One of my good friends got his very first AR-15. He's not a first time gun owner, but he is a first time AR-15 owner.
But let's start at the beginning, shall we?
Allow me to take you back to a time before the 2020 Presidential elections; the world is in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic; "peaceful protests" are occurring all over the place leaving city's looted and burned; something called a "CHAZ" (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone) has just popped up in Seattle; all while people are protesting to defund the police; and more guns are flying off the shelves than ever before in this country's amazing history.
A few of my neighbors (literally 3 of them) did not own AR-15's yet, and with the world falling apart around us, they decided it was time to correct this travesty. I mean there are few things that all red-blooded Americans simply must own. A good grill, a fast car, and an AR-15 are all on that list.
These three neighbors all wanted to build AR-15's with me, naturally, since I am the local gun fanatic on the block, and while we would have loved to build them from scratch, thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic there is a shortage of guns, ammo, and... you guessed it: gun parts.
My favorite FFL supplier Carolina Defensive Firearms was not able to source very many quality parts at affordable prices. However, they were able to find us 3 Bushmaster XM-15 Quick Response Carbine Rifles with no sights as seen in this picture:
The Bushmaster XM-15 is a nice basic AR-15, and the price was FANTASTIC for the current market. Would we have preferred to build them from scratch and hand pick each part? Of course! However, beggars can't be choosers in the COVID-19 market.
Two of my neighbors just added sights to their Bushmaster's, but that would never do for my friend and his larger-than-life personality... So, I promised him that I would help him customize his AR-15, since he wanted to really make it his own - and that is exactly what he did!
Custom Forend, aka: Hanguard, aka: Handrail
My friend with the larger-than-life personality... Let's just call him "Doc" from here on out... Doc didn't really like the look of the Bushmaster XM-15, and wanted to put a custom handrail on it. He did a little searching on the inter webs and fell in love with a custom Doc Holiday styled handguard from SD Tactical Arms.
Now, just a little plug for SD Tactical Arms, since I have never worked with them directly before: "Doc" absolutely swears by them and their customer service now. He says they have been an absolute pleasure to work with, they have been very responsive and communicative, and he is going to be ordering the handrail for his wife's AR-15 (yes, she has one now, too) from there as well.
The Handrail comes with the barrel nut that you must tighten down with a standard AR-15 armorer's wrench, like mine (which you would have needed to get the factory barrel off, too).
The Challenge
The factory Gas Block will not fit under the new handrail/handguard/forend (whatever you want to call it). The factory Gas Block has to be replaced with a low-profile Gas Block. That means removing three pins: 1 pin for the Gas Tube and 2 pins that hold the block itself on the barrel.
What a Giant Pain!!!
Having built quite a few AR-15's from scratch, but not having taken a factory AR-15 and customizing it before - I guess I didn't really know what I was in for. But I was definitely excited for the opportunity to do this & put it all up here on the blog for you to read about.
However, I hope you will keep in mind, this is ultimately little more than a hobby for me. I have a lot of tools that I invest in and continue to invest in because this is my passion, but I do not have a full gun shop to do professional level gunsmithing in. I'm sure a professional gun smith might read this and laugh at us. But hey! That's the difference between trying to do things yourself and paying a fortune for others to do it for you, right?
Removing the Gas Block from the Barrel in order to fit under the after market hand rail was simply NOT HAPPENING! Seriously... I understand the pins only come out one direction, I'm an engineer, and "Doc" is an actual dentist. We're not unintelligent people, per-se; but we just could not get those two pins that hold the factory gas block onto the factory barrels to budge an iota.
So, we have to admit failure. That was not a choice, that was a fact. We were faced with a choice, though: bite the bullet and take the barrel to a gun smith with our pride in check... OR, buy an upgraded barrel that Doc was most likely going to do someday anyways.
We chose the latter, and now Doc has the factory barrel with the factory gas block still attached for sale if you'd like to buy it!
While the Barrel was off...
While the barrel was off, it was a really good time to replace the dust cover, and Doc had one more trick up his sleeve. He also ordered a custom "I'm Your HuckleBerrry" dustcover from CustomARDustCover.com.
A New Barrel and Gas Block Later, and Away We Go!
We ordered Doc a really nice Ballistic Advantage carbine barrel, and a low-profile gas-block from MAS Defense in Charlotte, North Carolina. I order a lot from MAS Defense and have found their products to be of the highest quality (see my AR-9 build for more) and their customer service responsiveness to be second to none.
With the new barrel, barrel nut, low-profile gas block and gas tube all installed, we can now put the custom handguard on. The SD Tactical handguard is designed to slide onto the barrel nut and tighten down with two screws: "pinching" the barrel nut tightly.
I actually torqued these down at 25 inch-pounds using a "Fat Wrench" torque screwdriver, another great option I have used before are the Fix It Sticks, both are available on Amazon and other retailers and I included pictures of them in a slide show below (I keep both of them in my range kit).
We Need Sight!
Remember these Bushmaster XM-15 came without sights. I will do another blog post soon reviewing different sights, but I am a huge fan of Eotech and feel they are worth the premium. Doc ordered himself the Eotech 512 Holographic Red Dot Sight from Amazon and we went ahead and did a quick sight in with this laser sight-in tool from LaserLyte, in order to get us close to "zeroed in" before we get to the sight-in range to make it perfect.
Here it is... Completed with a little bit of bad photo-editing skills by yours truly...
List of Parts and Suppliers
To make it really easy for you to find any of the things we used in this blog post, here is a summarized bulleted list:
Carolina Defensive Firearms - Favorite FFL
SD Tactical Arms - Custom Handguard
MAS Defense - Ballistic Barrel and Low Profile Gas Block
CustomARDusCover.com - Custom Dust Cover
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