AR Sponsor
Posted: 4/10/2014 8:11:17 PM EDT
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I got a new scale in for the purpose of finishing my "light weight" build. I wont go to the extreme of the feather weight build, but want to come out around 5.5 lbs. Next thing I knew, the safe was open and everything was getting weighed.
I was a little surprised with the stripped lower differences. I expected the billet to be lighter. Yes I was lazy and didnt want to uninstall a trigger group (god damn 13'er blah blah blah) Lower Results: New Frontier Poly Lower (complete minus pins) 
PSA stripped lower (grip and and safety in bag added to give slight more weight accuracy for comparison) 
FF (my LGS) Billet Lower with trigger 
Then I was curious about other rifles. Zero'ed the scale and got to weight. All are unloaded, complete and most have a sling and/or optic attached. DPMS 16" carbine w/ colt hand guards and take off iron sights. 
PSA 16" carbine 
10.5" AR w/ troy rail 
yugo m70 
vz (love it) 
rem 870 with tacticool 
winn model 94 30-30 
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.357 lbs. That's very light. Realistically speaking the forged gi is not overbuilt. All the material there has a reason to be there. Every reinforcement is due to a type of failure that had occurred. Polymer will save weight but at what cost? The day the lower cracks or breaks that weight savings will be pointless. As aluminum gets thin damage that would have been survivable will put a big dent in the side of the mag well or fire control group. Obviously they all run in normal use but the std lower was designed for normal use as well as wear and tear such as tripping and falling while charging through the brush after a wounded pig. |
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Quoted:
If you want a light Billet lower, you have to start with the right Billet lower.... 
https://fbcdn-sphotos-g-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-frc1/t1.0-9/10154458_717226211631544_2031633339_n.jpg wow! Thats for sharing. And as for that skeleton lower. That just doesn't seem practical. 
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It doesn't surprise me that the billet is heavier as it has more material.
I have that exact same scale (great scale). I would recommend that you put it on the pounds / ounces settings, that is a format that is easier to decipher exact weight with greater accuracy as you have 1/16 per lbs. vs. 1/10. Another thing I noticed with the scale, try to stand long guns striaght up on the scale (if you can). IE, have the buttplate standing on the scale so the rifle is sticking vertically straight up. You tend to get a more accurate result than if you just lay the rifle on the platform (usually a couple ounces difference). It is very interesting once you start weighing things to see which items weighed more / less than you thought they did! Sometimes the results are surprising (thought an AR-180b weighed 6 lbs as per Armalite, it weighed 7lbs. etc). Usually, people's rifles weight more than they think they do. I always weight my long arms empty w/ sling, weigh any loaded mags separately, and then total them together. |
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