rickyp, I totally agree with you on having to know how to talk to him and ask as many questions as possible. I leaned this many years ago when dealing with him. I have dealt with Ed quiet a few times in the past and had always been happy with what I got but recently I tried to buy two different used barrel from him and I asked very specific questions on each barrel and I had to return both of them to him. The first was a used 35 rem barrel that I was very specific on the condition of the bore. I told him that I was a cast bullet shooter and needed a bore that was in excellent condition with no rust or pitting. Ed assured me that the bore was perfect. When I got the barrel, it had a badly pitted area just ahead of the chamber. The story with the second barrel is, I was wanting a 357 max barrel but I was looking for a 357 mag barrel to have rechambered to the max to get rid of the long forcing cone type chamber in the factory barrels. I explained this to Ed and he knew exactly why I wanted to go about it this way he didn't have any used 357 mag barrel at the time. A few weeks later, he advertized as having a used 10 inch blued 357 max barrel that had been rechambered to the max. I talked to him about it several times on the phone asking as many questions as I could think of. Ed even mentioned that "you know this is the best way to have a 357 max barrel" again the reason was due to the throat in the chamber being ideal for accuracy since it would no longer have the long forcing cone type chamber. I bought the barrel and when it arrived. The first thing I noticed was that the barrel did not to have ever been stamped with 357 mag. It was stamped 357 max but it was not the best looking stamp job I have seen although, you cold clearly see that it had always been 357 max. The mag was not stamped over. The next thing I did was check out the throat. Turns out, it was a factory chambered 357 max barrel with the long cone shaped free bore area just like every other factory chambered 357 mag or max that I've ever seen. When I called Ed to let him know about this, he played stupid on the phone and acted like he had no idea of what the factory chambers looked like when he had already talked to me weeks earlier about the same thing and he knew all about the chambers at that time. I sent the barrel back and two weeks after he received the barrel back, he sent me a refund. I was still out around $24 bucks on the whole deal because of having to ship the two barrels back to him and still didn't have a barrel.
Trust me, I was just as confused as you may be in trying to believe this whole story, based off my experiences with him in the past. I had bought 4 other barrels from him prior to these, two of which were used barrels and they were just as he described. I don't know what the hell he was thinking or why he misrepresented these two barrels to me but I will never deal with him again. He also tells everyone that there is a no questions asked return policy but he clearly gets mad and hard to work with when you actually have to send a barrel back to him. He did refund my money but I the whole deal was just aggrevating and it cost me $24 bucks to lean a leason.
I posted this story on here a while back as was called names and was told I was a liar and couldn't be trusted by Graybeard and he accused me of just wanting to bitch about and bash his sponsors for some reason. After he called me childish names and showed how much of a ass he could be, he locked the post so I couldn't respond and then after a day or so he deleted it so knowone else could read it. I don't have any reason to bash his sponsors. I was just trying to warn people of what might happen if they buy a used barrel from Ed. After this happened, I received several PM's from people saying that they have had similiar experiences with Ed. There are also many people that want visit GBO anymore due to Graybeard being an jerk. As long as you agree with him, everything is fine but as soon as you don't agree with Graybeard on something, he starts the name calling.