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Posted: 4/30/2009 5:13:48 PM EDT
| Man this site is great! Spent the past two weeks buying parts based on the wealth of information on this site (and what is actually available out there). I went with a Stag stripped lower, Stag complete A4 upper, RRA LPK, RRA BGC, low profile gas block, FF handguard, and a 20" Stainless barrel from Superior Barrels. Built the lower yesterday with no problems. The upper however has me more than a bit concerned. I don't have any experiance or the required tools and I can't justify buying them as I won't be changing this out after the initial installation. The head space thing also has me pretty concerned. What would be the best option for getting my upper components assembled? There's a Gander Mountain near by with an in house gun smith. Will any gun smith suffice or do they need specific AR experiance? There's also a gun show this weekend. I was thinking about walking around the booths with AR components and seeing if anyone local would put it together. Anything to worry about there? I appreciate the pointers. |
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Quoted:
Man this site is great! Spent the past two weeks buying parts based on the wealth of information on this site (and what is actually available out there). I went with a Stag stripped lower, Stag complete A4 upper, RRA LPK, RRA BGC, low profile gas block, FF handguard, and a 20" Stainless barrel from Superior Barrels. Built the lower yesterday with no problems. The upper however has me more than a bit concerned. I don't have any experiance or the required tools and I can't justify buying them as I won't be changing this out after the initial installation. The head space thing also has me pretty concerned. What would be the best option for getting my upper components assembled? There's a Gander Mountain near by with an in house gun smith. Will any gun smith suffice or do they need specific AR experiance? There's also a gun show this weekend. I was thinking about walking around the booths with AR components and seeing if anyone local would put it together. Anything to worry about there? I appreciate the pointers. Are you mechanically inclined? I built my first AR just like you, bought the parts individually and assembled the whole upper. When I built mine I didn't have any of the recommended tools. Are they helpful, yes they are. But you don't need them to do the build. Well I guess I should say it depends. My upper was a VLTOR VIS so it came with a special barrel wrench that attaches to a socket wrench. So unless you got one of these uppers you will probably need to buy a barrel wrench. Everything else can be assembled with the tools you should have in your garage. As long as you take your time and plan everything throuhg you should be fine. I say plan it through, because when I assembled mine, I put the barrel on the upper receiver then put the gas block on before putting the gas tube in. Normally this isn't a problem, but the VIS upper receiver has the top half of the rail as a part of the upper receiver. I had also used some awesomely strong slip-fit loctite on the gas block. So my only options were to either remove the barrel completely or to spend the 45 min I did trying to wriggle the gas tube into position with 3 different needle nose pliers. |
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Assuming the extension is already on the barrel, no need to worry about headspace. You need a solid bench with a vice and an action block, and a barrel wrench. You could get a gunsmith to do it all ...
and I can't justify buying them as I won't be changing this out after the initial installation
yeah, that's what I said ... 4 AR's later |
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