C'est fini! Serial Number One.

[lysanderxiii]

Well, after about eighty hours of CNC (Crankin' 'N' Cussin' on a manual machine) my rifle is finished. First metal was cut on the 4rd of July, test fired on 26 September. Not to mention at more than a hundred hours of drafting and design work.





[In these two photos, the observant may notice the lack of piston, the result of a minor hiccup in the testing. Note to all interested: don't use 1144 steel in the piston or the operating rod. A completely new piston design was made the next day, now it's hardened tool steel.]

Pretty close to the drawing.

 

[lysanderxiii]

In all starts with a pile of spare parts:


First metal cut. Extruded structural aluminum tubing. I was surprise at how hard it was to find radiused corner tube in volumes less that a truckload.


The trunnion, if there is an E9 version it will have a steel trunnion. The treads were helicoiled, which became problematic in the thin side threads.


Trial fitting of the trunnion to the upper tube:


Trial fitting of the bolt/carrier/Guide rods in the upper.

 

[lysanderxiii]

And, the bolt fits like it’s supposed to. The lower is a chunk of 1.25" aluminum plate


It’s using an AR-180B bolt/bolt carrier so it needs a steel guide rail for the cam pin.


The receiver is starting to look more like a receiver.


The magazine well. That was actually less trouble than I thought it would be. A bit of hand filing though.


The magazine catch machined into the receiver. That was a bit nerve racking. I can’t tell you how many times I recalculated the position of the hole.


All set up for the cycling and feeding testing.

 

[lysanderxiii]

Lightening cuts complete. Still no fire control group pocket cut yet.


All machining complete at this point


Detail view of the lightening cuts.


Rear sight base.


The receiver after its protective coating of Duracoat. I really would have preferred hard anodizing, but nobody around here does that sort of thing.


The upper. The structural tubing actually was already Type III anodized, only it was Class 1 (non-dyed).


The handguard. You can’t tell form this poorly lit photo, but it is made from light blond colored phenolic. Very light and fairly strong.

 

[johnnydollar]

Wow! Very nice work. Fine photos, too. Thanks for posting that!!

 

[1911 guy]

Nice job

 

[Walkalong]

Seriously cool project. Looks great.

 

[GBExpat]

WOW! Very nice! That... is truly impressive!

Pride should be a primary component of what you are feeling about this project right now, lysanderxiii.

Thanks for sharing the info & pics.

 

[Wishoot]

Wow! Amazing DIY project to say the least.

 

[bannockburn]

lysanderxiii

Nice, clean looking design! Kind of reminds me of the overall profile of a Galil. Great photos too with the step-by-step process of the design, layout, machine work, and the completed gun.

 

[kBob]

That is really neat and some nice work.

I will also tempt folks to leave their AR15, AR180b, FN-FAL, and HAC-7 alone and in the dark with candles, suggestive music, and a fine red wine.

Sure are going to start some conversations with that one on the range!

-kBob

 

[P.B.Walsh]

Great job! It looks like a very handy carbine.

 

[Salmoneye]

Thanks for the look...

 

[ttarp]

Neat project, care to share any specs? Size, weight, inspiration?

 

[Archangel14]

That's really something else! Very good job!

 

[boom boom]

Looks better than many projects in shotgun news. Might be able to sell them an article based on your rifle if you want.

 

[Gtscotty]

Super cool project! What does it weigh?

 

[Panzerschwein]

What his name? (the rifle)

 

[BCRider]

A simple "GREAT JOB!" seems so inadequate a reply to the many hours and brain cells it took to get this far. But there it is....

 

[lysanderxiii]

What his name? (the rifle)

Test Article, 5.56mm, T195E8

Neat project, care to share any specs? Size, weight, inspiration?

Weight - 7.5 lb empty (approx) 8.5 lb with loaded w/30 rd. magazine and sling
Length - 36 in (26.5 in, stock folded)
Barrel Length - 6.1 in (6-groove, 1-7 rifling)
And, it only has 93 individual parts.

I had since the 6th grade been interested in designing an automatic of my own design and spent many a night tracing cutaways and poking holes in pages with dividers (much to the annoyance of my father) in Musgrave and Nelson's tome on assault rifles or one of several editions W.H.B. Smith's. Then, as most of you know, life got in the way for a decade or three, but I still kept most of those sketches.

I though while building and AR (actually, 'assembling', kind'a like IKEA furniture) is fun and all that, when your done, what do you have? Just another AR, basically the same as the other 4 million of them out there. Not that there is wrong with that, but: 1) it isn't all that unique, and 2) all the fun 'engineering' work has been done by someone else.

This particular project started life with the alignment of several events, I had recently been introduced to a machine shop owner that didn't mind me borrowing a mill, lathe, some of the more common cutters and some electricity, the price of AR parts had sky rocketed in the wake of the latest wave of anti-gun activity (2013) making the price of a new AR unattractive, and I saw that Armalite was selling off their old stocks of AR-180B parts with their complete bolt carrier group assemblies were actually lower priced than an AR-15 BCG.

The initial design parameters were that this design would mate an AR-15 barrel to the bolt carrier assembly of an AR-180 with no modification to either and have a material cost of under $600 and use no non-common tooling (I did buy a wind up buying a radius corner end mill for the receiver lighting cuts and a long flute end mill for the magazine well). Fortunately, the plummeting prices of AR parts during early 2015 allowed redesigning it to reduce the total number of self-manufactured parts.