How To Build Your Own AR10, .308 or Ar15 Rifle

Making your own gun can not only give you a sense of accomplishment, but will allow you to understand all the inner workings of it. AR10 and Ar15 owners love to work on their guns and, luckily, the AR rifle is a gun that has been designed to be easily worked on.

Designed in a modular way, the AR is weapon that is ready for you to upgrade and customize it, and there are plenty of aftermarket parts available to help you do just that. Because there are so many modifications and additions that you can make to your AR, you have to start at real fundamentals, and decide how you would like to use your AR for.

Is it going to be a general weapon, or one for target shooting? A concealed weapon or sports shooting? How about an AR15 pistol? All of these and more are easily built from the basic AR15 skeleton, by swapping out and replacing various parts. What you actually want to do with the gun will dictate what parts you need to replace.

Start With An 80% Lower

Of course, there are parts that you can modify yourself, and the heart of a good AR conversion starts with an 80% lower, which can be machined to be the basis of your AR. These are readily available and also give you the opportunity to pick a range of materials tool. If you are considering a sniper rifle, you might want to look at using a 7075 aluminum lower, while if you are constructing a basic assault type weapon, then you might want to just use 6061 aluminum.

The lower receiver houses the fire-control group as well as the magazine, trigger, and pistol grip, and adds support to the rest of the parts of the rifle. When creating your own gun, the lower receiver is definitely where the rifle build begins. The lower receiver modifications require the use of a hardened steel jig so that you get the holes and grooves in the right place, and ensure that your gun goes together without a hitch.

Being a precision hardened steel item, they are fairly expensive to buy initially, but once you build one AR15, you are likely to want to build another at some point, so actually it is a good investment and helps to prevent any errors in the drilling/milling process.

Making A Customized AR Rifle

Once you have completed work on the 80% lower receiver, and got that into the assembly that you want, you can start to think about other parts that you may want. You will need to think about the upper receiver, and the barrel too. Barrels for AR’s come in a huge variety of types and lightweight or heavy-duty, and lengths of 7” right up to 24”. Any of these are good though you need to consider your usage. A 7” barrel will be a good choice for concealment, but can be a real problem with riding up under sustained fire.

A longer barrel will perform more consistently, but could be difficult to conceal and may be a problem carrying though undergrowth. Many people who customize AR Rifles choose the 16” as it both performs well and isn’t onerous to move quickly with.

You have a choice when it comes to handguards too; you could look at either a drop in type or a free-floating item. A drop-in is generally cheaper but the free float type will increase accuracy, so this could be a factor if you are planning a hunting rifle. There are a huge range of stocks that you can fit to your custom AR, designed to give the best performance under different circumstances.

Constructing an AR from scratch is a hugely satisfying experience and very addictive; once you have built one, you will undoubtedly want to build more. And you can also mix and match as you build up an armory of weapons. If you build your perfect gun and then find that you don’t like some aspect, strip it down and just change out the parts!