Blast Legacy

[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.

[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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[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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[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.

[Cmhary369]

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

[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.

[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.

[Trbo323]

-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.

Oh man, let's see, I think it would have been somewhere around 2016, could be off by a year or two

Yeah he never really understood the value of labor and especially if it's a form of labor you can't really hire a 17 year old to do.

And this would also bite him in the ass sometimes. For instance, that lot of used noids he got from F1, he wanted them tested, so he found a company to test them at some like $40 each rate. I was like, "what?" You just need a basic function test, I can do that. So we worked out a deal where it was like $5 each. All I did was dismantle a gen 3 Timmy, use some extra long LPR hose and swap through each noid on the work bench. Plug in to board. Connect hoses, pull trigger. Disconnect and move to the next one. Each one took me about a minute, maybe 2. He had around 50 of them. So the amount of labor was very low but the knowledge to do that was somewhat specialized. He even up paying me around $200 for maybe 2 hours of work. But to him he was saving money because he wasn't paying $40 each

I'm pretty sure he was thinking in order to test them himself he would have to completely assemble the marker. It just never occurred to him to have it all dismantled on the work bench. Because of the way it was set up I ended up doing eyes next with the same setup to see if they were functional or not.

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[Jaccen]

Always interesting to get a "behind the scenes" look at the industry. Thanks for the write-up/analysis of the situation. Disappointing, though, as finding BLAST parts is a bit more difficult now.

[zinger565]

On Facebook it seems nobody has recieved their orders yet for the new "Hindsight" engine. No shipping confirmation, even though folks placed orders going on 10 days ago. The only response someone has gotten was along the lines of "we ran out and are building more", which I find suspect.

Anyways, if this ends up being smoke and mirrors, I hope too many people don't get burnt.

[Insixdays777]

This is a total shame that the only available Bob Long Legacy parts are being held hostage by this criminal enterprise.

[Trbo323]

On Facebook it seems nobody has recieved their orders yet for the new "Hindsight" engine. No shipping confirmation, even though folks placed orders going on 10 days ago. The only response someone has gotten was along the lines of "we ran out and are building more", which I find suspect.

Anyways, if this ends up being smoke and mirrors, I hope too many people don't get burnt.

Oh boy here we go again

History repeating itself I think is what's happening here. To preface this, much of this is speculation but it also has some history involved

When I started working for him he was in the middle of we'll just call it the gear drive debacle. Most of what I learned about this actually came from various sources around the internet rather than him but here's essentially what happened in a nutshell

He decided to put up Bob long gear drive ASAS for sale as a pre-order item no big problem there really a bunch of people bought in and sent him money

From here he essentially had two options since he did not make any of the things himself

Option 1) order complete units from field one already anodized and assembled ready to ship

Option 2) order raw parts from field one send them out to his own anodizer and then assemble himself. Obviously this option would be cheaper and therefore that's why it was chosen at least that's what I believe

He waited until after the presale to even set up the order with field one so we are already like at least a month in


So he places the order and it takes field one a while to ship it it shows up and the biggest problem is that there's a few parts missing not just a few parts total but like all of the knobs not there something along those lines it turns out field one had run out of raw and needed to manufacture some more. We are at least 2 months in at this point

field one goes about manufacturing and it takes another month at least for these missing parts to show up

So for those keeping score we're somewhere around 3 months in finally these raw parts are ready to go out to the anodizer

I don't remember exactly what sequence this happened in next but at some point he decided he was not happy with the price the anodizer gave him I want to say it was after he shipped the parts to them but I could be wrong. Regardless he decided to argue with them about price and it took at least a month

So the anodizer finally goes about making them, because our friend wanted to argue with them in price they gave them a decent price but basically said we're not going to make these parts a priority so it took them at least 2 months to anodized all of the parts in the different colors

So somewhere around 6 months in and the parts are finally back in his hands but now he has to assemble them. This however is work for peons. If my memory is correct nothing ever actually came about it but he was talking about hiring a bunch of high school or college kids to basically do an assembly line to build these asa's

I don't think anything ever came about of the assembly line somewhere in the assembly process he found that he was missing something like a screw. This problem was an easier fix than most of the other ones in this process though. By the time he had everything ready to go or even just the first batch of ASAS customers have been waiting around 7 months. I've heard of multiple people who had to wait right around or just over a year to actually get their asa

"So those customers were patiently waiting this whole time?"

I'm glad you asked no they were not many people were requesting refunds and it was always some kind of a stall that he would send in a response. Most people received a response along the lines of I will have to send this over to our returns department, where the email would then just sit in an inbox because he was the returns department he was the everything department. I know a few people did get refunds mainly the ones that were very active on social media and bringing this whole situation to light but more commonly the customers were stalled and stalled until he finally had the ASAS ready

So assuming he is ordering these hindsight engines from field 1 this whole situation feels very similar

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[Impactfour]

The paintball market seems to have either a short memory or a forgiving attitude.

[Myrkul]

I thinks it's honestly more along the lines of just straight up addiction. I've made tons of purchases from sketchy venders and sellers. If I REALLY want a part, and they are the only ones selling it, you just send the PayPal, hope for the best, and trust in buyer protection.

[martix_agent]

hey guys, Trbo can't see these comments because he uses tpatalk.

[Rickfactor2]

In my experience, dealing with Blast even when it was still under the Long ownership was a challenge at times. Some of the people that would answer the phone had no social skills at all.

I also has an "exchange" with their head tech when I asked what he considered a controversial question regarding the ability to lock down modes/rate of fire to prevent cheating. He did not like that but thankfully others backed me up in also posting that it was a valid question and that they would like to know. Keep in mind, this was in the era of "team" guns that just seemed to shoot a bit "different" than others.

Planet Eclipse on the other hand has been exemplary with even Jack Wood himself who responded to my emails.

During my early playing days, I handed my cocker directly to Budd ORR who made fun of my non-WGP parts, stripped them off, and then replaced them with stock parts for free while explaining everything.

[zinger565]

Seems the new is the same as the old...

[martix_agent]

hmm, who would have guessed that?

The business owner has a TERRIBLE attitude; I can't believe people who know about him continue to do business with him.