What is the average delivery time on a Barrel?

[Deleted]

I ordered a barrel on August 30th and still didn't receive it.
What is the average time for a barrel?
How can I get an estimated time?
Many Thanks.

[guncollector]

Nov 4, 2011 14:48:41 GMT -8 @sergiomartinez said:

I ordered a barrel on August 30th and still didn't receive it.
What is the average time for a barrel?
How can I get an estimated time?
Many Thanks.

I ordered 2 barrels the first week of August. I have not yet received them. I contacted Andy at BHW by email and asked him to check. He said the steel has been assigned which means they are working on them. My guess would be that you need to wait another 6 weeks.

[Deleted]

Based on what you said you think 4.5 months is the average delivery time for a new barrel?
What barrels did you order?
Thanks

[Deleted]

Delivery time is based on a few factors, but the big two are:

-Is the barrel already in Stock?
-Are you requesting a finish on the Barrel

If the Barrel is already in stock and already completed finishing(Been polished, satined or Blackened), then a barrel can ship same day and will arrive to the customer between 1-5 days(Depending how far from Washington you live).

If a barrel is in stock but a finish needs to be added to it then I'd usually estimate another week or so before shipment, ESPECIALLY for black finish. The Turn around time for a Satin or Machined barrel is substantially less. Our Black finishing process is a bit more sensitive and time consuming and done about twice a week.

However, if you are ordering a barrel to be made from scratch, here's some things to take into consideration:

We do everything in house. The only materials shipped to us are the extensions and pins and steel bars. We cut down the steel bars here to the lengths we need,profile, drill, true, ream, rifle, headspace, thread, crown, inspect, and finish everything all manually and some of the work is all done by hand on lathes. There's no automation to the process and each barrel is done one at a time.

When an order comes in, it is assigned a PO number and added to the production schedule. In the case of individual orders, if you say order a 16" Standard mid barrel around the same time we happen to be running bulk of the same type--you may luck out and your barrel will be added to that run, thus giving you a faster turn around time. Obviously the fewer times we have to change our tooling out the faster we run. So we try to factor in customer orders to run with bulk orders when we can.

Once a barrel actually enters into the manufacturing process (Meaning a physical steel bar has been assigned to a customer's order) it only takes around 2-3 weeks to complete.

Usually at least 50% of the wait time is just a barrel awaiting it's manufacturing date. We have our production schedule right now planned about 4 weeks in advance. So average barrel wait time for a barrel made from scratch is around 7-8 weeks.

In the last couple of months we've also been restocking our barrel blanks supply and inventory on some of our more popular barrel profiles to help cut down on wait times as well--ESPECIALLY if a customer barrel fails inspection. We don't want a barrel getting all the way to almost being shipped and having to go all the way back to the beginning.


I know this is kind of a long winded response. But the short answer is, if your barrel is being made from scratch, it takes around 2 months as long as we're running well.

When we had our crisis back in spring the wait times were a horrendous 7-9 months behind at points. We don't want that kind of thing to happen again.

[Deleted]

Thanks for the long explanation. I was just looking for a simple short answer bulk park... between the 2 weeks and 2 years type of answer!. LOL!
Personally I don't care if it takes longer as I have plenty of projects going on at the same time but wanted to see I could have an estimate to plan. I am not sure about what guncollector ordered but I ordered a 6x45 and asked for 9 twist as I saw in the threads here those were available but w/o any special finishing or anything extraordinary.
One thing is clear for me, I rather to have a good quality product than any rush order related type of mistake.

Thanks again.

[Deleted]

You're welcome.

I know we have about 100 or so barrels that were waiting the last week on extensions to arrive and a bunch of individual orders in various calibers are being profiled today as I'm typing this. So it's possible both your barrels are in that batch, but I can't say for sure.

[guncollector]

Nov 4, 2011 17:16:02 GMT -8 @sergiomartinez said:

Based on what you said you think 4.5 months is the average delivery time for a new barrel?
What barrels did you order?
Thanks


I ordered a 24 inch bull barrel in 308 and a 20 inch standard profile barrel in 6.8 SPC. Both with black finish. I was told on November 2nd that the steel for my order had been assigned. Based on Kizmit's explanation of the production process my barrels should be ready 3 weeks after the Nov. 2nd date or a total of about 15 weeks for my order. I have no idea why my order has taken twice the average production time.

[blackjack308]

Kismet, when a barrel is ordered, how is it billed out? Do you take a down payment to secure a spot and bill the balance when shipped?

[everrest]

Nov 10, 2011 22:07:08 GMT -8 blackjack308 said:

Kismet, when a barrel is ordered, how is it billed out? Do you take a down payment to secure a spot and bill the balance when shipped?

My order placed in August took 12 weeks for delivery. My Credit card was billed when the barrels shipped. Usually the delays are caused by suppliers.
I know of a company that pre-paid for 1911 frames over a year ago. The company is still waiting on the frames.

[Deleted]

Nov 10, 2011 22:07:08 GMT -8 blackjack308 said:

Kismet, when a barrel is ordered, how is it billed out? Do you take a down payment to secure a spot and bill the balance when shipped?

We now bill as ordered for individual orders. Dealers and wholesalers usually put down a percentage and are billed for the entire order once shipped.

We used to bill in that manner--taking payment info and billing upon shipping the product out.

However, as we've started to grow, this method became harder to keep up. Some people preferred being billed on the day they ordered in order to keep their accounts straight. So it started to become a challenge sorting through who had and hadn't already paid--for some customers, this was a nightmare as it caused a lot of double billing. NOT good for either parties. (as someone who's been over billed for an online order and charged overdraft fees on top of it, I can see why someone wouldn't be happy.)

Another big problem was having a barrel made and right before shipping an order would be cancelled for whatever reason; lack of funds, simply not wanting the barrel any more, etc...

So if we could not send that barrel to a customer, that turned out to be a waste of steel and man hours (And this was especially critical when we were trying to recover from the spring steel shortage). Some folks order some really uncommon barrels occasionally and, if we can't resale a cancellation, it can really put a dent in a small business, especially in the case where put our money up front first to make and ship the product.

The billing process as it is now seems to be a bit easier on both our accounting department, and customers. It keeps things more organized, we have a little more funds available on hand to get proper tool replacements so machines can be maintained and fixed faster if need be.

Everest also hit the nail on the head. We, like individuals and our dealers, are constantly at the mercy of our suppliers. We are now able to put deposits on steel so we can avoid problems like the steel shortage back in March. The idea being we can have enough stock on hand to keep production up if we ever need to find a new supplier due to shortages on the supplier's end. So there's hopefully no more 3-4-5-6 month wait times.


Hope that make sense and I didn't bore you too much, lol!

[blackjack308]

Thanks so much for a very clear and logical explanation! Sounds like it's in everyone's best interest to do it that way if it allows a much more
consistent and timely delivery with less stress all around.

[gettophilosopher]

I don't mind a long wait as long as I know what I'm getting into. That's why if I'm going to place a non-vanilla order (i.e. not just ordering a couple in stock parts from Brownells or some ammo from PSA), I always call the store or manufacturer first and ask about wait time. If it's a good product, and they're honest with me, I'll wait. If they tell me "it'll ship next day!" and then it takes 3 weeks of me calling for them to finally ship, I'll wait and then not re-order from them again. *Shrugs*

Whenever I get around to buying a barrel here, I figure I'll just call and ask if they've got a ballpark guestimate on lead time for my specific one. Maybe I'll be lucky and they'll have one lying around or an order coming up the next week. ^_^

[bhwoodsman]

Do I understand then that after taking a client's money, delivery of a particular barrel would take 2 months minimum and could possibly be much longer?

[GLSHOOTER]

Dec 5, 2011 16:28:37 GMT -8 bhwoodsman said:

Do I understand then that after taking a client's money, delivery of a particular barrel would take 2 months minimum and could possibly be much longer?

That would be correct. It has been my experience in buying top tier barrels that this is pretty standard. Shilen and Krieger does it on their goodies. Many outfits won't build a special order barrel without the $$'s up front. The good thing is that BHW is ramping up and the horrendous wait times on things like was happening two years ago is getting over. Thank goodness!! ;D

Of course you can also CALL and ask them what they have in stock so perhaps on more standard tubes the wait will be a lot shorter than you anticipate.

I think what is really a strain is putting up $2,000 on a pistol and having to wait a year or so and more for some of them. Lucky for me my bests friends have all been 'smiths and I could go camp in their shop until they fixed me up!! It took me my first two guns to "expand" my friend base.

Greg

[Deleted]

I certainly advise shooting an email to Andy or Stacy, especially if they barrel one may be after is a more common caliber. I know some of our dealers make a habit of "window shopping" in hopes of grabbing something that we may have made extras on.

For instance, if a customer cancels their order and the barrel is already made, we first go down the list of individual customer orders to see if anyone has that same barrel on order and send it to the next in line. If there isn't anyone, then it goes up on the shelf until we get an order for that barrel. There's been a few instances where someone will call us up and we just so happen to have what they want in stock and the wait time is almost nothing.

Our goal right now is to get everything caught up to a point where we have 2 week wait times and a decent surplus of product on hand of our more popular bbls.