Atomic Nerds

As I am broadly lazy and strapped for content, let’s check the ol’ mailbag, eh?
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Holy crap, that’s a lot more than expected. Maybe I should look in on that account a little more often. Anyway, reader Geoffrey writes*:

I was hoping I could ask you what components you selected for your AR and why. Quite frankly, there are so many options out there that attempting to make an informed choice as to what would work for me continues to be perplexing. Especially so when trying to sift through the marketing copy to find useful details. Therefore, I was thinking that perhaps compiling a foundation of sorts of what others have put together along with their rationale might provide me enough insight to prevent myself from just buying items largely at random hoping they will come together into a useful rifle.

Well, as it turns out going at random can work out pretty well. At least it did here. There was some method to my madness, but not as much as you might expect. I imagine the most efficient way to do this will be to just go in the order I got stuff. Since I am on the internet, everything from here on is of course unimpeachable, totally accurate and up to date, and has zero possibility of any error or bias whatsoever. Also, I may or may not be receiving compensation for this post. Have a big ‘ol slurp of that, FTC!

The first part I got was a Rock River stripped lower. The reason I picked that part is because Rock River has a decent reputation for quality (if being a bit snug the first few times the upper mates to the lower), and the price wasn’t too over inflated. The lack of over-inflation on the price was the main impetus, since I found it at a gun show. Every other stripped receiver I’d seen in person previously had been sitting around $200, which was more than a little frustrating since the same parts online were sitting around $115-$130 at the time. I could’ve just bit the bullet and gone through the hassle of having a local FFL do the paperwork dance with one of the online sites, but that would’ve been a pain in the ass, and I’m fundamentally lazy.

Next up was the parts kit for the lower. My goal was never to build one of those 800 yard laser-beam tack driver ARs, so I skipped all the expensive two-stage and adjustable triggers and went with just your basic run of the mill standard parts kit again from Rock River. Again, the price was attractive, and I figured if nothing else they’d be most likely to have all the fiddley little pins and springs the exact right size. I also figured (after some borderline obsessive-compulsive reading) that if I wanted to later, it’d be reasonably straight forward to just upgrade the trigger to something fancier. Putting receiver and parts together was enlightening. I did add an ambidextrous safety, but that’s because I shoot southpaw.

Magazines came next. The aforementioned borderline obsessive-compulsive reading taught me that a fucked up magazine is the quickest and most common way to keep an AR from running properly. In those same online wanderings, the consensus was overwhelmingly in favor of Magpul Pmags as the magazine to beat. Given that ARs are basically legos for adults, getting more than three people to agree on something concerning them is a minor miracle. Throw in some positive remarks from people who actually know what they’re doing, and this part was a no brainer.

My stock was the next part to find its way into the build. I chose that based on the highly scientific method of winning a bet. PDB from the Gunblogger Conspiracy had a picture request of me during the NRA convention earlier this year. I got the picture, and so I got the stock. I’m not even sure what brand it is, but it fits and it’s a 6-position dealie. If I’d been paying for a stock, I probably would’ve gone with a regular A2 fixed stock, ’cause I like the aesthetics of that type better and the length is fine for me**.

Seeing as this has been my first AR, and I lack some of the specialized tools necessary for work on upper assemblies, I opted to just pay the little bit extra and let someone else deal with properly aligning everything, staking gas keys, and all the other various detail-oriented tasks that look remarkably easy to fuck up. As it turns out, just being a pro is no assurance of an un-fucked upper either, but more on this in a minute. Picking what I wanted was reasonably straight forward. I don’t like the aesthetics on the various super-stubby rifles. I like my long guns long, and the non-conformist in me just bucks at getting the same 16″ setup everyone else has, so I wanted a full-length 20″ barrel. I am not a high speed operator needing to preserve my night vision and confuse the enemy with my ninja-like maneuvering, so the plain-jane A2 birdcage flash hider was the lowest cost option for that slot. I hemmed and hawed for quite a while debating between an A2 upper receiver with a fixed carry handle (again, love the look) or going for an A3 or A4 with some rails and such. Eventually techno lust won out, and I rationalized that I could add a detachable carry handle later if I wasn’t happy with everything, so A3 with flip up sights was the order of the day. Barrel twist was another sticking point. Volumes and volumes and volumes have been sent forth to the internet debating and explaining and doing math on the various twist rates, with 1:9 having shaken out as the current most-common. 1:9 probably would’ve been just fine for me too since this is about 99% a plinking gun, but my non-conformist and overkill side chimed in together and convinced me to insist on a 1:7 twist, to better handle the heavier bullets found in defensive ammo. I’m not planning on popping prairie dogs with this, so over-spinning ultralight bullets won’t be an issue either. Is this the absolute best decision and configuration possible? Well, this is the internet, so yes, yes it is. And if you disagree then you’re some sort of godless heathen and you probably came here from the Brady Campaign website anyway. Sick freak.

Anyway, digging around trying to fit this exact bill took some effort. As mentioned before I finally settled on CMMG Inc. I picked them because first and foremost, they had the configuration I wanted, at a price that wasn’t outrageous. They came in a couple hundred dollars lower than a similar Rock River or Stag, and either of the latter two would have had a few compromises on my list. They had some other good options available (full-auto bolt carrier, in case I ever win the lottery and can afford a RDIAS? At no extra charge? Yes please!), and amazingly enough, I hadn’t run across much of anybody actively bitching about them online. Look for Stag and you’ll find one camp saying they’re the best thing since 1911s, but within two posts you’ll see someone explaining how anybody that buys from Stag should be beaten with a sack of doorknobs. The same applied to Olympic, Rock River, DPMS, and Model 1. About the only other company I didn’t see a vigorous doorknob-beating faction deriding was LMT, and while the monolithic upper they’ve got with the quick change barrel is cool as all get out, it’s also expensive as all get out, and do I really need more calibers to keep in stock?***

The downside to having picked CMMG is that the aforementioned snafu with the missing front sight wasn’t the only problem. The first time I hauled it out to the range, the action didn’t cycle. The rifle would go bang, but the bolt just sat there stubbornly until you extracted the empty and picked up a fresh round by running the charging handle****. After a bit of home-level inspection and troubleshooting, the upper had to go back to them for service. In their defense, this service was very fast, and came back in less than a week from dropping it off at the shipping hut, and that includes having Columbus day thrown in the mix. On the down side, I had to foot the bill for shipping it there myself. This was something of a decrease from the previous “make it more than right” attitude overall, but not a huge and damning one. The note included when it returned home stated “Barrel on customers upper sent w/ no gas port. Drilled gas port, tested.” Seeing as this is a gas operated rifle, that seems kind of a non-trivial oversight. Definitely a bit more severe than forgetting to cinch on a front sight. The important thing though is that they did in fact make things right, and very quickly in both cases. My best hunch is that this was simply a case of someone having a bad day, one of those “It was either Monday morning or Friday afternoon” things.

Since this is the modern age and relying only on iron sights is no longer necessary, I wanted a bit of techno-fun on this thing. Aimpoint, EOTech, and Trijicon are the most popular offerings in terms of battery operated sights that will fail at some crucial point and require you to either just guess where you’re aiming, or switch back to your iron sights that you suddenly wish you’d bothered to sight in. The leading candidate from Trijicon cost just about as much as the entire rifle did, so while cool, it got knocked out of the running. The Aimpoints and EOTechs were similarly priced to each other, and well below the Trijicons, but the Aimpoints all seemed to take extra mounting hardware, while the EOTech would sit happily on a picatinny rail out of the box. The model I picked also had multiple aiming points built in to account for bullet drop, which for no significant change in cost seemed a good function to have available. I gotta say, I really love that thing too. Just put the floating red ring and appropriate dot over whatever you want a bullet in and squeeze. Saying it’s fast is like saying the Roadrunner gets away from Wile. E most of the time.

The last component is probably the most important of them all. It’s probably more important than the gas port, in fact, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the note was just included for laughs. With the current trend to AR rifles covered with rails and accessories, what you add can make the rifle itself the accessory to whatever you added, it’s important to properly populate your rails. 40 megawatt pulse lasers, lights bright enough to signal other galaxies, laser GPS target designators, gyroscopic bipods made from a secret mixture of the ashes of Eugene Stoner and cold-riveted pure selenium, iPod mounts, USB ports, and more all spell out that what’s on the rifle is more important. Here’s the secret to my success:

That’s right. I put fuzzy 20-sided dice on my rail. Roll for save against AWESOME, suckers!*****

Hiccups aside, now that the upper is fixed, I gotta say it’s running great after the limited testing I’ve had a chance to do. With the current level of Crap I Gotta Do running high, about all I’ve been able to do was simply make sure it actually cycles now, but in the process of that it took a couple magazines to make sure. I mean, why wouldn’t it? Anyway, using the 10″ steel plate our range has out at 100 yards, I was getting satisfying impact WHUMP noises from the target nearly as fast as I could pull the trigger, and the few fliers I screwed up on were still within a couple inches of the plate. Not even the slightest hiccup came from the rifle during this overblown go/no-go test. I am a happy shooter.

Hopefully that covers about everything. As I’ve made clear, this is the internet and so my way is the only possible correct way. If you want to deviate from my awesome choices of win and cool, then that’s your own personal failing, but this works for me and I’m happy with it. If I missed any parts that anyone wants to know my motivation for, just say the word in comments and I’ll correct the space-time anomaly that caused you to not see information I obviously included in the first place.

*Ok, wrote over a month ago, but in my defense there is a warning that we don’t check that email very often. Better late than never!
**The adjustable length on this one does make it easier for LabRat to shoot though, so that’s a win too.
***Yes. Yes I do. Just not today.
****Almost forgot, I picked a PRI Gas Buster charging handle because I’d like to suppress this thing at some point, and the consensus is that shooting an AR southpaw with a can means a lot of gas in the shooters face. This handle is supposed to help quite a bit, but lacking a can at this point it’s hard to tell how effective it is.
*****You’re damn right I shot it like that. And it was COOL. Even with the extra sway they brought to the party. It was lucky sway. I rolled a natural 40 on that baby.

Posted Arms races, Ballistic Mood Improvers |