate solution.  The gas port is HUGE and I could feel a slight burr when punching the bore with a patch.

The chamber is very tight and I initially didn't think it was correctly headspaced because I couldn't get a dummy 6.8 round I made up to chamber using resized once-fired brass obtained from PRi.  After ignoring the Redding directions and setting up the die to bump the shoulder back as much as possible, I was able to get a couple dummy rounds to chamber and extract quite nicely by manually cycling the action.

I mounted a 3-9X40 Nikon scope on the rifle and sighted it in this morning.  By the time I found center at 30 or so yards and then moved back to around 100yds, I was running out of time to do much load testing.  The rifle printed two three shot groups with tight windage ( 0.5" or so ) but both opened up vertically with two near shots and a shot 1.0" or so out the top or the bottom to open the group to around 1.5" or a bit more.  My guess is that the upper should be able to hold 1.0" with a little work on the load and my bench technique ( I shoot a lot of High Power, but very little from a bench and it's clearly a whole different game ).

In any case, that's my story.  While I received everything more or less as expected from M1S, I doubt I'd go this route again.  Given the bad experiences that others are posting and the mix ups and fumbling about on their part that I encountered, this really seems like a company that doesn't have it quite together.  Saving a few bucks just isn't worth the aggravation...

P.S. On the plus side, ya gotta love that nice THUNK! of a 6.8 going off, though I now know how 22PPC shooters feel since I spent a while on my hands and knees feeling through clumps of pasture field grass in order to find the fired 6.8 brass.  Next time I'll definitely remember to bring a tarp.