Help me. I have been looking around for a company that sells a complete AR15 kit. From the upper to the lower. I will use it for varmints mostly. I am not totally certain, but leaning toward the .223 just for cost. Can anyone recommend a manufacturer for me, maybe some pro's and con's. I have seen Rock River, Olympic, Stag, Colt, BushMaster, DPMS. Thanks. BigSky

Check over here. Lots of folks here into the AR platform in a multitude of calibers and several of their sponsors are AR platform producers.

http://www.predatormastersforums.com/

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Bob from Idaho

Come on Bob, lots of us use AR's also! Most AR's are pretty good, but I would get one chambered for 5.56 not .223. This will give you the ability to fire 5.56 surplus ammo, reloaded 5.56 brass that is Mil-spec, or standard .223. If you purchase a .223 upper, than .223 is all you can shoot. The 5.56 has a longer neck(Rifle has a longer throat) which allows you to seat bullets more consistently if you reload, or wish to in the future. There are also manufactures that reload 5.56 brass w/ high end bullets for accuracy. Next is the Rifle twist. I shoot a 1 in 9, but many new ones are 1 in 8. This will give you good stabilization of 55 through 70 grain bullets. Rock River has gotten some decent reviews, Colt is to expensive, I'm still not sold on DPMS.
I prefer Bushmasters, but as with anything else it is personal preference. The A3 model with a heavy barrel will work well for varmints when handle is removed and scope is mounted, or with handle installed and peep sights. With this configuration it is still legal for High powered Military shoots. My A2 DCM is a tack-driver. A great varmint gun for 200 yards w/ iron or I add a 3x9 42mm compact scope on the handle for further distance. There are so many options available for the AR it can be confusing. There are also varminter specific rifles that are basically an A3 w/ a 24" barrel as opposed to a 20".

AR15.com has lots of resource info if you can look beyond the attitudes there. All the best, Jim

Your right jp. I'm not an AR platform guy, but there are some very accurate guns being made today and lots of folks have several different uppers for different purposes.

I was reading about a fella over on the predator Masters that just shot a 3/8 inch five shot hundred yard group with his chambered in 204 Ruger. The 204 is fast becoming one of my favorite cartridges though I'm slinging it form one of the CZ 527 bolt guns.

One thing for sure ol Jim Zumbo sure got a lot of folks interested in the AR platforms. His boo boo brought a lot of attention to how much that system has changed in the last ten years.

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Bob from Idaho

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems to me we've entered a time when very good AR15s can be had from many sources. One indication of this -- when anyone asks, "Which one's best?", they get about 40 different answers.

I get the feeling that the quality of the parts available has gone up pretty uniformly across the board, and what's more important in getting a good AR15 is more closely related to the quality of the assembly.

I know a couple of guys who have each been assembling maybe 20 AR15s for sale each year for the past 5 or 6 years.
Right from the get-go, both of these self-taught "manufacturers" have build exceptional, reliable, accurate AR15s.The parts they use? Whatever they can buy cheap, preferably in bulk. They sort thru parts to cull any that are obviously broken or worn. When they build, they simply reach into their parts bins and pull out parts until they find the ones that best fit together,and then they assemble them strictly to specs. Their iron-sighted rifles are perfectly capable of MOA 100 yard groups, if the shooter is, and their scoped models are varmint-quality. Although these guys are FFLs and licensed manufacturers, their business is advertised strictly by word of mouth -- they really do it as more of a self-supporting hobby, a mildly profitable sideline they enjoy.

Hi, I want to build an ar 15 lower receiver but this is my first time when I am building this at home. I want to know which place is cheap for ar 15 shopping. Thanks in advances.

ar 15 manufacturers

This is one of those statements that shows one's prejudice based solely on internet gossip. Bushmaster, DPMS, and Remington are all the same rifle, owned by the same parent company, and are for all intent and purposes different sides of the same coin. If one is not sold on DPMS and sold on Bushmaster, then that makes no logical since at all.

OP, you need to go over to AR15.com and look around. There is much more information on AR-15s there than here and retyping a lot of it here would be too time consuming. There are many good makers of ARs, many better than any of the big name companies but at a better price. Spikes Tactical, AR Performance, Bravo Company are just three of hundreds that make top notch rifles from complete guns to parts for the home do it yourselfer.
If you buy a complete rifle kit sans lower, make sure you do not order the lower at the same time. If you do, then you have to pay the FET because you have just ordered a complete rifle. You can order everything but the lower, then order the lower separately and then you can avoid the 15% (or something like that) FET that is placed on complete rifles.

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I've built four of them. One (16" stainless and free-floated bull barrel, lead slug in butt and JT Enterprises trigger) is a toothpick-splitter at 300 yards. O' course, the 10-40X scope on it might be a help. The others do pretty well, too. The "gun" part of an AR-type rifle is the lower receiver. This is the part with the serial number on it. You have to have that transferred to you by an FFL holder. Everything else is just parts.

They are pretty easy to build if you have the right thingamajigs and tools at hand. Patience is also a virtue to have in abundance as you build. I suggest you DO NOT try to build one without an action block, which is a clamp, more or less, that holds the upper and lower receivers tightly together and prevents damage to same when you are tightening the barrel nut. If you should bugger the small slot that aligns the barrel to the upper, your investment is trash. You'll need an array of small-diameter roll pin punches. I saw a set at Lowe's the other day for about ten bucks. You'll mostly use the 1/16" and 5/32" ones. Be careful: They bend/break easily. You'll buy these tools and use them just this once (unless you build another or build one with a friend right there), but they are worth it if you want to assemble with little to no danger of damaging your parts.

Check this thread on another site. Seems this homebrewer guy knows about what he writes: http://forums.accuratereloading.com/...9/m/1721024501

Just to chime in for a little more info, Stag Arms used to make lower receivers for many of the other "top name" companies before they went out on their own and started selling their product with their name on it. Olympic Arms used to make most of the internal parts for all the other "top name" companies, and may still for all I know. If the parts are mil-spec it shouldn't matter and they should interchange no matter who's name is on it. I have built two AR-15 lowers and they both are made from Stag Lowers and started life with DPMS internal parts. I have changed out some of the springs to get better lock time and trigger feel, but it should all interchange. Lowers are easy to assemble and can be done with no special tools other than a few properly sized punches. Uppers are a little more complicated because you need specialized tools and a receiver block to hold the receiver during assembly. Check on youtube.com for videos on assembling anything. There are multitudes of videos and tutorials on how to build and/or assemble an AR-15.

AR-10's are a bit different and some of the parts are not Mil-Spec and do not interchange. So you must consider this if you decide to go that route. You may very well have to stick with one manufacturer for uppers, lowers, or parts if you decide you want something chambered on that platform.

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Hunting is not a necessity.......it is an obsession!

From PERSONAL experience: Some SGW and Olympic lowers had the holes for the trigger, hammer and pivot/takedown pins just a red hair out of place. I have one of these upper/lower sets from 1989 or 1990. It's a "matched set," alright: The lower matches ONLY that upper-- none other. And now you know...

It is true that up until a few years ago that the specs between manufacturers were a bit "loose". However, since the AR craze hit about 5 years ago things have tightened up amongst manufacturers and they seem to realize that it benefits them to have parts interchange. Look at all the aftermarket makers of parts out there. Without a "mil-spec" standard none of the aftermarket parts would interchange. I am really surprised that the AR-10 market hasn't learned this, but then again, the parent company of Remington does have a large chunk of the market and it doesn't benefit them to make their guns match up with others. It is fairly amazing that you can buy parts from one maker and it mates up to another in an industry that has been making different designs to compete with one another since the dawn of the firearm.

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Hunting is not a necessity.......it is an obsession!

I'm from Front Royal. Lived there from 1976 to 2004, then moved to NV where I can SHOOT anytime and just about anywhere. Best place on Earth for shooters...

It is great being able to shoot whenever you want. I also have that capability on my Mom's property. My biggest problem is getting the time to actually go out and doing it.

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Hunting is not a necessity.......it is an obsession!

I know that situation all too well, myself. My job takes up so much of my time and leaves me without much energy to do much of anything on the weekends. At least I do have the weekends. I have had jobs that had none, other than a day or two off during the week. The "mindset" of two days off during the week is not the same as two days off over a weekend. I am now waiting for my barrel to be fit to my rifle and to get out into the desert and let some lead fly. My wildcat has been four years in the coming. It's almost here. Hart says they sent the barrel to him last Monday or Tuesday, June 25 or 26-- whatever it was. I sent an email to the gunsmith today; waiting to see what he says...

You fellows are aware that there is a nearly five year jump between post #5 (7.17.2007) and post #6 (6.14.2012). It may not make any difference to the answers - and surely not to assembling an AR-15 - but I did think it worthy of note.
(Was Bushmaster/DPMS/Remington the same company five years ago? Don't know. Just asking').

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"Only hunting and mountain climbing are sports. The rest are just games."

That's why Hornady had to come out with Zombi ammunition. That's the only way you can kill some of these threads. The guy who resurrected this post should have started his own thread since his resurrection did not really have that much to do with answering the OP, and once these zombi threads come back to life, people, myself included, never check the OP date and these threads never die.

Pretty sure at least were owned by the same company 5 years ago. Some were owned by the same parent company when I moved to VA back in 2005 IIRC so that would have made the merger, at least between some of them, at least 7 years old. Other more recent mergers, I think between Bushmaster and the parent company, occurred more recently. I may be wrong about some of the mergers. At my age things that happened 10 years ago or a year ago all seem to blend together. There is no way my 'baby' is 28 and my first is 36.

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On the 8th day, God created HKs.
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