All in a Night's Work, in Texas

Far-sighted readers of this family blog will know that I'm turning one deadly assault rifle into two deadly assault rifles. I went a step in that direction this evening, by assembling an AR15 Lower Receiver. It's not hard.

I drove to Waco in the rain and bought a Spike's Tactical stripped lower, a buffer tube with components, and an Anderson "parts kit." Then I drove back home and put it all together. I used a small padded vise to drive the trigger guard roll pin home, and taped up the receiver to install the bolt catch assembly -- using a roll pin punch and a taped punch to keep the holes aligned.

The front take down pin was a bit tricky, because the small brass detent kept springing out of its hole, like a Womyn Dean in search of a Bishopric. It's not easy to find those little detents, when they're rolling around on the floor like so many predatory texts in an English market town.

But the job was done soon enough and I was pleased with result. If you want to do this, consider getting some roll pin punches, a lower receiver vise block of some sort, and a razor blade to help keep the front take down pin detent in place, while you slide in the pin.

New Grip to Follow

Do you save any money, doing it yourself? Sure you do, a bit; more if you're a parts dealer. But you also have the satisfaction of having a hand in something you're going to shoot; and that's alright. More practically, you get to understand your rifle.

This lower will go on an upper that a friend's assembling for me. My hope, of course, is that it will shoot like a laser.

Cheers,

LSP