Iraqgunz had a great set of questions in another thread regarding our AR’s and various spec’s and parts used in them. I answered the question in the thread, but decided that the question deserved its own thread so hear we go…
Feel free to come in with more questions regarding the make up of our rifles, and I will answer them here.
First,
Understand that we are at heart, a custom shop. We build carbines, shotguns, and of course 1911’s as packages, but also to customers spec’s. Many of our dealers order there guns to their own “spec’s” for market requirements [ie, they like their own “package”]. So you see rifles with sights, without sights, with mil-spec buffer tubes, and without, etc. Folks are meeting their requirements, and meeting their price points. I would venture to say that we get more shotguns ordered to existing packages, and more rifles spec’d out individually, as a percentage of orders. Handguns somewhere in the middle.
So here are some answers to your questions…
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Barrel steel and twist. We have used a couple of different vendors for barrels in the past, and quite a few rifles have been built with customer supplied barrels. Much of this has to do with availability, and of course performance. Currently we are using barrels from Wilson Arms, and we are very pleased with them. Our Chrome Moly barrels are all 4140, and 1/9 twist. Our stainless barrels [ used in the Super Sniper ] is 416 stainless and 1/8 twist.
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The barrels we use from Wilson Arms are individually Magna Particle tesWe have ted. They are not HP tested.
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Castle nut staking. We do not typically stak the castle nut, as it causes more trouble than you can imagine when folks want to change their own buttstock hardware later on. We are looking into making this a “checked off option” during the order process as we realize that it is a good step to add in the assembly of the rifle. On the other hand, we don’t get complaints of the castle nut backing off in the rifles that we build. We are looking into a better way to handle this.
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Bolt carrier key staking. Good subject. We have our BCG’s NP3 treated by ROBAR to increase lubricity and ease cleaning. We feel this is a GREAT feature, and it has been very well received by our customers. Our problem has been that we have not always been able to get bolt carriers in disassembled, and we would have to take them apart to have them NP3’s, and then re-assemble them. This does not make the staking process ideal. Mainly it has not been as consistent as we like. Sufficiently staked, with metal from the gas key “moved into the screw head” just not as consistent as we would like. We now have a steady supply of disassembled carrier groups, and we are implementing the use of the Ned Ned Christiansen MOACK’s to ensure not just “proper” staking, but consistent staking.
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Buffer tubes. Yup, we have used both Mil-spec, and commercial tubes, depending on availability and on customer requirements. We have certainly seen a trend toward just Mil-Spec tubes in the last year or so, and we hope to be able to standardize on just Mil-Spec tubes soon.
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Extractor Springs and Inserts. We use standard springs and black inserts. We switched to black inserts some years ago, and I have not been able to identify exactly when. Remember, we have been at this for about a decade.
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Lower receiver pins. “Small” pins… .154".
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Standard front and rear sights. Well, the problem is that customers want a choice. Most of the rifles we ship DO have front and rear sights. Some have our sights, sometimes customer spec other brands. Sometimes they have sights already, and they have us leave them off so they can install theirs at home. Many times dealers spec out guns without sights so they can sell sights in their store at the point of sale to the end user. I agree that all serious use carbines/rifles should have iron sights. All of my AR’s have optics and BUIS’s. I spec’d them the way I wanted them. Most of our customers do also. As an example, one of our most popular AR’s is some variation of the UT-15, usually including our Quadrail, folding rear sight, and now that it is available, our gas block/folding front sight. Oh yeah, the Armor-Tuff upgrade. Usually in black, sometimes in grey or green.
Folks, the state of the art in AR’s is a swiftly moving target. We have been building AR’s since 1998, and the components we have used and the level of performance has constantly been upgraded. Look for more innovation as we strive to control more of the construction by bringing more and more component production in house so we can control quality and availability of our products.
Now I know there will be more questions, so I look forward to getting as much information out to the members of M4carbine.net as possilbe:cool:
BTW, look for our new drop in “Bulletproof” trigger groups to start shipping to dealers and backorders to customers shortly! More to follow!