Amateur Gunsmith Gets it Done

I’m feeling quite pleased with myself. I managed to take my AR15 apart, make sure there was no gunk in it, and put it back together.

CORE, the manufacturer, is having a promotion. I got $40 off, and they included a free nickel-boron-coated bolt-carrier group. What is nickel boron coating? For that matter, what is a bolt, and why does it have to be carried? Not totally sure, but I will speculate and look around and see what I can find out.

In a bolt-action gun, it seems pretty obvious what a bolt is. It appears to be a cylinder of steel which locks cartridges in the chamber to be fired, and which houses the firing pin. I think that’s right. In semiautos, it seems to be a weird and complicated piece of metal which serves the same purpose. It looks like the bolt carrier is a hollow doodad inside which the bolt rides.

As for nickel boron, two seconds of Googling tell me it’s like chrome, only harder and more resistant to corrosion. And you really, really need it on your bolt carrier. I guess.

Anyway, it looks nice. It’s sort of a muted silvery grey with a finish that resembles bead blasting. And it was free.

The guy who sold me the gun told me I should take it apart and clean it when I got home. He said there could be manufacturing “grease” in the chamber or who knows what. I don’t think the put grease in these things. Maybe I’m wrong. I would guess they’re CNC-machined with water-based coolant. But machining can leave dirt and bits of swarf (chewed metal) in things. I took his advice.

There was a fair amount of grey stuff in the bolt carrier group (I assume it’s called a group because it has three major parts). It looked just like powder residue. Does that mean they sold me a used BCG (Us AR15 guys call bolt-carrier groups “BCG’s”), or is the crud they leave behind when they do machining just coincidentally a lot like powder residue? Who knows? Maybe they test-fire them. Anyway, it’s shiny.

I was amazed to find out that AR firing pins are held in with cotter pins. That’s how wheels are held on kids’ wagons. Do kids still have wagons, or have lawyers done away with them like they do away with every other fun thing? Ordinarily, the loose ends of cotter pins are splayed apart so they’ll stay in place, but AR cotter pins go into tight holes, and the ends stay together. The big problem, as I have learned, is that sometimes cotter pin ends splay a little bit on their own, and then the pins don’t want to go back in the BCG’s. So now I’m betting I’m supposed to order spare pins.

Didn’t have to do that with my AK, but whatever. Fine. The AR is AMERICA’S RIFLE! BRO!!! IT’S AMERICA’S RIFLE!!!

I didn’t know if I wanted to remove the extractor, but I thought about it, and I knew I would feel bad if I took the gun apart and left the extractor alone. It’s held in by a little pin. I had quite a time getting that crazy pin back in after cleaning the extractor up. I had to put the bolt in a vise and bang it in with one of my special brass gunsmithing punches.

I used Hornady One Shot to blast the parts reasonably clean, and I managed to jam them back in the rifle. I popped my crate of ammunition open, and I loaded a magazine. Now I think I’m ready to consider shooting.

I have no way of attaching a bipod. The foregrip has weird M-Lok holes in it, and you have to find some way to mate them with bipods. I’m working on it. I guess I can shoot from a Caldwell rest.

I’m already looking into reloading. Apparently, I need a case trimmer. Cases get longer when you shoot them, so you have to trim them back to size. This has never been an issue with pistol ammo. It looks like rifle ammo is different. I also have to start annealing cases. When you anneal a metal, you make it softer and friendlier. The idea, with brass, is to change it so it’s less brittle. I am told this makes cases last much, much longer. I looked up ways to do it. Evidently, you can buy a special $500 machine, or you can use the propane torch you probably already have, and it takes about 5 seconds per case. Guess which method I plan to try.

I just found out Hornady makes V-Max bullets for the AR. This is depressing, because I bought a Thompson Center rifle in .204 Ruger a couple of years ago. One of the big pluses of the .204 Ruger is speed. You can go a little bit over 4,000 fps. Today I learned I can get about 3800 from .223 V-Max bullets, along with all the things that make an AR handier than a bolt rifle. It may be that the AR can do everything the .204 can do, with huge magazines and nice ergonomics.

It will all depend on how accurate the AR is. My Thompson Center is super-duper accurate. I have a feeling the AR will win, because I keep seeing videos of people getting 1 MOA with AR-type guns. Of course, the Thompson Center was a tack driver right out of the box, and it cost very little, whereas the AR will almost certainly need a new trigger and a pricey barrel in order to do the same things. So it will end up costing maybe 5 times what the .204 did.

I feel like I should make three types of rounds. V-Max for critters, FMJ for precision shooting, and a few hunting/defensive rounds because, hey, you never know.

I still have nothing which could honestly be called a deer rifle. Some states let people hunt deer with AR-15’s, but it seems unnecessarily hard on the deer. The .223 is underpowered for the job, and underpowered bullets make for wounded deer that run away and die slowly. I think.

I have an AR10 in .308, but it has a varmint barrel about a mile long. Not really practical unless you’re shooting deer from 500 yards using a card table. I have a Swiss K31 which would work fine. I have a couple of rifles that shoot 7.62x39mm, which is considered a legitimate deer round.

I still don’t hunt deer, but that’s beside the point. I feel like a man who owns guns should have something he can shoot a deer with without looking ridiculous.

I could get a different upper for the AR10, in 6.5 Creedmoor.

I guess there is nothing wrong with shooting deer with a black rifle. It looks funny, but the deer can’t tell the difference.

Tomorrow, I really, really will shoot.

Then I’ll come back with a big list of all the things I still need to make the gun work.