Chris, the two best AR upper builders are John Holliger (WhiteOak) and Nez Rongero. As you know Blackstar did a lot of advertising about their polished LW barrels. They were a real POS and they soon disappeared from the gun business. I have a close friend that did Blackstar's initial chambering. They had him do a few for a now deceased and chunky gunwriter (giving him more credit than he is due, He said the bores varied as much as .0015. Real junk.
I have some theories about Blackstar. Blackstar was a division of Delstar, a metal finishing company. I think a shooting enthusiast thought...hmmm, I think we can buy inexpensive blanks and apply our Delstar electropolishing to it and charge premium prices. Classic solution looking for a problem situation. Unfortunately the theory didn't work out, or the execution was poor...and a lot of unhappy customers got burned. Mark Stouse was the CEO back then, and his LinkedIn page says he's a Marketing exec which leads me to believe he was the man with the bright idea at BlackStar.
