If being an ass was a Olympic event, I'd have to give the gold medal to Tom Spithaler. I don't know the real ins and outs of Olympics inner workings, but Tom seemes like the day to day guy from the outside. Olympic was never big business, but they were early into the AR game. They would source parts from Pakistani blacksmiths if they could, stiff their suppliers and pass the complete lack of quaility control onto you.
Even so, somebody at Olympic had a soul. Somebody but enough heart into their scrapyard lathes to produce some really terrific match barrels since before truly accurate AR's were a thing. In an industry dominated by lawyers and accountants, Olympic made 6mm PPC uppers, 30 Carbine uppers, WSSM uppers, AR's without buffer tubes, AR pistols and pistol caliber carbines, left handed 1911's and the Whitney Wolverine and some other weird and wacky stuff that mostly worked, but that nobody else would try.
I doubt we will ever know what happened behind the door at Olympic Arms, but I feel sorry for the guys that poored all that time and love and energy into the both the good and interesting things that came out of that shop. There were sparks of genius that were mostly let down front office decision making.
That is a little sad and both the industry and enthusiast are poorer.
Oh yeah, did I mention that Tom was an ass? I don't kniw what brought the curtain down, but I'd lay money on it having something to do with Tom.
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