I Love It When A New AR15 Comes Together

Today I had some time on my hands, it was overcast and rainy so not a good day for flight or the range, so Leah and I decided that, in addition to doing a Pirates Of The Caribbean Movie Marathon, to get a project of mine accomplished that's been waiting around for awhile.

It was time to build my latest AR.

The Upper had been done awhile ago and just had an AAC 51T hider attached to it.

So I took my stripped lower received and with Leah's help, including some enthusiastic hammering and assistance finding flying springs, we got the lower assembled and it function tested correctly. Then it was simply a matter of mating it to the 300 Blackout Upper I've had ready for this moment and voila:

Now dressed with can and Crimson Trace Grip with laser/light mounted.

Just need to add an optic up top and its ready.

It is in fact a pistol, as yes, that's an arm brace on it currently.

Pretty darn useful arm brace, I must say.

Probably get to papering it as an SBR at some point, but this way I can take it to the range and run it while the paperwork is processing.

Update: I took it to the range on Sunday, mounted an EOTech on it from one of my other ARs, and it turns out the Crimson Trace laser grip was dead on with no adjustment needed.

The first target:

First rounds through with no malfunctions of any kind and nice accuracy, and I'd say its a keeper.

Leah also liked shooting it and it was as simple as "Put dot on target, squeeze trigger" and she made some nice hits on her target as well.

Tonight's Project - An AR-15 Lower Build

I decided that tonight was the night to finally build and complete my AR-15 Lower.

Having never done this before, it should get interesting.

Wish me luck.

Update 1: Ok, The Mag catch is in. So far, so good.

Update 2: Whew, that took some work, but the bolt catch is now in. That roll pin did not want to cooperate.

Update 3: Now it's looking more like an AR lower.

The front pivot pin, detent and spring installed so easily it was surprising.

Trigger, disconnector, hammer and selector were then all installed when I realized there was an extra spring sitting with the outstanding parts...the instructions I had that detailed the assembly process quite subtly glossed over a mention of installing the disconnector spring.

Drat. So I took it all apart, added the spring and put it all back together. Having done it once before it was a tad bit easier to do. Then I added the pistol grip and screwed it into place.

Unfortunately, The roll pin for the trigger guard refuses to go in and Natasha has ordered me to cease all hammering noises and assorted vocabulary enhancements this late at night.

I'll have to work on it tomorrow.

Also, anyone have any idea what is the size of the Allen wrench to screw in the front of the Magpul trigger guard screw? Nothing I have seems to fit.

Update 4: And, with the exception of the trigger guard, I'm done!

Total build time, including running around looking for the right tools occasionally, battling evil roll pins and assembling and reassembling the trigger components, taking pics and blogging the experience was two hours and forty minutes.

Certainly it was an interesting exercise, and I now know a lot more about AR-15 lowers than I had before.