What to do with all these parts.......AR build. (long)

Ive been going through all my spare parts bins and found quite a few AR parts laying around so I decided to buy what I needed to finiah up a build and go ahead and document it for the most part. Mostly, AR building is pretty simple, like Legos, but theres a couple things I did that I thought I would share with yall to possibly give new ideas or help others out in the future.

I decided I wanted to build this gun as close to the rifle I saw issued to the Army on my last trip to Afghan so alot of the parts are inspired by that. No fancy Magpul stocks or grips or high speed doo-dads, special levers or ambi safeties, just a pure simple battle carbine, with some better parts.

Heres my parts list:
-Spikes stripped lower
-Dreadnaught Industries upper
-Daniel Defense 1/7 CHF virgin barrel 16"
-Danied Defense bolt carrier group
-Armalite "F" front sight post and taper pins
-DPMS Gastube
-DPMS lower parts kit
-Brownells standard M4 handguard retaining ring
-John Masen 4 position CAR stock, tube, nut and end plate.
-Armalite heavy buffer
-Armalite flash hider and crush washer

Extras:
-KAC standard issue RAS
-Grip-Pod
-Aimpoint Comp M2
-Surefire

Tools:
-Torque wrench
-AR15 barrel wrench
-Barrel vice blocks
-upper reciever vice blocks
-#32 drill bit and 2-0 taper reamer
-4-40 tap
-High temp molybdenim disulfide wheel bearing grease
-And the standard punches and hammer.

Lets Begin, the parts:


Asembly of the lower is pretty much straight forward as most people have done it, but I did want to document a little modification I like to do. I use a 4-40 set screw to hold the takedown pin detent and spring in place. This makes it a little easier to remove the buffer tube or change stocks etc. without losing the spring also makes asembly a little easier.

Tools required for this mod:



Doing the deed: Use a little cutting fluid.



End result, captured takedown pin detent and spring:




Next is the barrel install. Pretty straight forward. Lube receiver threads with the above mentioned grease. Touque to 30 ft/lbs, loosen and repeat 3x. On final torqueing align properly for gas tube installation.

As I mentioned, I bought a virgin barrel. I wanted to use a standard front sight post and I wanted it pinned on. I chose this for this gun because as I said I wanted to build a gun as true to a military rifle as possible. The problem is that virgin barrels arent notched for the taper pins that hold on the front sight. This is a job that most people I spoke with say cant be done by a home DIY'er.....hogwash I say. Heres how I did it.

First I tapped the indexing hole in the bottom of the front sight for an 8-32 set screw. This allows you to actually temporarily mount the front sight. I test fired the gun in this configuration, loosening the set screw to adjust the sight left and right until the gun was shooting dead center with zero adjustments to the windage of the rear sight.
You can see the screw here: Nevermind what Im doing in the pic.


Once the front sight was temporarily secured where I wanted it I scribed a couple indexing marks and loosend the screw. I slid the front sight forward and applied a little blue lock tite the the barrel and reinstalled the front sight back in its original position. I used the indexing marks I made previousley and got everything back in alighnment. I retightened the screw and let the lock tite set up overnight.

Now onto the scary part. Heres where you could royally mess up a couple hundred bucks worth of barrel, so patience and redundancy are the key.

I had to drill two #32 hole through the FSB for the taper pins. Basically, ensure that the drill is level in all directions. Clamp the barrel in the barrel clamps and make sure the barrel is perfectly level horizontally. Then check and recheck again. I also put a level on the upper reciever picatinney rail and leveled it vertically. I drilled ONE hole first.....success!

Once it was drilled I removed the gun from the press and took it to the workbench. I used a 2-0 taper reamer from Brownells and began to twist, and used a bunch of cutting fluid. About an hour later I had reamed enough for the taper pin to slip into the hole about 3/4 of the way.

Hand reaming:



I tapped it in and it came out perfect.....



On the second one I got a little impatient so I decided to let the drill press do the work for me so I chucked the reamer up and level everything the same as before. This took about 30 seconds to ream:

Reamer in the drill press:


Thats all Ive got for now and Ill get some updates here shortly as well as a range report. I hope this may help someone in the future. Theres not alot of info on the net about installing your own front sight on a virgin barrel, thats kinda why I wanted to document this job.

More to follow.......

Outstanding! Look forward to the next installment ...

Thanks.. I forgot to mention, but in the second pic you can see where about 1/8" of the detent spring was trimmed off to accomodate the set screw. Also, that drill bit is not required for the takdown detent mod. A 4-40 tap fits perfect in the springs passageway.

I really need to build more ARs...You certainly make it look easy!

Been curious about the screw mod. Great photos!

Well.....Got it finished up this afternoon. Installing the taper pins was prety much the last step in finishing it other than the bolt ons.

I took a little Brownells OxBlue paste and let it sit for about a minute. That finished it up real nice.


Heres what Ive vome up with so far. I installed an Aimpoint Comp M2, Surefire light, Laserlyte K-15 , and a Matech rear back up iron sight. I just threw the LaserLyte on to play with, its not going to live on this gun.




Took it to the range today and put 80 rounds of green tip through it with no problem. Gun ran like a top. Once I can get to GunHo Ill shoot it for groups and see how it does.....

Till then, thanks for reading.

Looks like you had a great time puttin it all together.

J.B.