Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Hodgden acquires RCBS

Well there goes the friggin neighborhood....

Bet ya this is the end of RCBS having and honoring a life time warranty...

Guess Lee will end up getting a lot more of my business than they do now.

It it Hornady's fault that the mega conglomerate Vista Outdoors decided to run RCBS into the ground and then sell it off?

I also don't see Lee being any better about warranting their equipment than Hornady is.

Actually, I've had decent luck with Hornady's service. I had to make several calls regarding my LNL AP. A lot of free parts got sent. In one case, where it required a rebuild, the press got sent and returned free of charge. I would put them on par with RCBS.

I'll still buy the products I need from both.

Did Hodgdon become the same as Hornady? I musta missed that.

Well, that was my mistake, I had Hornady "on the brain" as I had just read they were involved in the purchase of Thompson Center from S&W.

I still stand by my comments about Vista"s handling of RCBS..

Hodgdon: the company that buys up smaller powder companies and then can't keep up with demand. Now RCBS tooling will be disappearing from shelves and unobtainable except at black market pricing. What a great hobby I chose to get into!! I guess they will buy Savage and Glock next as to complete the complete destruction of the industry.

I see this as a potential positive-- Hodgdon has a vested interest in the handloading market whereas, for Vista, it was always a tiny slice of the revenue pie. The Hodgdon family members that I knew were great folks.

I agree, good news, and will make a great company even better.

I was in a party stalking stags in Scotland probably 20 years ago that included Chris and Bob Hodgdon. They certainly were great folks. I don’t know what family members are serving in what company capacities today.

I've never had a lick of trouble with Hornady customer service. Their products are typically well-designed, but sometimes they suffer from quality.

As far as this acquisition, we have no evidence that there will be a change.

I have no inside information nor any particular animas toward any of the companies involved. I do, however, tend to prefer Hodgdon to Vista and suspect this acquisition will be a good thing for us. I hope so at least.

I got a rude awakening when I called RCBS for support with a press. I needed parts, and had discussion previously about what was available and what I needed to do. When I finally got around to getting things together, I was told I would need to send the defective part in (at my expense) and they would evaluate whether it would be replaced or not. The folk at Oroville said the new owners (Vista Outdoors) had made changes, and that's the way it would be going forward. They didn't sound happy.

In 2007, I was reloading a run of ammo for Camp Perry and was having a difficult time using the Hornady Priming tool. Out of frustration, I called Hornady and ended up with the engineer responsible for the priming tool. I went through my laundry list of design defects and what I'd do to fix it. The engineer said he'd see what he could do and get back to me. The winter after Perry, I checked back with the engineer who advised me he forgot our conversation. I chased it up the chain and ended up with Steve Hornady who was very irritated with me and the engineer and advised me that I was on my own with my priming tool because their business model/pricing didn't allow them to stand behind their products for life like RCBS.

In a few months, I saw that Hornady redesigned their priming tool incorporating many of the feature/improvements I had discussed with the engineer...and no acknowledgement from Hornady. I stopped buying anything Hornady.

Fast forward to this year. I was loading Sierra TMK's and the Hornady seating stem (purchased pre-2007) was putting a crimp on the bullet jacket behind the polymer tip. I called Hornady to see if there was a solution. Long story short, I ended up with about 5 different seating stems with corresponding sleeves...no charge. Hornady has really stepped up their game and customer support in the interceding years and I am now a Hornady fan...

During the seating stem call, I mentioned to Hornady customer service that I had a priming tool that didn't really work well. He said I had an old one and they'd get me a more current one. I got a shipping label to send my old one in, and a few weeks later, I got a new improved priming tool...all gratis!!!

Sorry...I get wound up talking about where RCBS is and where Hornady was. Cliff Notes version;

RCBS lifetime warranty is conditional under Vista Outdoors. There are still good people in Oroville and hopefully Hodgdon's leadership returns RCBS to glory.

Hornady was a bunch of bumblers 17 years ago...but they're doing great things product wise and their warranty has become what RCBS used to be.

I bought an RCBS hand priming tool in about 1997 I think and it served me well for 20 plus years. I lent it to a mate and it came back broken. So I bought anudda one and it looked identical but it was utter garbage. In the 20+ years since the first one RCBS' quality had taken a nose dive. So if the buy out can get RCBS' quality up again it could be good.

Hate them if you like, but a lot of the powder any of them sell is made by other companies here, in Canada, or overseas, and the supply is subject to various pressures, most recently the wars going on everywhere and also a nitrocellulose shortage, none of which Hodgdon has any control over. Military contracts trump civilian sales. Similar issues affect optics companies like SWFA and Primary Arms that don’t make anything themselves, but only resell.

Saw this a few days ago. I think it’s a great fit for Hodgdon and I like it that a company in the reloading biz will own another company in the reloading biz.

Potentially it’s whole lot better than some corporate Wall Street management firm like Vista Outdoors owning them.

^^^This.

Of course that doesn’t fit the Conspiracy Theorists and other uninformed members fairy tales……

Bob Hodgdon passed away a year or two ago. Chris Hodgdon is no longer a company officer but the Hodgdon’s still own the outfit and are still involved.