I took a look back through my emails and found one that I received on 12-10-21, so not as far back as I had guessed. It was a status update, so my request was at some point prior.
"[i]As its been some time since our last production run of our 80 series barrels, I wanted to give everyone some insight on the situation. In late 2016 a machinist friend and I decided these barrels would be a good project and agreed to work together to reverse-engineer and reproduce the OEM Beretta part. We split the design and manufacturing work between our shops and over the next few years we were able to work together to produce several runs of these with a modest but ever-increasing demand.
In 2019 he got a very lucrative, but time intensive contract to produce a small part allowing him to temporarily shelf all of his other clients including us. I was continually re-assured over the intervening time that the barrels would be made even as he broke deadline after deadline, increased his quoted price, and even asked me to increase my order to make the set-up etc. more worth his time. I agreed to every condition but have still received nothing.
In the end, Allegheny Arms is heavily invested in this project both financially and by reputation and we fully intend to get these made. We work with numerous machine shops on various projects and while several have expressed interest in taking it on, until we are able to rectify the situation with our former partner, we are simply unable to give a timeline for their completion. As you can see, we have maintained the list of interested parties and once we are able to move forward we will notify everyone of our progress.
With that in mind, we completely respect anyone’s decision if they were to choose to pursue a different route rather than continue to wait on these. If you are no longer interested in remaining on our notification list please reply to this email with a simple “STOP” and you’ll be removed. If you’d like to remain on the list, no action or reply is necessary.
As a personal aside as a gun guy I completely understand how prevalent “vaporware” is in our industry. As hard as I’ve been working to avoid the label, I also understand how frustrating it is to have a product promised without timely delivery and genuinely thank you for your patience.[/i]"
So it looks to me like he’s trying, but is pretty dependent on others as he can’t make the barrels himself. Perhaps now that things have slowed down in the gun industry some capacity will free up for making these barrels. Beretta could easily make them, but you can’t give money to Beretta sometimes.
