"Huge market gap" Right....
100% on board. I have no bolt guns but I would buy a Canadian made bolt bullpup right quick.
"We don't take souls, we leave that to wives and girlfriends, but we can do a layaway " - Grumpy Wolverine.
If you need religion to have good morals then you don't actually have good morals.
driller, I actually brought this very idea of a bullpup bolt action rifle forward to another Canadian firearms manufacturing company quite a while back. They didn't seem to receptive to the idea due to (in their opinion) the minuscule demand in the Canadian market.
I'd like to think the potential for success with this type of firearm was greatly underestimated by them. There is a HUGE market gap to be filled here (providing it's priced less than what's currently available). We have Desert Tech and then we have.... that's right, NOTHING.
I'd love to see it happen but the only problem I see is the ability to manufacture this with a sub 3k price tag. But I see no reason why it can't be done for a lot less than a Desert Tech.
Keep the design simple. Start with a short action with choice of 223 or 308 bolt face. Use AICS magazines and possibly a simple quick change barrel system like the Savage barrel nut that would allow the user to have different caliber barrels and change them himself with nothing more than a vise, wrench and headspace gauges.
I'd be in for something like this.
I’d be in for one in a long a long action thumper round. Short as possible and around the 2k mark would be icing on the cake.
The problems I see is that demand will be very low and as a consequence the costs of R&D will have to be spread over a very small number of guns, which rather effectively kills the sub $3k part, unless a person is ok with crap which I am very doubtful Rick will have any part of. In converstaion with him the programming costs and fixtures for the Sporter still ran close to $50K.
To start up something totally different from what they already do would likely cost significantly more I would guess. Apart from mags everything would need to be made from scratch and given that they appear to be fully immersed in making Sporter for the next year or so anyway, don't see them taking on more expensive high risk projects.
When I picked up my Sporter lower he was grumbling about having to back burner his treasured 20mm project due to not enough time of machines.
I don’t see how this is a huge market at all. It’s not even a huge market in the USA and the idea that a high quality rifle of this sort would be meaningfully cheaper than 3k is probably a pipe dream.