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you know, as soon as the first guy online started calling it the poverty pony,

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people didn't want it anymore. Welcome to episode five, episode five of the Frugal

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Firearms podcast, the podcast designed to help you get the most for your shooting dollar.

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And today we have a special guest that I've been looking forward to since the show idea started,

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Dustin Pitcher from AR15 discounts.com, a company that I personally have used in the past to buy

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products at a very, very good price point and got very, very good customer service and fast shipping.

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So I'm very pleased to bring him on to talk about his scope of products that he offers,

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the opportunities that you have to learn from an expert in this field in terms of what to buy and

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what not to buy, what pitfalls you face being a new builder, or even if you're an experienced

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builder and where to put your money and where to save money. So Ken, you ready to bring on Dustin?

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Absolutely. I think he's going to get me motivated to take a couple of the receivers that I have

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sitting in my safe and maybe start saving up a few dollars and maybe do another build.

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How many of those receivers do you have sitting in that safe, Ken?

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The important thing is that I have a sufficient quantity for my needs at present.

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Maybe not the grandkids. I don't know. We'll see.

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Well, perhaps, perhaps not. Well, you first, you have to get grandkids and you don't have to go.

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That's a separate problem.

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That is a separate problem. So now we're welcoming on Dustin from AR15Discounts.com. As I mentioned,

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this is an opportunity, I think, for our listeners to really understand from the seller's perspective

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and from a person who is invested in this in terms of inventory and how much they've put into

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growing a business based on AR15 building, where the value really is centered. I think that this

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is going to be probably one of our most productive episodes to date. So Dustin, welcome to the show

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and tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are.

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Right on. Yeah, no, super happy to be invited on this. Thank you so much. I'm glad you reached

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out. I know it took a little while for us to get connected, but here we are. My name is Dustin

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Pitcher. I am one of the owners of Dirty Bird Industries LLC, which is the holding company for

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AR15Discounts.com and a few other entities underneath it. We're a family business, so it's

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myself and my brother and my mom as well. And that's kind of how we started. We started in

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my brother's garage, essentially shipping out lower parts kits and stuff. We got started.

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We were a deal website. We found good deals on parts and we tried to get them to the front page

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of like gun deals, which was back then with slick guns. And Reddit has a gun deal forum.

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And so that's still a huge part of our marketing strategy. We did that for a while and

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it helped us to grow. The reason it's good is because builders like to build. They don't

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typically just build one. And so when they get done building their first one, they're like,

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this is cool. But now I want to do one with an 18 inch barrel. I want to do an SPR style.

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But they don't want to just go out and pay full price for a bunch of these parts. Because if you

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pay full price for a lot of these brand, lower parts kits, BCGs, all that stuff, well, I mean,

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you're in the gun way more than a factory rifle at that point. And so for the folks that like to

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build a lot of different guns, finding good prices is important. And so the industry as a whole,

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the gun industry as a whole back then, you know, we're talking 2016, 2017 was kind of stagnant.

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We were a couple, several years removed from the last big run. And, but we were able to get some

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market share with that fairly simple strategy. And now today we have 18,000 skews. A lot of it's

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AR parts. Wow. Yeah. So a lot of it's AR parts, but we also opened a brick and mortar location.

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So when we, we started my brother's garage, then we leased a 1300 square foot little, you know,

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flex industrial space. And this is a story of a lot of companies like ours, by the way. And then,

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and then we took down the wall. We've leased the second unit. Then we were able to buy the, the,

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the, the complex, the building, which it consists of like two buildings. And we ended up filling

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the whole thing with racks. We took out all the walls and it was like a little tiny Amazon for

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gun parts. You know, at that point we were based in Bakersfield, California. At that point we had

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to decide, okay, do we want to grow here? Which didn't really make much sense because the regulatory

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environment, our hands were tied as far as what we could do and what we could sell. We wanted to

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get into suppressors like, you know, there's a lot of money in suppressors. Yeah. There's a complete

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firearms, you know, we, we are an O7 MFFL. So we, the ATF will give us variances. We can manufacture

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on rifles. Problem is in California, because the assault weapons ban, there's not really a graceful

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way to do that. And there's certain, and we, even we can, which we do, we do make some here for

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that are California compliant, but they're California compliant. There's the rest of the

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country. They don't want the California stuff. There's no reason they would buy it. So, so we

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made the decision to move to North Carolina, Raleigh. So we have a, we got a 50,000 square foot

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warehouse in Raleigh. That was a big move for us. It was a very stressful time. And it was, it's far.

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It's the other side of the country. So my brother runs that out there. That's his name is Jay. He's

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phenomenal. He's, he's an excellent operations guy. So they're doing great. You know, we have a lot

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of good employees. We've kind of pride ourselves on customer service. So going back to your original

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question, that's who we are. We're family owned. We started out in the deal space, but now we sell

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everything. You know, we have relationships with some very high end manufacturers, people that were

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skeptical, you know, when you call up guys, Lisa Hey, I'm from AR 15 discounts.com and you're like

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this, you know, um, discount surplus type thing. They're, they're concerned with their brand image.

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You know, they're concerned that you're going to go out and violate their map policies right away.

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Because that happens to them a lot. And for people who don't know that's a map is the minimum

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advertised price. Yeah. And so, you know, Geissele took a chance with us. They were the first like

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premium brand we got on with love those guys. We've been with them ever since we did a lot of

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business with them. You know, now we have, you know, we carry LMT stuff. We carry some nice stuff

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that we can find, you know, on the higher end of things. And then, you know, radian and there's,

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there's a tons of great innovative manufacturers out there. That's one of the cool things about

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the space. I mean, talk about maxing out a platform. I mean, there's, there's brilliant minds all over

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the country, just thinking of ways to improve this platform. So for our builders out there,

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let me get into some of those questions. Cause we, we were discussing, you know, the sort of things

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that we think that our audience is going to be most interested in. And based on that experience

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and that extensive line that you've got, what's, what sort of trip wires would you say, or, you

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know, you, the common mistakes that you would think people are making and making that, let's say the

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first time builder, you know, heading them toward the right product. I mean, obviously you're going

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to sell them the product that they order. But I've dealt with your customer service well before the

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podcast existed. I dealt with your customer service guys and they were extremely helpful

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and guided me in the right way. And, and it was done in a way that, I mean, maybe you don't know

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this, you know, they weren't even being specific about stuff you sell. It was, it was like, well,

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if you find a better deal elsewhere, I mean, this other stuff that we don't sell is good too.

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So they were honest and they create equity and, and loyalty in that regard. So I think that was

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a good thing. And he ended up getting sales out of it. But, but what are those kinds of problems

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that you think the first time buyer would fall into in terms of getting the best quality for

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their money? Yeah. So that's a good question. I would say the first problem is paying too much.

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I would say that's probably what happens. They don't shop around enough and we don't have the

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best prices on everything at all all the time. We were quite aggressive. We do have a price matching

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policy and all that stuff. You know, we do everything we can without violating our partners,

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you know, policies in regards to pricing and stuff like that. And when we run a foul of it,

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we're quick to correct it. So I would recommend for new builders shop around, you know, and we

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have live chat, so we have 24 hour live chat. And so they can help with price matching and stuff

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like that. But we hate to lose a deal on price. We hate to lose the sale on price. So that would be

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the first kind of general thing I would say. The other aspect of that would be getting caught up

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in in brands sometimes. So I'm not going to call out specific brands, obviously, but the space has

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been around long enough that there are, we'll take BCG's for example, there are a few you got like

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Lantac, Geissele. There are others I'm trying to think of. Arrow has their own kind of,

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Arrow Precision has their own kind of enhanced BCG that's legitimately enhanced and not just,

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you know, wizard piss. But those BCG manufacturers, we're talking Toolcraft, which actually,

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Toolcraft as far as I know, they actually only make carriers. I don't know. It's been a while

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since I had a conversation with them. We still do business with them. But they used to, they were

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buying bolts and some of the hardware from others. They were just machining the carriers and they

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make really, really nice carriers. There's Toolcraft, you've got Microbest, you've got

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AO Precision. There's probably three or four others. Those are the people that manufacture

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the lion's share of the BCG's out there. Well, if you go buy one with a brand name on it, it's the

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same BCG. A lot of the cases, a lot of the times. Now, you might get some additional benefits from

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the brand. You may like to have that brand. You may be outfitting your gun with that brand

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specifically. And so the logo they put on the BCG is important. So that's a personal decision to

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make. And no one really has the right to tell you that they're good or bad decision. But

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for first time builders, a lot of them don't know that that's kind of how it goes. Same thing with

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forged stripped upper receivers and stuff like that. There's a few manufacturers that are making

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tens of thousands of these every month, and then they're getting boxed in a dozen different brand

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packages. And, you know, we, yeah, go ahead. I was going to say, I mean, if you look at,

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a lot of people think, you know, the receiver being, you know, the lower receiver being,

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you know, the part that most people start with, because it's the serialized part.

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It seems to me that as long as it's made to a minimum of a mil-spec, you know, tolerance,

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which I don't think is actually that hard to do and has a reasonable finish, that there's not

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going to be a lot of difference there. And I think that sometimes people are willing to spend money

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on a lower that they really don't need to spend. But they should be spending it on the barrel,

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or they should be spending it on, like you said, the BCG, or perhaps some of the furniture that

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makes it, you know, collapsible stock or whatever that makes it easier for them to use. And I think

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that people, you know, misproportion where they're spending the money. And maybe it is part of that

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branding that they just think, well, the cool guy standing down the row has brand XYZ. So if I have

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brand ABC, I'm not going to look cool. That isn't the reason you should be buying the gun

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in the first place. Yeah. So lowers are an interesting conversation. You know, you can save

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a lot of money by going with a lower. Interesting story. You know, we sold, we've been dealing with

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Anderson, Anderson manufacturers. Those guys are great. Their stuff is, they make really good

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quality stuff. They make a lot of lowers for a lot of people. And people, to your point,

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people don't know that. They think that I'm buying the Gucci brand when in fact they're buying an

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Anderson. They might be though. They might be. Because again, I'm not going to single out,

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I sell them all. You know what I mean? And also they're also buying into the customer

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support that goes along with it. Sometimes too, they might be buying it. They might be buying,

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the lower might've been manufactured by Anderson, but it might go through a whole separate quality

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control process once it hits the floor of that brand. You know? And so just because they're all

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coming from the same place doesn't mean that there's not a difference when it gets to you.

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There could be additional quality control that goes into it. It's tough to say. It's tough to

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say. But for example, how I know the logo lower matters a lot is man, we've always told a lot of

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Anderson lowers, you know, they've got the horse on it, you know, cool horse, right? It's cool enough.

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It's cool logo for some people, but you know, as soon as the first guy online started calling it

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the poverty pony, people didn't want it anymore. And so Anderson, it took them a little while to

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kind of get wise to this, but they came out with their no logo. They called it the ghost lower or

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I think they called it the ghost. I don't know, but it's the no logo. There's no logo on it. It's

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like super minimalist. All it has is their, you know, multi-cow AM 15 serial number, Anderson

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manufacturing, Hebron, Kentucky or here on or whatever it is. And those things sell like

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hotcakes because you either really want a nice brand. You want to spend the money on that nice

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brand, or you want no brand at all. You know, there's not really an in-between. You don't want

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to necessarily be sporting a brand that's known for being a budget, you know, even though Anderson's

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has excellent quality and we do a lot of business with them. They're fantastic. And they make lowers

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for a lot of people, high-end brands. Does Anderson or another manufacturer, for example,

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make a 6,000 series aluminum lower also making a 7,000 series aluminum lower the differences.

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I mean, from a metallurgy perspective, I'm sure Craig could probably get more, but I've always

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been told 7,000 is better for durability for forged lowers. They're all going to be 7,000.

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I've never seen a forged lower that's made out of 6,000 series aluminum, but a billet lowers though.

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Sometimes, sometimes 6,100, 6,000 series aluminum. And I don't know exactly why that is. I would

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suspect because they're forged. And so a lot of these, even a lot of the different OEM lower

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manufacturers are getting, they're using the same forging. So, you know, the process starts way up

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here. It starts with the raw materials, which is to say the forgings. And so, you know, those are,

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they're buying those for what, 10, 12 bucks a pop or whatever. They're putting them into a machine

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and finishing them out. But they come like kind of, you know, looking like a lower already

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for a forge or they go billet, in which case they're basically, you know, they're removing

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a lot of material to make exactly what they want. That's why you get the cool designs on the billet

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lowers and stuff. Yeah. And Ken, and you're right. It does have to do with the, the alloy you choose

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has to do with the process that's going to follow that because some alloys are not amenable to

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different processes as easily. So you're just simply optimizing the alloy for the thing you're

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choosing later. But it also seems to me that, you know, again, unless you want like a skull or some

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sort of a, you know, embossed image that can only be done through machining with certain types of,

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of lowers just for the cool factor, but functionally it's, it's all kind of the same. I mean, you had

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mentioned in our notes ahead of the show, how to distinguish a gimmick or a hyped brand from a

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quality worth paying for. Yeah. Well, that's tough to do, especially, well, for a first timer,

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that's, that's going to be tough to do. You got to kind of get in the weeds as far as the research

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goes. I would say for the most part, if it's a brand that's, you know, Gucci or like really well

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known and has been around for a while, it's probably solid. And there's probably a reason

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it's been around for a while, you know, and it depends on kind of what direction you're going

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for like competition guys. You got JP, there's nothing gimmick about JP. They make the best

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competition rifles out there. You know, not to say that a builder can't build something that's

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similar, not to say that other manufacturers don't make great competition builds, but it's just

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JP's, you know, they've just put that's been their focus. And so what you're paying for is

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what you're getting with a company like JP. So in cases like, oh, I didn't mean to cut you off.

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If you go to that point though. Well, I was going to say, so you carry, you mentioned 18,000 skews.

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You can't test them all. It's just too many, but how do you decide what makes and doesn't make

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the grade in terms of what you want to carry? I mean, some of it's obviously if you carry Geissele

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or something like that, then you are in a position where the reputation stands on its own.

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Some of these other products maybe are kind of unknown. I mean, do you have to test them? Do you

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go on reputation? Do you go on how well the company backs up the product? How do you make

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those decisions? I'm assuming that some things don't make the cut and you say, no, I'm not carrying

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your stuff. Yeah. So the manufacturers and brands that we deal with typically, if they've got poor

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reputation, we're not talking to them anyway. If it's that bad, but for, you know, really,

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and this is the case with everybody, not just us, nobody's pulling every part out of the box

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and putting them on a build and running them, you know, that then we don't have YouTube channels.

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It's customers that are doing the testing essentially. And so we take customer feedback

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very and how we protect the customers that way is we have like a kind of a satisfaction guarantee.

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Look, you've got 30 days, you can install it, you can run it, you can chuck it down the driveway.

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I don't care if you like, don't like the way it smells, you can send it back for any reason

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and we'll give you a full refund. And so and then what we do is we pay close attention to reviews

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and feedback that we get from the customers because they're the ones using it. You know,

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I don't have a team, an army of people to go out. I mean, it'd be a cool job to have, I'm sure.

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Yeah. I mean, I do have an army. They're my customers, you know, and so I listen to them

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what they tell us. And so they do the testing, they leave reviews, they ask questions and,

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you know, they give us feedback. So it hasn't happened very often, but sometimes we'll drop

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products based on that, based on consistently negative feedback. Well, let me approach it from

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the frugal perspective. A lot of people bought lowers when they were like, Oh, they're gonna,

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they're gonna ban these things, you know, and a lot of people don't bought lowers and they had 500

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bucks. They could have bought one, maybe entry level gun, or they could buy, you know, five or

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eight receivers. A lot of people went out and bought receivers figuring, well, at some point

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in time in the future, I will be able to build these things. And a lot of about Anderson, I

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myself did, did that about several, several Anderson, which are basically sitting in a safe,

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unconstructed at this point in time, even had some, even found a couple that I bought back in the,

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in the nineties from Olympic arms, only only one. So, you know, sitting there going,

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maybe someday I'll assemble these things into something that might be interesting.

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But from a frugal perspective, I mean, what would you do? Okay. You, you, you've got a builder out

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there. They, they bought a lower. What would you do? Would you buy a, you know, a bunch of tools to

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assemble the thing first? What do you need to build it? Yeah, you're going to have to have tools.

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So there's some kits, we have some bundles that we do on the site. And so like armors, wrenches,

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and upper vice blocks and stuff like that. So we have some bundles we put together that kind of get

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people going with the basics of what they need. If you're going to do more than a few builds,

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the, you're going to want some nicer tools. You know, you might want a reaction rod so that

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you're engaging the lugs of the barrel instead of kind of clamping onto the upper receiver. So that

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when you torque it, especially if it's a barrel, not that requires like, you know, more than 50,

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55 pounds per square inch, you can be sure that you're not tweaking the upper receiver.

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That's just one example. And so tools go a long way, you know, they're specialized tool though.

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So if you're doing one build, and that's probably all you're ever going to do, you don't want to go

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out and spend as much, you know, 500 probably wouldn't be, you know, we've got all the really

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nice tools, it could be four or $500. You know, well, you're not going to spend that if you're

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only doing one build, but, and you won't know until after you do your first build, because that's

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usually when people get hooked, you know, someone will do their first build, then they've had enough

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of it, they go shoot the gun, you know, whatever. There's other guys that just, they just start

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cranking them out. We have customers, we've had long, long time customers and they just build and

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build and build. It's fun for them. It's their project. You know, some people like model airplanes,

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some people like building guns. So what do you think, I was going to say, what do you think the,

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the, another topic that we had in the notes, you know, the show notes was, you know, the common

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mistakes that, that people make when building, and this could even go to experienced builders. I mean,

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you had mentioned things like, you know, picking the wrong gas system length or the wrong combination

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of buffers and things like that. Yeah. So how do you, I mean, how do you avoid those, those tripwires?

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I mean, I guess the obvious question is coming, you know, come up in the chat and ask the question.

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Come up in the chat. Now these look, I mean, we offer our live chat, so they're not build experts.

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They, they escalate to our team in Raleigh that are in the armory there for build questions. So

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I have the live chat there to provide basic website related things and get order status updates. They

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can do some things and they're good. They're, they're fine, you know, but it's not, you're not

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going to get detailed advice on the live chat. It's more useful that they're there for people.

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We do get good feedback that they're there, but they're not asking, they're not answering

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technical questions. Or maybe then it's, it's going to, to, to your, you know, AR15junkies.com

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or I mean, YouTube channel. I'm sorry. That would be, you know, perhaps the resource that you would

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use. Yeah. The number one mistake is going to be gas system length. Okay. They get a mid-length barrel.

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They bought a carbon gas system because they also bought a carbon buffer tube. And a lot of people

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think that, that, you know, there's a correspondence between the gas system length and the buffer

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system, because you have a rifle length buffer system, and then you have a carbon length buffer

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system. You also have other lengths now, which we can get into if you want, but that's getting into

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the weeds. And then you have, you know, so that's, that's typically what we do now. A lot of times

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our customer service will catch that. We'll see that they've got a mid-length barrel in their order

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and they've got a carbine length gas system. And we'll try to reach out to them. And nine times out

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of 10, they didn't do that on purpose. They're like, Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. My bad. Give me the

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mid-length gas tube and we'll swap it out for them. We don't catch them all the time. You know, we do

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a lot of orders though. But the, the tough thing about that question, I remember reading it on your

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thing is like common, common mistakes. I've been in it so long that it's, I kind of take everything

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for granted, but really it is the gas system issues, you know. And as far as resources go,

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I would say forums, our customer support, we help people all the time, you know, we do configurators.

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We have configurators on the site. I don't know if you ever used one of those, but you can basically

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configure your own upper. So it's a lot of people like to buy complete uppers and we set up the

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configurators with rules so that you can't pick the wrong thing. And, uh, I didn't know that. I mean,

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I saw the configurator, but I didn't know that it had filters in it that would prevent you from just

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doing something dumb. Yeah. Yeah. So rules based on, you know, gas block diameter, you know,

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cause sometimes a thin profile barrel has a six to five gas block diameter, um, or the gas system

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length. That's, you know, the big thing or some upper receivers do not have a forward assist,

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you know, slip side up person. So you don't want to make the customer buy one if you, they can't

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put it on. Well, the other thing is buy from a retailer that has a really good return policy,

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you know, basically like ours that says you can send anything back in 30 days for any reason,

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you know, and the reason is because if it's your first build, you're probably going to mangle

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something, you know, you might mess up some aluminum and say, you want to be able to send

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it back and buy an oops kit, buy, buy an oops kit. Yeah. Extra springs and detents, you know,

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you're definitely going to want those. And so, yeah, that's what I would say. Just get in and

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build it, you know, um, look at the forums or whatever, watch some videos, just do it,

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you know, you had mentioned gas blocks. What do you think about, uh, I think that that's,

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that's an adjustable gas blocks and things like that, that you had brought up in the notes ahead

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of time. Yeah, I think it's something that's kind of heterodox. I am not a huge fan of adjustable

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gas blocks, unless you really need one for competition or the presser work or stuff like

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that. And even then, if it's a suppressor, basically there's two settings you need.

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And so you can, you can do that via an adjustable gas key, but for a defensive style weapon, you

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know, uh, I wouldn't run an adjustable gas block. I also think that it's better to adjust,

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to tune the gas system using the buffer, uh, buffer weight, basically. Uh, and also spring rate,

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you know, the spring coast springs are awesome because they have all the different color springs.

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And so, you know, if you're, if you're running your gun and it's throwing brass straight forward,

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well, then you're way over gap. You have two options. If you can get a heavier buffer,

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that'll help you out. Or if you don't want to, you know, they're also heavier. So there's weight

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there, you know, cause they use tungsten weights, you know, you can get up there, some buffer,

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especially like nine millimeter blowback buffers. I mean, they're massive. They're super, super heavy.

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And so you can adjust using spring rate at that point, you know, um, adjustable gas blocks will

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be useful for maybe precision rifle shooters, which a lot of time competition guys, cause they're,

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they're doing reloads. And so, uh, they might need something that they can tune for a certain load

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at one time for one competition, maybe one elevation, weather, whatever these guys are

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wizards, man. But, uh, so they need that, you know, to be able to on the fly adjustments.

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I think more people get them than really need them.

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Would you say that's the same with like, you know, your Chrome bolts and your Chrome line

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barrels and all of these things? Oh, no, no. Okay. So talk for an hour about barrels. Um,

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so the, the skinny on barrels is basically, um, Chrome lining is kind of an art. There are still

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really good Chrome line barrels, but for the mass market for production lines, they're going to

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produce a lot of them. An example of good Chrome line barrels is going to be Criterion. They make

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some of the most accurate Chrome line barrels out there. Um, fantastic company. You can't go wrong

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buying a barrel from Criterion. They're not cheap. They also do nitride to barrels too, but you know,

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for the mass for a production line where you want to crank out 10,000 barrels, uh, a month, it's

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easier just to nitride the barrels and, and nitriding actually holds up longer. You know, I,

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I don't, I have, you know, I got into research in this years ago and I would see a lot of different

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claims, different places online, but it appears to be like, you're going to max out about 10,000

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rounds and then the rifling is shot on a Chrome line barrel. I I've read that nitriding you can,

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you know, get up to 30,000 rounds. I would think that's good information, but I'm gonna put a

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disclaimer. I'm not, I'm not a barrel manufacturer. No, that's fine. I mean, we are frugal. So I mean,

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I don't think there's going to be any of my guns that are running it ever going to be north of 10,000

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rounds. And that probably includes my 22 long rifles as well. They might get close. Well, the

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life in two, two, three, I don't have the coin to be able to run 10,000 rounds through a barrel.

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No, that ammo, Hey, you might say that that ammo keeps coming down in price. It's two, two, three's

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finally, finally coming back down. If you ever look at the, at the, I saw an interesting statistic

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one time that I had to think about for a minute, but I think it's true that the actual life of a

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barrel is around two seconds. And you think, well, where does that come from? It's, it's the

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aggregated time that the bullet is in the bore for the barrel. I mean, but, but I mean, it kind of

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makes sense under that kind of pressure and friction. And you can listen to your listeners,

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go back and listen to episode four of the frugal firearms podcast, to listen to how to reduce the

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friction in your gun, including your barrel. But at the same time, yeah. When you think of a barrel

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is lasting only a few seconds. That's really it's actual life. Yeah. I had never thought about it

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that way. So that is interesting. Yeah. Yeah. What, what would you say is, is there a,

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there's a, there's a question that I wanted to get out here, you know, before, before we run out of

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time today, is there anything I suffer from this because, well, I'm an engineer and engineers do

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this kind of thing, but, but what sort of products cause the, the most paralysis by over analysis?

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You know, the people get really super hung up on, let's say the trigger or something like that. And

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they can't make a decision and they're always reaching out to the forums and asking questions

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because they just don't know what to do. And there's so many choices and, you know, only

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choices and you know, Oh my God, I just can't select one. Is there anything that fits that

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category? I read that when you sent the show notes and I was thinking, I was like, is there,

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is there, there's not really, because it's a personality thing. And so if someone's going to,

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if someone's going to be like that about one part, they're probably going to be like that about most

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of the parts. You know, I totally am. Yes. So it's, it's really a personality thing. You know,

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gear acquisition syndrome, I think is, is, you know, so this affects not just gun builders, but

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people in the photography. I'm the same way, you know, I read reviews all day about something,

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you know, about cameras and stuff like that. And anything you can think of that dudes are interested

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in, some of us, maybe most of us are like, we'll get into the weeds on that stuff. So yeah, there's

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not a specific product that would now as far as, and there's so many options, like triggers,

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barrels, BCG. I mean, it's really everything. I mean, there's, there's everything under the sun

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for ARs now. I mean, you, you, you can obsess over every single part you get, which I've done,

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which I've done. And you know, with that talking about dirty bird. And so the parts that we have,

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we do some assembly work, we don't cut any metal. And so what we do, what we've done with

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their dirty bird product line is we've identified what we really like, what our customers like,

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and we'll approach those manufacturers and say, Hey, do us a run of dirty bird hand guards or do

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us a run of dirty bird triggers or whatever. And for our lower parts kits, for example,

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I spent a lot of time on that. Our lower parts kits come with an extra take down spring and detent,

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which a lot of them don't. And we actually source every spring and, and detent from different

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manufacturers. Some we, some we get multiple parts from, but our dirty bird kits are kitted

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with, you know, piece by piece. And we include, and when we do our enhanced triggers, we include

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reduced power springs in there. So you have an option for the lighter pole weight. You know,

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we have the nickel Teflon trigger that everybody has, you know, PSA has it. They all come from

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Schmid. They all come from Schmid tool that, that, you know, mil spec plus trigger. I think BCM

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calls it the PNT or something like that. Great trigger, great trigger. Everybody buys it from

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the same place, but we include reduced power springs. And so we've got kits that you can get

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that trigger in and we've got lower parts kits that are like pin and spring kits only for guys

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that want to source their own controls. So there's guys that want to, they want to pick the bolt catch,

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the mag catch, the mag button, the, you know, the takedown pins, they want to source the trigger

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guard. They want to do everything exactly how they want it. So they buy the pin and spring kit,

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because it doesn't include a bunch of crap that they don't need. When it comes to finding quality

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stuff, you know, if you, if, if we put dirty bird on it, you can be assured that it's quality,

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because I mean, we've been dealing with these people for a long time. We stand behind the

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products. Obviously that's a good thing about this industry is a lot of these brands and

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manufacturers will do stand behind their products. It's an American thing, you know,

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this industry, we have less, especially when it comes to the actual components, we're not talking

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like slings and optics and stuff like that, but the actual components to build a rifle,

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not a lot of our stuff is imported. A very small percentage of the parts are actually imported.

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You know, we've mentioned strike earlier. Well, they don't actually say what is made in the US

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and what is coming out of Taiwan anymore. They just decided, at least that's last time I talked

368
00:34:00,960 --> 00:34:05,040
to those guys. They were like, we're just not saying anymore. They work on their, they're moving

369
00:34:05,040 --> 00:34:08,080
more and more of their manufacturing in the United States, but their ideas like, look,

370
00:34:08,080 --> 00:34:11,120
we're going to stand by that brought by the product. And I, what, you know, it does,

371
00:34:12,480 --> 00:34:19,120
we don't want to participate in this, that, that kind of discussion that said, it's still stand,

372
00:34:19,120 --> 00:34:24,640
it's still true that most gun parts are made in the USA. And you talked about, you know, tier one

373
00:34:24,640 --> 00:34:30,880
versus tier two and three manufacturers are, is, I guess you would call strike and, and I assume

374
00:34:30,880 --> 00:34:37,040
dirty birds is a tier one, you know, type manufacturer or certainly Geissele, you, which

375
00:34:37,040 --> 00:34:41,600
you, which you mentioned earlier before. Yeah. So a lot of people are going to have different

376
00:34:41,600 --> 00:34:45,680
opinions on this. Okay. So this is just my opinion and tiers. It's like, what do you mean? Is it tier

377
00:34:45,680 --> 00:34:50,800
one, like only manufacturers that cut the own metal for their receivers and all that stuff? Or

378
00:34:50,800 --> 00:34:56,000
here's how I would position that. Here's how I would answer that question about quality levels.

379
00:34:56,000 --> 00:35:02,320
I would place the companies that are doing defense contracts and a lot of times selling them to

380
00:35:02,320 --> 00:35:08,000
other countries at the top of the list. I've been very impressed with, and these are, these are

381
00:35:08,000 --> 00:35:14,000
manufacturers that produce complete firearms almost exclusively. That would be, you know, LMT,

382
00:35:14,000 --> 00:35:20,400
Knights armament, HK, I guess, cause they make the 416. It's kind of like an AR. I would,

383
00:35:20,400 --> 00:35:28,240
I would put LWRC in that category. There's a few others. Who else? Primary weapon systems has been

384
00:35:28,240 --> 00:35:34,160
getting a lot of agency contracts and stuff recently. Agencies really, really like PWS stuff.

385
00:35:34,160 --> 00:35:41,280
They're into the piston driven idea and all that stuff. So if I was like tier one, I would probably

386
00:35:41,280 --> 00:35:48,320
do manufacturers like that because they've been around for a long time. They're making parts that

387
00:35:48,320 --> 00:35:52,960
they know are going to be used in a life or death situation. And when you handle those guns, there's

388
00:35:52,960 --> 00:35:57,680
just, you know, there's, there's something about them. Maybe some of the type, I don't know, but

389
00:35:58,240 --> 00:36:04,400
you know, maybe they're not using some super unobtainium alloy. Maybe they're using a regular

390
00:36:04,400 --> 00:36:10,560
forging, but they are going, you're paying for the quality control process essentially at that point.

391
00:36:10,560 --> 00:36:16,720
And so that's who I would put at the top. Probably tier two is going to be big delineate specific

392
00:36:16,720 --> 00:36:21,040
brands like that. I want to have you point anybody out that you don't want to. I mean, there are a

393
00:36:21,040 --> 00:36:25,440
lot of quality parts out there that you can, you can assemble combinations of this at the other

394
00:36:25,440 --> 00:36:30,800
thing. So it's a certain amount of going through the catalog. I appreciate the fact that you won't,

395
00:36:30,800 --> 00:36:38,080
you'll try to catch areas where a person orders the wrong gas block or the wrong buffer tube or

396
00:36:38,080 --> 00:36:44,320
whatever for the barrel assembly. As far as tiers go, there's a lot of different ways to see it.

397
00:36:44,320 --> 00:36:51,520
I would probably say less like quality and more like hands-on. So tier one, I think of as

398
00:36:51,520 --> 00:36:58,000
manufacturer suppliers. These are the people cutting the metal, you know, tier two would be

399
00:36:58,640 --> 00:37:06,400
the brands that are, that are either doing their own drawings, so doing their own engineering work

400
00:37:06,400 --> 00:37:13,360
and sending drawings for their own specific ideas to these manufacturers. Sometimes there's overlap.

401
00:37:13,360 --> 00:37:18,560
Sometimes the manufacturer suppliers also doing some innovation and design work. That would probably

402
00:37:18,560 --> 00:37:24,640
be tier two and then tier three. And so they're not producing this stuff themselves, but they're,

403
00:37:24,640 --> 00:37:29,120
they're, they have a say in it. And then they're also bringing it in, they're packaging it, they're

404
00:37:29,120 --> 00:37:34,000
doing some quality control once it comes from the manufacturer. Tier three parts are basically

405
00:37:34,000 --> 00:37:39,440
going to be primarily mil-spec parts coming direct from a manufacturer that's, that you're going to

406
00:37:39,440 --> 00:37:44,960
buy and get in bulk packaging. You know, you're going to get a BCG wrapped in foam, you know, or

407
00:37:44,960 --> 00:37:47,920
you're going to get an upper receiver. It's not going to come in a nice little box or anything.

408
00:37:47,920 --> 00:37:51,920
It's going to be in a, you know, kind of a plastic bag or whatever.

409
00:37:51,920 --> 00:37:56,640
But you're not saying that people should be afraid of buying those parts because you back them up

410
00:37:56,640 --> 00:38:02,720
and they're not necessarily lesser quality. They're simply that, you know, these companies are

411
00:38:02,720 --> 00:38:09,280
putting a design spin on something that is already coming from a quality factory.

412
00:38:09,280 --> 00:38:14,080
Yeah, no, a hundred percent. That's exactly right. Going back to the beginning, that's why I say buy

413
00:38:14,080 --> 00:38:20,240
from a good retailer, someone who's got accessible customer service so that you don't have to worry

414
00:38:20,240 --> 00:38:26,000
about if you do, because when you're buying that tier three stuff, it's not like bargain basement,

415
00:38:26,000 --> 00:38:31,280
you know, but there's not that extra level of quality control that goes into it because you

416
00:38:31,280 --> 00:38:35,760
want the good price and because 99% of the products coming off the line because the manufacturer does

417
00:38:35,760 --> 00:38:42,000
have QC, you know, like Anderson's got their own key. It's phenomenal QC, very, very, very low return

418
00:38:42,000 --> 00:38:46,080
rate on Anderson stuff. A lot of the manufacturer suppliers we deal with, they're good at this stuff.

419
00:38:46,080 --> 00:38:51,680
They're, they're, they're processing systems guys, you know, and they, you know, they're making a ton

420
00:38:51,680 --> 00:38:57,200
of them every month. It'd blow your mind the number of barrels that some of these manufacturers

421
00:38:57,200 --> 00:39:02,240
are making. It's almost unbelievable. And so nothing wrong with buying those. There's nothing

422
00:39:02,240 --> 00:39:08,400
wrong with buying those parts at all. No, I appreciate that. I mean, I used to work in QC

423
00:39:08,960 --> 00:39:14,960
and quality assurance, quality control back in, when I worked in the manufacturer, the Apache

424
00:39:14,960 --> 00:39:21,680
attack helicopter. So it learned a lot about that back. This is 30 years ago. And some of the things

425
00:39:21,680 --> 00:39:26,880
I was fascinated about is some of the specs they had on, on like the sheet metal on those helicopters

426
00:39:26,880 --> 00:39:33,200
were, were for mock aircraft. And you're like, the thing is never going to go mock. It's just not,

427
00:39:33,200 --> 00:39:38,640
but the quality control was at that level, just as if you were going to have a, an aircraft going

428
00:39:38,640 --> 00:39:43,520
that fast. And I appreciate the fact that you increase or that you include, you know, like extra

429
00:39:43,520 --> 00:39:48,880
springs and detent balls. And these are low cost items, but there, there was something which will

430
00:39:48,880 --> 00:39:55,040
absolutely stop a build, you know, there, my garage has, you know, three or four springs and some

431
00:39:55,040 --> 00:40:00,720
little balls and the screws that I, I honestly, God, I have no idea where they went. When I was

432
00:40:00,720 --> 00:40:06,800
taking apart something that just went, I heard it bounce off the wall someplace and I have never

433
00:40:06,800 --> 00:40:11,760
found it. I don't know where it went. Sometimes they just get raptured, you know, and you never

434
00:40:11,760 --> 00:40:16,400
see them again. You'd never see them. And the fact that you include, you know, a couple of those extra

435
00:40:16,400 --> 00:40:21,440
types of things, that'll stop a build cold. I've had firearms, which I've taken apart and some

436
00:40:21,440 --> 00:40:26,960
little $2 spring, I don't know where the hell it went. And now I have basically a break. I can't

437
00:40:26,960 --> 00:40:31,680
fire it until, until, until I get the replacement part and that's going to take a week or two,

438
00:40:31,680 --> 00:40:38,000
if I'm lucky. So I think that's why, when you look at AR15discounts.com, one of the first

439
00:40:38,000 --> 00:40:44,240
products you'll see listed is the OOPS kit. It seems to show up on that front page. Where do you

440
00:40:44,240 --> 00:40:50,080
either for the beginner or enthusiast or serious builder, where do you proportion your money? Where

441
00:40:50,080 --> 00:40:55,680
do you put that money just categorically? Like put most of it in the barrel, a little bit in the

442
00:40:55,680 --> 00:40:59,760
receiver, most of, a lot of it in the trigger. Kind of where would you rank things in terms of

443
00:40:59,760 --> 00:41:04,320
getting the best bang for your buck? I mean, I hate to say that because it's too cliche, but yeah.

444
00:41:05,280 --> 00:41:10,160
Or an entry level gun that a frugal person is going to build. Yeah. They got, they got the lower

445
00:41:10,160 --> 00:41:16,480
receiver say. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So I hate to overcomplicate the question, but it really does

446
00:41:16,480 --> 00:41:21,280
matter the kind of builds you're doing, you know, because if it's a precision rifle, well,

447
00:41:21,280 --> 00:41:25,600
then it's going to be all about the barrel and the trigger. You know, if it's a, if it's a combat

448
00:41:25,600 --> 00:41:30,720
ready gun, if it's something you're going to have to go to war with, well, you probably want just a

449
00:41:30,720 --> 00:41:35,680
really good quality mil-spec trigger, you know, cause you don't want a two pound pull. If, you

450
00:41:35,680 --> 00:41:41,360
know, for close quarters, you know, rough style engagements, you don't want that. You want, you

451
00:41:41,360 --> 00:41:46,560
want solid stuff. If likewise, you know, if you're going to run three gun, you want light, you know,

452
00:41:46,560 --> 00:41:51,040
lightweight, probably, you know, low recoil, but that means you're putting a three port brake on

453
00:41:51,040 --> 00:41:54,960
it. You're doing all kinds of stuff with the gas system for the person building their first day,

454
00:41:54,960 --> 00:42:01,120
or which will likely be around a, like a, your traditional 16 inch barrel kind of do everything

455
00:42:01,120 --> 00:42:08,640
gun, what I would call a recce style rifle. You want to find a quality BCG if, and you have budget

456
00:42:08,640 --> 00:42:15,760
in mind for BCG, I would go with probably like a micro best, you know, cause a lot of other people

457
00:42:15,760 --> 00:42:22,560
sell those BCGs and charge a lot more for them. They're phenomenal. They're, they're, they're

458
00:42:22,560 --> 00:42:26,880
pretty widely recognized as being some of the toughest hard to use BCGs out there. So I wouldn't

459
00:42:26,880 --> 00:42:33,600
actually splurge on a BCG as far as a barrel goes, I would avoid the bottom of the barrel.

460
00:42:33,600 --> 00:42:43,200
Well, there you go. But, you know, a great company to look at for barrels is Ballistic

461
00:42:43,200 --> 00:42:48,720
Advantage. We do a lot of business with them. We sell a lot of their barrels, Roscoe manufacturing.

462
00:42:48,720 --> 00:42:53,600
We do a lot of business with them. They were previously ESS, I think back in the day when we

463
00:42:53,600 --> 00:43:01,680
started. But I would, I would say get a barrel that's been proof fired. Okay. I know last I

464
00:43:01,680 --> 00:43:06,800
spoke to Ballistic Advantage, they, they, you know, which it's high pressure testing. Okay. So

465
00:43:06,800 --> 00:43:11,680
they're all magnetic. They should all be magnetic particle inspected. You want that MPI should be

466
00:43:11,680 --> 00:43:20,000
stamped MPI and high pressure tested HPT. And essentially HPT is, is a proof fire, you know,

467
00:43:20,720 --> 00:43:28,160
essentially. And I believe, I believe Ballistic Advantage still does that. And so we usually have

468
00:43:28,160 --> 00:43:33,680
it. We'll ask them, we have them in the queue at some point to have on as a guest. So you're going

469
00:43:33,680 --> 00:43:38,240
to talk to, you're going to talk to Clint. I don't know who they're going to give to me to talk to.

470
00:43:38,240 --> 00:43:41,760
But that, but that is, you know, one of our targets to have on as a guest in the future.

471
00:43:42,400 --> 00:43:47,600
Yeah. Try to talk to, try to talk to Clint. He's awesome. He's awesome. Any, any concluding comments

472
00:43:47,600 --> 00:43:53,760
there, Dustin? Appreciate your time today. And, uh, no, I'm happy to have talked to you guys,

473
00:43:53,760 --> 00:43:58,720
obviously stopped by. I hope everybody, through the firearms, that's kind of our deal here,

474
00:43:58,720 --> 00:44:04,400
15 discounts.com stop by, give us a chance to, you know, get to know our customer service. And I

475
00:44:04,400 --> 00:44:08,560
think that will make the difference. As I spoke about multiple things really comes down to who

476
00:44:08,560 --> 00:44:11,600
you buy the parts from, cause you don't want to have a problem if you do need to exchange or

477
00:44:11,600 --> 00:44:18,080
whatever. So, uh, but yeah, no, have fun building. I mean, it's, it's phenomenal. I think people

478
00:44:18,880 --> 00:44:23,520
in general should do, I I'm excited for anybody who exercises their second amendment, right? And

479
00:44:23,520 --> 00:44:28,320
whatever way they see fit and if that's built in guns, do it. God bless America. Thank you.

480
00:44:28,880 --> 00:44:35,600
Thanks for your time, Dustin. And, uh, we will, we'll put in a, a little promo for you on the,

481
00:44:35,600 --> 00:44:40,800
on our social media. Uh, hopefully you'll advertise the, uh, the episode as well. Uh,

482
00:44:40,800 --> 00:44:44,320
cause this is a good interview. And I think that people who are getting to know your company,

483
00:44:44,320 --> 00:44:49,840
uh, will definitely want to hear this and, and, and have that virtual conversation with you to

484
00:44:49,840 --> 00:44:54,640
understand that you stand behind your products. Sure. Absolutely. Hope to do this again. All right.

485
00:44:54,640 --> 00:45:00,400
Thanks much. Thank you, Dustin. All right. Bye. Bye. Okay. Dustin, I really appreciate your time.

486
00:45:00,400 --> 00:45:05,600
I think I've learned a few things. I like the fact that, uh, you, you add extra little parts

487
00:45:05,600 --> 00:45:10,160
that often get lost and so forth. And these, uh, after listening to them, I think I'm going to

488
00:45:10,160 --> 00:45:16,560
start flipping through those 18,000 skews and, uh, coming up with a list of, uh, items that I think

489
00:45:16,560 --> 00:45:22,000
I'm going to do for my next frugal build. How about you, Greg? Well, you know, one of the nice

490
00:45:22,000 --> 00:45:29,680
things about that website at AR 15 discounts is that they have everything categorized on the left

491
00:45:29,680 --> 00:45:36,800
side. So you can dial it in by manufacturer or by caliber or by part category or anything you want

492
00:45:36,800 --> 00:45:43,520
to really make sorting through all 18,000 skews, uh, a bit more efficient, uh, which is very,

493
00:45:43,520 --> 00:45:49,120
very helpful. I use that tool quite a bit myself. And the other thing, however, I didn't know about

494
00:45:49,120 --> 00:45:56,240
was the air of 15 build junkies, a YouTube channel. Perhaps I wish I knew about that beforehand,

495
00:45:56,240 --> 00:46:03,600
but I didn't. Uh, but now I think that at least you with this mountain of builds that you're going

496
00:46:03,600 --> 00:46:09,280
to need to do should probably go review that and get some pointers there as well. So thanks for

497
00:46:09,280 --> 00:46:16,560
listening again. This is air 15, uh, discounts.com edition of the frugal firearms podcast. You can

498
00:46:16,560 --> 00:46:24,000
reach out and comment on both social media. We're up on Twitter and Instagram and Facebook,

499
00:46:24,000 --> 00:46:31,200
or send us an email at frugal firearms podcast at gmail.com. Again, frugal firearms podcast

500
00:46:31,200 --> 00:46:36,880
at gmail.com. And we'll get right back to you. We're looking for suggestions for future shows.

501
00:46:36,880 --> 00:46:41,920
Uh, we're looking for any manufacturers that want their products highlighted. So

502
00:46:41,920 --> 00:47:09,920
thanks for listening and good night.