Re: Howa in Roedale RCS II New pics added
hewlett260
the RCS II project has been delayed for some time now, frustrating the hell out of me.The reason being the manufacture of the plastic side pannels.
The tooling costs 40,000 € and its not an investment to be made lightly, its also a fairly drawn out process and not a conract that one can hand out to several companies and see who comes up with the best product.
The delay started when the company who i entrusted with the manufacture of the sidepannels firstly screwed up the molding tooling by allowing a junior trainee to perform work on the tooling.( as i found out after the fact) He ran the CNC milling machine into the tooling destroying a lot of expensive equipment and all i got out of that tooling was a couple of sets of pannels from test manufacture.
They then set about the tool manufacturing process once again.
Again things didnt go smoothly, they got the tooling almost finished, when it came to machining the pins that create the screw possitions in the plastic into the mold form, mistakes where made and they where wrongly possitioned, this meant delays in machining excentric pins to compensate.
After many delays, excuses and dilly dallying, and a fair amount of bullshit, and with some very, lets say heated exchanges,particularly that each time i payed a visit to the company the boss smelled of alchohol ( which probably explanes why his best staff left to seek alternative employment ) i pulled the plug on the company.
We should have been at court with them this week, but the court date has been delayed as the persons in question are away on vacation, new court date is set for October.
I then approached another company who do a lot of plastics manufacture for the Military-LE-Coastguard equipment manufacturers. Unfortunately my desired contract was too small for them to be interested.
I then approached another, then another then another plastics manufacturer, all turned down the opertunity doe to " Ethical" reasons, meaning they didnt want anything to do with the manufacture of anything to do with firearms. ( we get that a lot here, ive experienced the same with coating companies, banks and suppliers, just this week we had a refusal on ethical grounds from a company who we hoped would manufacture magazines for our chassis systems)
Anyway, after a long and frustrating search we finaly found a company who could do the job for us. but then we needed to wait for a gap in massive orders from the auto industry, as the company make many parts for mercedes and lamborgini and obviously the multi million euro contracts come before us.
However despite the setbacks we are now finaly on with the process and i was at the company last week to check on progress. We expect from what we have been told to expect plastic in mid September, I however expect this maybe too optimistic and reserve the right to be pescimistic on the delivery date, with a bit of luck, end september, beginning of october,
As soon as we have plastic on shelf we will be assembling stocks and getting all the pre orders out the door first. From mid October onwards we aim to have very short delivery times on these stocks.
I'd like to take the oppertunity to thanking the guys and gals who have pre ordered stocks, showing trust, encouragement and sponsorship along the way.
The RCS II chassis system is a very ergnomic stock, it handles well, sits well and ive won a couple of competitions using the one on my avenger II .308. as a stock for a rifle that is employed from a variety of shooting possitions i find it hard to beat.
Anouncments and updates will me made on our website-shop as soon as we have plastic.
rgds Pete