Anyone have a link to a Step by step doc for building ARs??? I’m talking about something really in depth that shows each part, not assuming you’ve been doing this for awhile… I guess a"“Building ARs for Dummies”…
I’ve taken many Complete lowers and popped/swapped an upper and called it good, but I have never taken a stripped lower, LPK and everything else from a box or bag and had an really brought one too life…
I’m sure to most of you guys its as easy as shaving, wait, maybe easier…
But to someone thats never done it, it can be a tad intimdating…
I plan on picking up a few more lowers in the future and would like to be able to put them together myself…
lowers are simple to build with just basic mechanical knowledge. My advice is it’s a lot easier to use needlenose pliers to squeeze in the pins instead of trying to hammer them in with a punch. Be careful when doing the front takedown pin detent. I usually try to do that part inside of a bag, because that detent can go flying across the room and you wont be able to find it. If you do this part inside of a plastic bag, it will catch it if it goes flying
I have to agree that the Brownells videos were very helpful and printing out the PDFs were the icing on the cake. Highly recommended.
I will say that I didn’t buy their specialized tools for the lower, no doubt they would help a lot but for one build I used standard tools in my garage with no problems. The vice grips trick for installing the bolt catch and trigger guard roll pins (not in Brownell’s videos) worked like a charm.
Watching brownells videos about doing uppers was very insightful as well. Once I saw them take an entire upper apart and reassemble it I was inspired to do my own. I have since done a few upper mods on my grendel in the way of adding a JP/VTac rifle length HG, building a 76239 upper out of my LMT, cutting FSBs down to be lo-profile gas blocks and eventually I’ll take the Troy MRF-R off my LMT and cut it to 9.5" when I SBR that rifle. I’ll be getting a new barrel, bolt carrier group, and upper and switch the 16" barrel to that upper and make my cerakoted LMT upper the 10.5" I plan on it being.
