Many people tend to notice I gra

Many people tend to notice I gravitate toward two distinct groups of parts, very high end and milspec bargains find on clearance. Given the choice would use all billet receiver sets, match barrels and high end trigger groups with $2,000 scopes on top of all. The trick is whether doing a top line total custom match rifle or building with a mix of milspec used parts and clearance rack items to have a 100% functioning rifle when finished. Selecting the correct parts for each build often results in a rifle that eats them alive swapping gas system and buffer system parts trying to make their rifle run. Will try to help some folks from falling in traps here and let you know where you can skimp and where you can't. What you will notice is that I use a whole lot of White Oak Armament barrels and uppers along with Mag Tactical billet receivers.

JUST A FEW BARRELS

Above left photo shows my pile of 223/5.56 NATO barrels. The two 24" heavy tubes in foreground are White Oak Armament 1:12 barrels to be used in a pair of twin varmint snipers that will launch 40 to 50 grain bullets thus the slow twist as won't have to stabilize any heavy bullets. If notice box they came from there are quite a few other similar boxes from same vendor. White Oak Armament barrels may not be cheap but they are guaranteed great shooters. The rest of the barrels are mostly clearance barrels from Palmetto and other sources. The three in right photo are Palmettos 18" 1:7 that retail for over $250 and on three occasions over the past three years have caught them on a one day only $89 sale. These three bring me to seven of these barrels with four used in builds thus far. Not quite a match barrel and why would not pay full price when another $100 will get a name brand match barrel.

MAG TACTICAL BILLET MAGNESIUM RECEIVERS

BARGAIN LOWERS ARE JUST FINE FOR SOME BUILDS

LWRCI & LMT LOBSTER TAIL BOLTS ARE TOP PICKS

AR PISTOL BUFFER TUBES

When building AR pistols there are a myriad of AR 15 pistol buffers are choose from. The most used "Gold Standard" currently seem to be the KAK Shockwave kits which I use more than any other due to cost and consistent results. A part of the AR 15 pistol appeal is a smaller and easier to hide/transport gun that if have a CCW can carry loaded in vehicle as a pistol with your CWL/CCW but be sure to sheck current laws in any state you may plan to do this. Some states disallow 12"+ barrel AR pistols to be carried loaded and others do not. Why my standard AR 15 truck pistol is a 10.5" 6.8 spc II or 11.5" 5.56 but prefer the 6.8 spc II. Above left uses a Battle Arms Development latest ULTRA COMPACT PISTOL SABERTUBE® and VERT® BUFFER SYSTEM COMBO and the AR pistol on right uses a KAK Shockwave pistol buffer kit. I recently built the smallest AR 15 pistol of my lifetime using a 5.5" 5.56 barrel and a Deadfoot Arms DCS buffer kit which is only 2.55" long but due to ovely large parts bill at my local gun shop and owner pitching a fit to buy and offered to trade my big box of high dollar parts and some cash boot because it was shorter than his SIG Rattler he was able to push me into selling and I almost never sell any gun once buy or build. He asked that I not post pictures of "his" gun online so now I have to try and scrounge money for another DFA-MCS kit with a dozen builds lined up that will need optics. both of these builds are featured in our piston drive section.