These guns have been shipping for a little bit now and I have to admit being pretty curious. The retro AR10 really doesn’t serve a purpose other than simply owning it. I guess it would be a fun companion piece to your M-1A that doesn’t have a scope or your HK91 or PTR or FAL, etc.
So what’s the general consensus? Outside the fact that these are really just a DPMS with Armalite inspired receiver sets and not a repro at all and have some kind of cheap brown furniture are we seeing any problems? Are they gassed okay? Run okay with mags that fit the mag well? Accuracy decent? Any delivery timeframe on the Brownell’s waffle mag and more correct appearing pistol grip?
There doesn’t appear to be much end user feedback yet. There’s an eleven or twelve page thread over on TOS but not much real info there.
About the only thing noteworthy is that Brownell’s has changed the height of the front sight post. The original was too short so some rifles were shooting quite high at 100 yards. I think 10" in one instance.
Also, at least one rifle had a canted front sight that kept the owner from being able to fully correct for windage.
I don’t know how flimsy it is. I haven’t seen anyone doing any sort of drop tests, etc.
Ian of Forgotten Weapons comments about the overall cheap feel of the BRN-10 furniture. I haven’t seen anything he might have done on the rest of the retro line but I assume the pistol grip and stock are the same across the retro line. I also note that the BRN-10 has no heat shields. Is this true on the XM/M16 line too?
Here’s something that might put you in a retro frame of mind. An historic interview with Alan S. Wilder who was assigned to the Springfield Armory. Gun stuff starts about thirteen minutes in:
I had a local fellow who makes belts and guitar straps make me a repro sling. The metal slider and the button on the tail end came off a cheap sling I bought off eBay.
I don’t know if the current rifles ship with the heat shield forend but Brownell’s does sell the forend by itself.
I added the heat shield forend to mine a couple weeks ago. I don’t know if it really makes a difference or not. But I’m not really doing mag dumps with the rifle.
Another item recently for sale is a steel 308 waffle mag. These still have the correct waffle look but are probably more likely to last. The aluminum waffle mags are pretty thin and light. They probably won’t hold up to continued range use.
I have one new steel mag and like it. It seats pretty easily when full, drops free and locks the bolt back. My only complaint is that the waffle pattern isn’t very deep.
