Good writeup. I have a few comments and a question.
Truing the upper is still rather controversial, particularly when done by hand. Some have found that the Midway or Brownells lapping tools, though often a tight fit into the receiver, may still not be fully square with the bore of the receiver. Caution to those who try this as it is easy to remove too much material which can result in a $90+ AL paperweight. Additionally, this is only part of the solution since the barrel nut may not be fully square either, thus exerting uneven pressure on the barrel. My humble suggestion would be to shoot it first and see if you have any issues before doing this.
Using the lightweight JP springs with the reduced mass hammer is worth trying on an inexpensive hammer. Heck I think the springs are only $8 or so. Light springs with a stock hammer or stock springs with a lightened hammer are not recommended, however. I tried this setup for a bit and ended up chucking them in favor of a Geissele SSA trigger group as I was getting too many light primer strikes.
The set screw trigger mod will redice trigger pretravel, but will not cure a gritty trigger. I see you’ve addressed that in your post, but wanted to let others know. One should be careful with the set screw mod when adjusting trigger pretravel. Too much and you’ve a pretty dangerous trigger due to reduced trigger/hammer sear engagement.
Why are you using such a heavy buffer with a middy? Recoil is very manageable even with a standard CAR buffer.
Thanks for the comments, definatly stuff that should be stressed.
As for the question, I just wanted to give the ST buffer a try to see how it worked out. I’ve heard a lot of good things from folks running it, even in middys. If it doesn’t work I’ll throw a standard buffer back in there and roll with it. For that matter I may even experiment with altering the ammount of tungsten powder in it as I like the deadblow concept instead of solid weights. It’s only money, a few bucks here and there to try out new parts to see if they offer any benefit is just part of the game.
Unfortunatly a range trip is at least a couple weeks away, seems there’s a little oil spill in the Gulf I have to go to that is going to delay testing this rifle out.
Glad you liked the writeup, I just hope folks can take something away from it and maybe even convince someone to take a step beyond the typical “tab A into slot B” builds normally seen.
I just completed putting together my first Lower. I went with a DSA Lower with a DPMS LPK that I picked up at the same time for a good discount. Smoothing up the machined surfaces on the Hammer and Trigger sears did remove the gritty feel and in fact is quite smooth. There is still a noticeable amount of Creep, and the trigger breaks above the 6 lb mark.
I am curious as to how your Hammer Mod (i.e. shaving material to reduce weight.) and the use of the JPS 3.5 kit is working out for you…?
Any issues with Failures to Fire due to light primer strikes?
I want to stay away from custom triggers on this build and while I can live with the heavier trigger pull…I have to get rid of this excessive creep…that I can’t live with.
Again, this thread has been very informative and interesting.
The trigger feels much better than my old AR in which I just polished the sear surface. Unfortunatly I’m away from home and won’t be able to get it out to the range for maybe 6 weeks or so, no range reports till then.
For now just one of the 2" sections of rail and an MI snaphook mount. Not real happy with it, but it gets the job done. I’m hoping Magpul releases it’s RSA sometime soon so I can replace my current setup. If not I may buckle down and spend the $45 on a DD mount for the top rail.
Rattle can black paint works just fine for covering it after grinding. From all the reading I did before hand it should be a nice setup, it sure feels good dryfiring, but untill I put a couple K through it, it’s still in the trial stage.
Update time. I finally made it to the range to wring this thing out a bit. Been a bit busy with a little oil spill thingy in the gulf for the last few months, so this was the first time I’ve had the chance to get out and shoot rifles in a long time.
Ran 500 rounds through it, all Wolf or Tula steel cased cheap ammo. Had one stuck casing, and one dud round with a malformed primer that failed to go bang, other than that, no problems to report at all.
The trigger is absolutely amazing compared to a stock trigger, completely different animal. Ran a couple hundred rounds through my old AR as well, and switching from one to another really made the trigger difference apparent. Even though the old AR has a polished trigger it is crap compared to the new one, it’s just that damn good. Smooth, light, and crisp with no over travel, perfect.
Spikes ST-T2 buffer, couldn’t really tell a difference, give it a “meh, whatever” vote. It’s there for the bling, but I couldn’t tell enough difference to make it worth the extra cash, oh well.
Overall, I am very happy with how this rifle turned out.
Future upgrades? All I can think of is maybe trying out one of the new Battle Comps instead of the PWS FSC556 comp I have on there, and either a mini red dot mounted next to the scope, or ditching the scope for an Aimpoint of some type. Other than that, it’s a done deal.
Agreed 100%. There’s no point lapping the receiver true without also truing up both surfaces on the barrel and the barrel nut, too. Does it hurt anything to lap just the receiver? Well, probably not. The hard anodizing is now gone from the front of the receiver, but it should be fine anyway.
Thanks. Never tried 3gun, have to get a shotgun before I can even try, but I did take some cues from the 3 gun world for the build.
So far in the piddly ammount I’ve got to shoot this rifle, it’s held up fine. The true test will be time, when it gets to 2K rounds, 3K rounds, etc. I’m fairly confident that it’ll work out, initial test made me real happy with the trigger setup.
Interesting would be an understatement when it comes to my Gulf trips. I’ve done 4 month long trips down there now, each one of them in the command post in charge of different operations. 16-18 hour days are the norm, and I’ve got a lot more gray hair now. I’m hoping I don’t go back for a while, pretty burned out at this point.
Latest mod, the Battle Arms Development 45 degree selector.
On SAFE.
On FIRE.
Why did I buy one of these? Well, I’ve been shooting pistols a hell of a lot more than rifles over the years, and since I’ve gotten into AR’s I’ve been trying to get the controls the way I want them. That being more pistol like in that I can manipulate all the controls without breaking my firing grip. Mag release, bolt catch, and now safety can all be worked without shifting my grip at all. Besides all that, when I started building my new AR I said I was going to fine tune it to the nth degree, and this definately applies to that statement.
Quick sequence of manipulating the safety. Weapon was cleared and pointing in a safe direction, it’s tough to hold the rifle at an odd angle and take pics at the same time.
Now, B.A.D. went through a lot of legal consultation before bringing this to market, with the concern being that with the short throw lever installed the selector no longer pointed directly at the FIRE marking. In our current sue happy society, something as small as that could mean the end of a small company if someone had an ND and claimed they didn’t know it would fire because of the markings not being lined up.
To protect against this, B.A.D. installed a steel pin which will not allow the selector to be installed in a standard lower. New lowers are being manufactured just for this selector that will have the FIRE marking in the right place and allow the steel pin to clear the reciever.
Here’s the pin. (this pic is not mine, I got it off the web and put the circle there)
That is an excellent ST review Kwrangln:)…I know you were waiting some time to get your hands on one of the 45 throws. The fact that you are one of the first ones to get a new ST and then doing the above great writeup should help to show that while there is a slight consideration to remember when running these ST’s in a normal lower, they are not the boogey man and should be perfectly safe to run.
So is the ST what you thought it would be and was it worth the wait and trouble to finally get on your lower?
