This is more of an “I got lucky” post rather than a “follow my lead” post as I believe spending money on quality gear the first time has the greatest chance of achieving your goals (all else equal).
Anyway, I kinda built an extra rifle around a barrel I got for a good price. Said barrel is an old stainless (allegedly Rainier Arms) barrel that started life as a 16” barrel and was chopped to 14.5” by the second owner. I paid $100 shipped for that barrel and figured I might as well make an upper out of it. One blem Geissele MK8 and blem BCM upper later and I’ve got an upper together for under $600 (with a BCG). To keep with the budget theme, I screwed my F1 titanium can (17-4 on the first two baffles) on to keep things light, cheap, and quiet (my Plan A is still carbon locked btw). Cool, hopefully it shoots.
Enter AAC 77 SMK ammo (doing the Lord’s work bringing affordable SMK factory ammo). I bought some of this stuff hoping it would shoot well in one of my ARs since 75cpr is great.
Back to the barrel. My original intent was to run the cheap barrel until I could afford a Kreiger or Bartlein barrel cut to my specs. In the interim, I wanted to get everything running and was hoping for sub 1.5 MOA groups.
Time to shoot right? Well I shot first at 50 yds with this combo to sight in and was stacking 3 rd groups on top of each other. Maybe it was a coincidence since it was Christmas Day and I was just happy to be shooting my new PLXc 1-8 Griffin MIL. Last week, I took everything to 100 to get it dialed in and I go and shoot a couple sub MOA 5 shot groups as I’m sighting in (see attached). The group on the large target measured well under 0.6”. I dial 0.4 MIL to the right and hope for the best (it’s a budget build after all). I send one to the small dot and decide to run steel out to 700 to see if I’m on. Turns out that single shot was a pretty good one. Maybe I should dial back 0.1 MIL left?
Proof is at distance and I was able to engage within a couple rounds on <2 MOA targets (without verified DOPE for this gun) out to 700 yds which was exciting. Bonus, the PLXc dialed precisely out to those distances.
In short, I got lucky on this build and as much as I want to replace that $100 barrel, I probably shouldn’t because it’s the most accurate 14.5” 556 I’ve owned to date (insert your comment about your 0.2 MOA “all day” AR here please).
Lots to be proven out still, but it’s nice to have some budget parts come together for great performance once in a while. If this barrel can maintain accuracy during sustained fire, I won’t be replacing it…
Do you have any budget set ups that shoot lights out? Kinda makes me feel bad about my $5k precision rifle sitting in the case
Anyway, I kinda built an extra rifle around a barrel I got for a good price. Said barrel is an old stainless (allegedly Rainier Arms) barrel that started life as a 16” barrel and was chopped to 14.5” by the second owner. I paid $100 shipped for that barrel and figured I might as well make an upper out of it. One blem Geissele MK8 and blem BCM upper later and I’ve got an upper together for under $600 (with a BCG). To keep with the budget theme, I screwed my F1 titanium can (17-4 on the first two baffles) on to keep things light, cheap, and quiet (my Plan A is still carbon locked btw). Cool, hopefully it shoots.
Enter AAC 77 SMK ammo (doing the Lord’s work bringing affordable SMK factory ammo). I bought some of this stuff hoping it would shoot well in one of my ARs since 75cpr is great.
Back to the barrel. My original intent was to run the cheap barrel until I could afford a Kreiger or Bartlein barrel cut to my specs. In the interim, I wanted to get everything running and was hoping for sub 1.5 MOA groups.
Time to shoot right? Well I shot first at 50 yds with this combo to sight in and was stacking 3 rd groups on top of each other. Maybe it was a coincidence since it was Christmas Day and I was just happy to be shooting my new PLXc 1-8 Griffin MIL. Last week, I took everything to 100 to get it dialed in and I go and shoot a couple sub MOA 5 shot groups as I’m sighting in (see attached). The group on the large target measured well under 0.6”. I dial 0.4 MIL to the right and hope for the best (it’s a budget build after all). I send one to the small dot and decide to run steel out to 700 to see if I’m on. Turns out that single shot was a pretty good one. Maybe I should dial back 0.1 MIL left?
Proof is at distance and I was able to engage within a couple rounds on <2 MOA targets (without verified DOPE for this gun) out to 700 yds which was exciting. Bonus, the PLXc dialed precisely out to those distances.
In short, I got lucky on this build and as much as I want to replace that $100 barrel, I probably shouldn’t because it’s the most accurate 14.5” 556 I’ve owned to date (insert your comment about your 0.2 MOA “all day” AR here please).
Lots to be proven out still, but it’s nice to have some budget parts come together for great performance once in a while. If this barrel can maintain accuracy during sustained fire, I won’t be replacing it…
Do you have any budget set ups that shoot lights out? Kinda makes me feel bad about my $5k precision rifle sitting in the case
