USA manufacturing trend or bad luck?

Hi fellas, I have not posted here in a while, but recent events have caused me a need to vent.

Within the last week I've had to return 2 rifle parts due to bad QC or shoddy manufacturing. Both were US manufactures/companies.

First was a 300 BLK KAK 9" melonite barrel...while swapping out muzzle devices, the barrel extention came loose. Yes, you read that correctly. My comp I was removing was not even "torqued" on and while unscrewing with little effort, the entire barrel spun as I saw the gas block turn and the gas tube twist I thought.. "OH S% $#,..what have I done!" I thought I sheared the index pin or broke through the upper's notch. After inspection I was..well livid. Contacted KAK and sent it back. This barrel was over a year old but Kurt told me to send it to him, which i did. They are very responsive and CS is top notch..but it should not have happened in the first place.

Next was the GG&G QD bipod with cant and pan feature. Just arrived in the mail. Mounted it on my rifle and noticed the cant feature was very loose, the rifle would keep flopping over to the left or right, so I tried to tighten it up but would not lock up tight enough unless you cranked down on the thumb nut so hard i thought i would strip the threads. After further investigation I noticed the the cant axis and the pan axis were assembled differently. The one that worked had a brass cap on the end of the thumb nut that produced varying amount of friction to the axis pin and the thumb nut was captured with a roll pin so it could not be accidentaly removed. However, the cant axis was missing both. I emailed GG&G, but have not received a response as of today. These bipods have a lifetime warrenty and other than the issue above, it is a very nice bipod, great design and features like 45 and 90 degree locking legs and silent operation. Also the thumb nut to adjust the legs move with the leg extension so its one-hand operation. Very nice.

I try to buy US when possible and I know these things happen but it just seens more often lately (I have more examples but these are the most recent). Most chinese is crap but cheap, US is expensive but quality is suposed to be high. I hope this is not an indication of what is to come.

Good day Gents

Quality seems to be in the crapper these days.

Just curious, has anyone else had any experience with GG&G bipods or their warrenty?

Not going to comment on the bipod, but you tried to unscrew a comp from a barrel, did not have that barrel clamped in a vice but rather had the upper in blocks and were torquing against the barrel extension pin? I
Think you have yourself to blame for that one. Buy a set of barrel blocks for a bench vice or at least some v blocks. Uppers and barrel extensions are not made for that.

Yes, I did. My comp was wrenched on at about 20 inch lbs. The barrel extension should be about 150 FOOT/pounds. So yeah...WHAT THE HELL WAS I THINKING, RIGHT.

So this must be common for people using upper bench blocks..I was never aware of that. Thought it was the barrel...hmm My bad.

The point was..the barrel extension was not on tight enough. But I guess I should have been more clear about that.

Actually you made a common mistake. You assumed that if your muzzle device was attached with a certain torque value that it will loosen from that same torque value . That is not the case as things like heat , corrosion , and surface tension can make the amount of torque needed to loosen it increase, especially if you have fired it. What you did is a common mistake. When I install barrel extensions, I loctite them in place with red loctite, and take a starter punch and bugger the threads through the pin hole, then install the pin. Even with this taking a barrel extension off is not that hard.

I assumed with the barrel I got that the extension was torqued to " spec". Which from what I have learned over the years was ~ 150 lbs/ft.
I had no idea some barrel manufactures were only using loc-tite and staking the theads. I was also under the impression that red loc-tite will degrade and burn away with high temps.
At any rate, this extension came loose before i really started cranking on the muzzle with a 4" wrench. It was just past hand tight. This was a fail waiting to happen..so im glad I did what I did or I would still be shooting this rifle. Best case, I would had seen major shifts in POI, worsted case ...who knows...