Blast Legacy

[zinger565]

Well, I guess one of the "new" things is the "Hindsight" engine. Looks to be a Nucleus (Field1 Force) engine fitted for the Insight/Onslaught platform.

Damn pricey though at $325. Insights/Onslaughts are going for $450+ on the used market, so you're looking at $800ish to get a similar shot as a Force.

[Euphie]

Before the site went down for renovations they were sold out of the double trigger frames IIRC, but had single trigger ones, and had a few different color bodies for sale. I think it is a great platform to build a custom gun from, but I imagine it can be hard to move millennium parts these days because stacked tube blowbacks just aren't that popular anymore.

[DocsMachine]

He ran into a problem when he couldn't find the fatty lower internals. He wanted to manufacturer the hammers but couldn't find a shop that would do them for a price he wanted (CHEEEEEEAP) so he eventually gave up on building them

-How long ago was this? I seem to vaguely recall somebody emailing me out of the blue, wanting a run- fifty or a hundred, maybe?- of Spyder hammers. This was long before I had the CNCs, and I gave him what in all honestly was an absurdly low price, considering what it would have taken me to make them on my manual machines. (It was one of those cases I wanted to "win the bid" so to speak, hoping it'd lead to more business.)

I don't recall specifically if I ever heard back, but I have a vague impression I thought they must have thought the price was much too high.

Doc.

[Cmhary369]

Does this mean they will have frames and bodies as well?

[Euphie]

The hammer seems like a really small hurdle to trip over, I have a few of the hardened steel ones but I also made one out of a 3/4” Delrin round with a bolt in the front to hit the valve and a square nut as the part that catches the sear. I mean that was like $10 tops of course it is a super light hammer and I assume the nut will eventually get chewed up and have to be replaced but still.

[Trbo323]

I got the email too I assume anyone who has ever bought from dirtyworks or Oregon paintball did, as I am guessing that is where the emails were harvested from.

i like being able to buy millennium bodies and old intimidator grip frames, but that e-mail didn't make it seem like more was going to be in stock so it seems much ado about nothing, maybe he just wanted to whine a bit.

Those millennium bodies all came from F1 when he made the original deal so he only had a limited inventory.

His original idea was to anno them and turn them into fully functional markers and sell them that way. He ran into a problem when he couldn't find the fatty lower internals. He wanted to manufacturer the hammers but couldn't find a shop that would do them for a price he wanted (CHEEEEEEAP) so he eventually gave up on building them

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[Trbo323]

As a disclaimer, its been years since I've dealt with Richard. So these are largely my impressions of what's actually going on here. I don't know any of the current situation for sure as I am no longer involved with him or his business

We are finally proud to announce the release date of the new Blast platform. This platform will host all the Bob Long and Blast related products and upgrades.

This whole thing just strikes me as outsourcing. I'm really wondering if Richard will be involved in much of it any longer

Over the past 3 years we have essentially been shut down. We have been working on a large number of products, so much so that I can say we bit off way more than we could chew.

He is blaming a 3 year shut down on working on a large number of products, I'm not buying it. This is the positive spin on a negative situation

Additionally our Portland, Oregon store (while it was open) was essentially shut down because it has been robbed 8 times in the 5 years, 5 of which came in 2022 alone. Unfortunately Portland has become an unfriendly place to conduct business so we were forced to move while working through all these new projects. This has been incredibly challenging as this was coupled with every kind of issue known to man. From electrical not being run to our new building, to one of our machines going down, to employees ect ect. On and on it went for about 3 years.

The robbery part is news to me. I had only heard of the large robbery soon after he opened. He claimed $50k but I fully believe that number was inflated. He even claimed some stuff was stolen that he had accused me of stealing from him. So apparently some stuff was stolen twice...

Also, welcome to the crappy part of any city. He basically chose the shop location because it was closer to downtown Portland over where the established shop was. Basically it was on the outskirts of the industrial side of Portland and not close enough to downtown to have much of a police presence.

Also, his "every issue known to man" statement is pretty par for the course in my experience. He never seemed to be that good at planning ahead so I'm not surprised there were issues with a new location that he didn't anticipate or ask about ahead

But as all things come to an end and we finally made it to the end of the hallway. It took a lot more effort than expected

Again, didn't anticipate the amount of work

We cannot thank the industry enough and those supporting us. The more we marked SKU's out of stock, (we did this for the new platform release), the more orders came through our doors. We have help over 7,000 customers from 2019 to end of 2020. We could not and I could not be more grateful.

3500 "customers" a year, I'm sorry but no. Maybe 3500 items went out the door but I really doubt that number is accurate.

I couldn't tell you how much I think that's inflated, maybe business is picked up but from what I saw in my time, he wasnt getting anywhere near that level of orders

We want to start by thanking the customers and industry for their patience. The customers have been so incredibly supportive. We have received (no exaggeration) THOUSANDS of emails thanking us for what we are doing.

Lol. No.
Maybe if you count every single email you get from absolutely anyone that says "thanks" at the end, like an attorney sending you papers for an employee you decided not to pay, and added up every single one of those emails that you have ever received. Then MAYBE. but that's pretty misleading as it is

and to our tech for putting up with all the repairs (if you have not tried our tech he is amazing). And to anyone else I am forgetting thank you, thank you.

I don't know who their current tech is. I do know a lot of people in the area in the paintball really realm and as far as I know it's nobody I'm aware of.

Short story in the same area. About a year after I worked for him I had a customer in my area that needed a pmr worked on. Someone had clearly tried to work on it. The trigger switch and power button were missing. I asked about that and he said Oregon paintball (aka dirty works) tried to fix it. Now I'm suspecting Richard himself tried to work on it but I don't know for sure, maybe he had a tech at this point idk. But it needed the trigger switch replaced which in this version of pmr it was a trigger switch and power button on the same harness. Apparently Richard had told him that he can't get those harnesses any longer because they are no longer available. I found one in 30 seconds and ordered it

I suspect because it was a low dollar transaction Richard basically gave up on it

While this person may not be an expert we they will be good enough to ensure you will get that product that you need to fix your issue.

Um. What? So he doesn't even trust his own employee to get the job done?

Inventory & Color Options:
We would like customers to give a little grace in this area. We 3800 sku's to manage on this 1 site. We also have Oregon Paintball.com which has over 10,000 sku's. We tried to make everything as accurate as possible however there will be errors. We may not have the exact color you want in which case if you can take a different color perfect if not no worries. But please keep in mind this product will not always be available in the colors that you want. I cannot stress enough when I say this is the last leg on some of this stuff.

Lol, the inventory at Oregon paintball didn't run on SKUs. When I would ring up a transaction it was a category and a price. The system didn't know what actual item was sold.

Even if there was a inventory system for ordering and what not, the only way there were 10k SKUs at Oregon paintball is if 9500 of them were old and no longer used.

You would have had to count individual paintballs to get to 10k in that shop when I was there.

Also is he already making excuses? I mean really, he is saying they may not have everything in stock that's listed for sale? Is it really that hard to run inventory?

Site Changes:
The new platform will look similar however all the code has been updated including checkout. We knew the old site was going to be changed so we never bothered updating it.

Yes I'm sure that's the reason

Also if you see something or an error on the website let us know. I am sure there are a few.

So, customers are the QC department?

Support:
We have been asked by a number of people how they can support us.

I'm sure

Jobs:
We have a large number of jobs open and are looking for talent. For those that are interested in Blast products or have a desire to create or be a part of something truly special please take a look or send a job posting to folks you know would be interested. We need new ideas and employees that see and share our vision.

This goes back to what you guys were suspecting earlier, employers that are good to their employees don't have these problems

Again cannot thank you enough. If you have made it this far in the letter you're awesome if not you suck. Check out blastlegacy.com

And there's his true colors coming out. One of his "mottos" for DW was "your gun sucks". Which always seemed odd to me considering he told me he hadn't played paintball in at least 5 years (could have been longer, I don't actually remember the exact number of years he said) at that point. So I was always like, how would you know what's good? Basically, he was always willing to tell people that they need a better marker/part/whatever and guess who happened to sell that "better" one?

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[Euphie]

I got the email too I assume anyone who has ever bought from dirtyworks or Oregon paintball did, as I am guessing that is where the emails were harvested from.

i like being able to buy millennium bodies and old intimidator grip frames, but that e-mail didn’t make it seem like more was going to be in stock so it seems much ado about nothing, maybe he just wanted to whine a bit.

[Arthur]

Wow

[Trbo323]

Yup, Bob sold it off and Richard bought up all remaining stock and the trademarks/etc. He rebranded Oregon Paintball into Dirtyworks and was selling off that stock for the last few years.

I'm not sure what the difference is between field one and Bob long but the way I always thought that happened is Bob sold to F1 and then F1 didn't want to do the legacy stuff anymore so they sold off all gen1-3 servicing, parts and... Rights? To Richard.

Richard got a pallet of parts, some new some used which he sold all as new. Some blank PL bodies like the a bomb and naughty dogs timmys and a ton of stuff like screws

The problem (besides selling used noids as, well "unlisted condition" so people would assume new) was that he only got a small quantity of some of the parts. So he would list them on the Web page and when he would run out would still get an order for them and then would basically panic and try to find it elsewhere. He would also list stuff that he did not currently have on hand. Basically all F1 products were on his page so if an order came in he would first have to get it from F1. This was a huge problem because F1 would run out of stuff and he wouldn't know. So when that happened he made up some story for the customer for the delay because he didn't want to admit he was getting the parts from F1 to his customer.

I take it Richard, whoever he is, is not well-regarded, and the new business was not well-run?

Doc.

Lol, no. I had to take him to court. He refused to pay my paycheck.

I'll write up the full story some day but think Gardner levels of sketch just without the e marker patent to swing around

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[Trbo323]

That's code for either
1) They can't or wont pay high enough to maintain employees.
2) They're a terrible employer

No either, it's both

I started working for him basically as an independent contractor, he was paying me I think $20 per marker to repair. A few months later I lost my full tone job and he wanted to hire me on, at around $17/hr with no benefits. To put that in perspective, minimum wage at the time in the area was around $14.

But the job I lost was paying me $20 with benefits. I was like, dude, I need to pay my mortgage and let's be honest, airsmith is a fairly specialized job. It's not like you can just go to indeed and find one.

When I have time I'll write my impressions of that email. It's not like I've dealt with him since our settlement but I think there's some interpreting that needs to happen there

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[Chuck E Ducky]

So they going to bring back and updated work out the box MVP if not meh… good luck I guess.

I would like to grab a few gloss black Cam Drives. Thoes ASA always worked and looked great.

[Menso]

You’re right. Buyer beware.

[DocsMachine]

I take it Richard, whoever he is, is not well-regarded, and the new business was not well-run?

Doc.

[Lt. head-shot]

I think its still worth it to have the thread up so that people can get more context and know who/what this is. But maybe a re-title could help?