Little AR10 trash build

[Wolfdog91]

Haven't done a trash build in a bit and wanted to build my first AR10 so decided to do kill two birds with one stone. And since I've been told folks enjoy my weird lil projects , thought I'd share real quick my progress so far .
What's a trash build ? Basically I just get some really cheap parts toss them together and make something for non serious work because I'm a weirdo and I quite enjoy it ....for some odd reason. its not even about saving money at this point I just like doing it . And it's cheaper then drinking I guess lol.

And this is going to be a hunting/ plinker so if I can get it shooting pretty consistent 1" groups @100yd I'll be plenty happy . But the kill zone in most cutters skulls is like 2"x2" so a gun that consistently should half that , thats perfectly fine with me lol.

Also sorry for all the posts can only do 6 pics at a time and I have a lot of pictures lol

O also , warning I'm not a gunsmith or anything so please dot. Take this as a how to .

Anyhow wanted something that would require a little tinkering and saw PSA lowers and BCA uppers can ten to need a little fitment work and that sounded interesting, also BCA are one of the few places that have side chasing uppers , which I really wanted for an AR10 so looked around and snagged one of these on sale uppers in 6.5 creed ( when with it slightly out of the desire to annoy people lol but also to test this idea that the chamber design of the creed "just makes it work " )



And right off the bat it looked alright ..until I messed with he handguard aaannnd yeah not supposed to do that ,

figured it was just the handguard loose. Evey BCA upper I've disassembled and been over torqued to the point it makes no sense so I had big doubts this would be any different but decided to check any way and surprise surprise... The barrel nut is barely much more then hand tight ! And guess who dint order a vice block and what not because they went thinking they would have to do barrel work just yet ....yep this guy
And since my AR-15 reaction rod was too short

Had to go do some reading on the ye olde' forums from back in the day when you couldn't just get all sorts of fancy new fangled tools for every job ... Which I gotta say got me a little depressed reading, I mean folks used to really think about stuff now you can't just order something folks seem to be dead in the water , anyhow ,
Read and saw how folks used to make there on clamshell type receiver block out of just some 2x4's and some wood screws so why not !

 

[Wolfdog91]

So clamped her on in the vice and torqued it in down some


After that made sure everything was back the way it should be and went to look at the barrel . Honestly don't expect anything stellar from barrel in a $230 clearance upper


Yep usual grease and some crude not the worst I've seen. But not the best
So went in with hoppes then some JB some dry patches more hoppes lol Iosso dry patches then some more hoppes

Not perfect but better

 

[Wolfdog91]

And not for the part I was really interested in , the upper and lower fitment
As you see this the pin hole on the rear that barley doesn't flush up which for this combo isn't uncommon apparently so needs a little work with a Dremel. And this is what seems to be the common deal...dose it make it right ? No but hay.
Also warning I'm not a gunsmith consultant a gunsmith before doing something like this.

So actually ended up grinding all around but right here really end up being all I really needed to hit

And using a light behind the upper while trying to fit it really helped with seeing were to grind
So just makes it off took my time and about 15 min later boom

So the cool thing about this is it actually let me grind just enough so I have a nice tight upper and lower fitment . I can pop the pin in and out really easy but when it's in there's like no wobble

 

[Wolfdog91]

So really now all that was left was a test fire to make sure it worked , on thing I've seen a lot of with these uppers is them not cycling, so picked up some factory ammo put two in the mag and into the berm we went
So two in the mag. Cycled the first , picked up the second, and locked back . ..... That's like 90% of the problems right there so... I called her good for actual shooting

 

[Wolfdog91]

So after that mounted the scope and tried to bore site it, one thing I don't like is you need a allen key to field strip this thing but egh not the worst thing in the world


Then my lovely wife bought the last lil thing I needed from the post office with was the luth MBA3 3 stock , I love these things

 

[Wolfdog91]

And before reloading I always test with factory ammo just to see what she does so running. A bipod rear bag and I made this lil bag rider deal off a suggestion someone on here gave me a while back , all it is is a chunk of 1" aluminum round stock and a ole 1" scope ring


Also did the little trick with screwing in a board to load my bipod against

O and getting a little fancy like some of y'all with the canopy lol


And not gonna lie , though I don't feel this is fucking as bad as I was told AR10's do it definitely takes som getting used to

 

[Wolfdog91]

But anyhow my bore sight was off so took a bit to get on paper @50yd but once I got that went off to 100yd
Setting sun please this weird haze we get down here in the evenings dint help either

But first group

Honestly didn't expect much with factory ammo but had five round left so decided to get some velocity data, strapped on my magneto adjusted my set up a little and next group was a lot better, still a bit of a tired but better then what I see at the range come deer season lol !


And of course I gotta be that guy and toss out the worst one just to see


And that was all my factory ammo so RELOADING TIME

 

[Wolfdog91]

But before that had to give it the ole rattle can wanna be sniper paint job lol

O and a look at that factory stuff
Didn't beat it up as bad as I thought it would, guess because no shell deflector ?

 

[Wolfdog91]

So as far as reloading I didnt get super crazy , again 6.5 creed is supposed to just work if you do a few things right so , new starline brass , (which btw was all under spec, honestly I fell like I could have just gave it a quick chamfer and debur primed and loaded them but I full length sized and tried to trim it all )and Hornady 140gr ELDM's which from my understanding are THE bullet for the creed

For powder all I had that was suitable was a can of accurate 4350 which isn't as fast as H4350 which is supposed to be the powder for the creed but after some digging I've found some data and that people have used it pretty well with a starting charge of 39.0 and a max of up to like 43gr ( though apparently that's at like a 110% compression) so I just went middle of the road and when with 41.5 AR's suck a decent bit of that gas up so I always find myself needing to go higher to even get close to mid range velocity

Coal/CBTO ? Loaded them to fit in my mag nice and easy but as long as possible and tested to make sure they didn't stick in the rifling

Also since this heffier does have a good bit of motion going during firing and these bullets are pretty slick decided to give them all just a kiss of a crimp to keep them in place. Tired measuring it but egh not sure how reliable it is

 

[Wolfdog91]

Also slight rewind, was a bit of a airhead an ordered small rifle primer brass instead of large somehow, was gonna use some of my stock of ginex large rifle primers but now all I had was some magtech 7 1/2's I was just playing with

Also 41.5 GR of this accurate 4350 really comes up !

 

[Wolfdog91]

Ok so back out @100yd

I did end up cutting my bag rider down a bit since it was casing me to have my non firing hand where the pistol grip would hit it during recoil but no biggie


But feeding From the mag and


No clue what happened with that high left one . Did have one really low velocity

Really wanted to get up to at least 2600fps so decided to just go ahead and jump a half grain up to 42.0 and honestly, I'm gonna call that my max with this power , was definitely getting compression and personally I don't like compression
But !

If it wasn't for that bottom one ! But still I'm at 1" @100yd right at 2600fps so really now all there is to do is load some more and confirm.
Gonna be loading about 25 up tonight do a confirmation in tomorrow and see about baking some steel out as far as I can....which will be all of 350-400yd lol

 

[ebb]

Sounds like some of my builds! The bullet never gets told how much you spent on your gun, and the only thing that matters is the size of the group. Keep tweaking the load, keep tinkering with the gun, one day it may be obvious that one of the pieces of the gun needs to be better. Change it when you want and with what you want. I love your builds and posts, the only one you need to please is YOU, keep doing it. Don't let the gun snobs influence you at all, ever. I missed a good AR trigger at Cast Boolits because i didn't look at the swapping and selling section every day, watch for upgrades. I am a member at Palm Beach Gun Collectors and had been looking for an Ariaska firing pin, they are $130 and up. I see a guy at the club meeting trying to sell a whole bolt he wants $20 for it. Thanks for posting.

 

[Knotwild]

Try a box of 129gr Hornady American Whitetail. It might surprise you. For our southern deer with close range shots (200 & under), I found I really liked a 90 to 100gr varmint bullet pushed fast with neck shots. I have a Tikka that won’t shoot 140’s well.

 

[Geronimo Jim]

What a great write up!

 

[Jeff Porter]

While not in keeping with the trash build theme, try an adjustable gas block if you haven’t.

 

[RandyB]

I was enjoying the story until I got to the "F" bomb. Oh well

 

[Wolfdog91]

I was enjoying the story until I got to the "F" bomb. Oh well

Where that ? Was half asleep when I type all this up

 

[Wolfdog91]

While not in keeping with the trash build theme, try an adjustable gas block if you haven’t.

Actually it's on the list to try

 

[Wolfdog91]

Sounds like some of my builds! The bullet never gets told how much you spent on your gun, and the only thing that matters is the size of the group. Keep tweaking the load, keep tinkering with the gun, one day it may be obvious that one of the pieces of the gun needs to be better. Change it when you want and with what you want. I love your builds and posts, the only one you need to please is YOU, keep doing it. Don't let the gun snobs influence you at all, ever. I missed a good AR trigger at Cast Boolits because i didn't look at the swapping and selling section every day, watch for upgrades. I am a member at Palm Beach Gun Collectors and had been looking for an Ariaska firing pin, they are $130 and up. I see a guy at the club meeting trying to sell a whole bolt he wants $20 for it. Thanks for posting.

Yeah I've gotten to the point where I just do what I like . For a while I was doing all this stuff basically trying to please other people online and I just stopped on day and was like " wait....I'm loosing my mind trying to get all these expensive set ups and shoot these ultra tiny groups just so I can show someone who's probably gonna talk down to me anyway "
Like I was legit kinda miserable because I was broke and basically trying to chase what I was being told I needed.... Funny thing is now I could of drop $2k on a build it it not really affect me too much but egh, I just like doin this stuff more

 

[AccelR8]

You're doing it right.

I started building ARs a very long time ago, way before the internet. I made all my own tools like barrel nut wrench and upper receiver holding fixture, and others, simply because at that time none were available to the average guy. Gun shows and Shotgun News were the primary parts sources.

I'm getting things together for a 6.5 Creedmoor AR 10 build. I haven't found any commercial upper receiver fixtures. I may copy yours. Thanks for sharing all this info!

I am a bargain shopper when it comes to parts. I do not buy the high-dollar stuff. Aside from barrels, usually it's the lowest priced available that meets my needs that I buy. Bolts are also be an exception to that. I should probably knock on wood when I say this but I've never put together an AR that didn't function flawlessly right off the bat and exhibit at least acceptable accuracy. I get a bigger kick out of a bargain build that works well than I would out of just paying for (perceived) highest quality.

True story; one friend of mine who is a true gun snob built an AR15 for another friend of mine, a first-time gun owner and a not so mechanically inclined individual. The gun snob builder bought only the top of the line, most expensive parts and components. A truly “fine” build.

I took the new gun owner with his new build to the range last Wednesday. The rifle couldn't get through 5 rounds without malfunctioning. 3 different kinds of mags, 4 different kinds of factory ammo and hand loads. Most common malf was the bolt overriding a cartridge that started feeding into the chamber, bending the cartridge in the middle but also fails to extract and fails to pick up cartridges from the mag-that is bolt closing on a empty chamber. Just a total failure overall. The point is, expensive does not always equal good.

I have no doubt that build can be sorted out given enough effort and it'll be a fine rifle. Eventually.

Anyway thanks again for sharing this journey!