My AR Lower receiver from scratch

lsw · Nov 26, 2013

Wow! I came late to this thread and just finished reading it from the first post. What a great concept and execution. My hat's off to chsnprodigy, sticky, and the guys who are actually doing this! Chsn, I bet after you pulled that trigger on a live round for the first time you had a grin from ear to ear!

kalister1 · Nov 26, 2013

I have plates that are about .180, so I will need to modify the safety and make pins for the upper.
Gotta find a tap for the buffer tube too.

chsnprodigy · Nov 27, 2013

kalister1 said:
I have plates that are about .140, so I will need to modify the safety and make pins for the upper.
Gotta find a tap for the buffer tube too.

Sweet! Looking good! Post something on the forum about needing the tap for the buffer tobe. Someone on here let me borrow it. They mailed it to me and all. There are some great people on this site.

And just a heads up, the 20 round steel magazine didnt work for me. The magpul pmags worked great. You might have different results, but thought I would let you know.

chsnprodigy · Nov 27, 2013

lsw said:
Wow! I came late to this thread and just finished reading it from the first post. What a great concept and execution. My hat's off to chsnprodigy, sticky, and the guys who are actually doing this! Chsn, I bet after you pulled that trigger on a live round for the first time you had a grin from ear to ear!

You have no idea! The entire time I was making this I had no idea what the outcome would be. If in the end I would have a huge paper weight, or if I made something that could actully work. I cant take all the credit for this project, whomever did the actully backwards engineering back in 2002 can take top honors. I was just a machinist who stumble across the instructions one day on google. haha

ironpony · Dec 3, 2013

Great work !

dcody40 · Dec 4, 2013

I read all the posts and watched the test firing of your creation. I'm impressed. I'm sure you have inspired a bunch of others to move forward with their own Projects, I like thinking outside the box. I'm also a home shop machinist, and most often build bigger things for motorcycles, aircraft, and reloading machine parts. My big project is a Pitts Special biplane built from plans.
My AR experience so far is from the typical lowers, to 80 % lowers, and am really thinking about a zero lower. But from scratch as you have done! All I can say is wow.
Like many others who work with metal, we could come up with a hundred solutions or variations in how we would tackle this. I'm sure by now you have a Mark II or even a Mark III in mind.
Some idea's where you could simplify, build a part in a different way to provide more function.
Plus I'm sure you know about counter sinking hardware, you will actually end up with more surface contact, if done right.
I hope this topic keeps on going and ends up creating some more masterpieces that happen to shoot. This is the spirit of the custom firearms world.
You should put a serial number on it just for insurance and your own protection. Although your pictures of the masterpiece would work also.

chsnprodigy · Dec 8, 2013

Thanks for the compliments dcody40. As for a MKII design the only upgrade that comes to mind is putting in detents. Others on this thread have already started looking into this. Another side thought is to attempt to make it lighter by machining triangles into it. There is a lot of surface area where cutting weight is possible.

dcody40 said:
I read all the posts and watched the test firing of your creation. I'm impressed. I'm sure you have inspired a bunch of others to move forward with their own Projects, I like thinking outside the box. I'm also a home shop machinist, and most often build bigger things for motorcycles, aircraft, and reloading machine parts. My big project is a Pitts Special biplane built from plans.
My AR experience so far is from the typical lowers, to 80 % lowers, and am really thinking about a zero lower. But from scratch as you have done! All I can say is wow.
Like many others who work with metal, we could come up with a hundred solutions or variations in how we would tackle this. I'm sure by now you have a Mark II or even a Mark III in mind.
Some idea's where you could simplify, build a part in a different way to provide more function.
Plus I'm sure you know about counter sinking hardware, you will actually end up with more surface contact, if done right.
I hope this topic keeps on going and ends up creating some more masterpieces that happen to shoot. This is the spirit of the custom firearms world.
You should put a serial number on it just for insurance and your own protection. Although your pictures of the masterpiece would work also.

redeye505 · Dec 17, 2013

That is bad ass. Great Job.

chsnprodigy · Mar 2, 2014

Co-worker improved on the design

So this weekend a co worker brought his AR lower from scratch for me to look at. This was his first time even remotely building a AR lower, and his first gun ever. He took the original design many steps further. He kept going back to the original colt blueprint to figure out many dimensions. As many of you have started looking into, he changed out the button screws with counter sunk screw heads. He is attempting to put all detents in as well as putting a functional bolt catch in. This lower reciever is almost done, he didnt machine some parts becuase he didnt have dimensions for certain things...like the bolt catch. And let me tell you, his new design looks "complete." The only thing that I suggested to him is maybe he could but a extended trigger gaurd in. Let me tell you, this many single pointed his threads and we fitted a buffer tube in and was smooth. This thing was the beez knees and the cats meow. And like I said...this was his first attempt at anything firearm related. Take a look at the pictures.

Jstevens56 · Mar 2, 2014

chsnprodigy said:
So this weekend a co worker brought his AR lower from scratch for me to look at. This was his first time even remotely building a AR lower, and his first gun ever. He took the original design many steps further. He kept going back to the original colt blueprint to figure out many dimensions. As many of you have started looking into, he changed out the button screws with counter sunk screw heads. He is attempting to put all detents in as well as putting a functional bolt catch in. This lower reciever is almost done, he didnt machine some parts becuase he didnt have dimensions for certain things...like the bolt catch. And let me tell you, his new design looks "complete." The only thing that I suggested to him is maybe he could but a extended trigger gaurd in. Let me tell you, this many single pointed his threads and we fitted a buffer tube in and was smooth. This thing was the beez knees and the cats meow. And like I said...this was his first attempt at anything firearm related. Take a look at the pictures.

Wow, that is sick.

Ab_Normal · Mar 2, 2014

Jstevens56 said:
Wow, that is sick.

I thought it was well done.

DutchV · Mar 2, 2014

Might be his first lower, but not his first time around the block. Fantastic stuff.

chsnprodigy · Mar 3, 2014

Ab_Normal said:
I thought it was well done.

My original is all done, but this is a friends that hes making.

My AR Lower receiver from scratch

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