New AR-15 Products

It sometimes seems like new goodies for the Stoner platform are appearing on nearly daily basis. So by the time this appears in print I am sure there will be dozens and perhaps hundreds of new products that haven’t been covered. With that said, the baker’s dozen or so that I am about to talk about cover a variety of disciplines so there should be something of interest to most of you. Skip those items not of interest to you or not legal in competitions you build guns for. Let’s get right to it.

Spacegun Buttstock The Spacegun Buttstock is a product built by Gary Eliseo’s company, Competition Machine, Inc. (GotXRing.com, The only tools necessary to install (and adjust) this on either an AR-15 or an AR-10 (for you grown ups) is an Allen wrench. This baby is adjustable six ways from Thursday. That means it is probably not apiece of kit you want to slap on the night before a match. It takes a fair investment of dry and live fire time to get everything just right for each individual shooter.

The cheekpiece rotates up through twelve positions. In the event the shooter needs to operate the charging handle, all that is necessary is to rotate the cheekpiece to its lowest setting (taking only seconds) and the charging handle will operate normally. I like that feature much better than some custom stocks that are not compatible with a charging handle.

Receivers For those custom stocks that interfere with normal charging handle operation, there is the billet Upper Side Charger flat top upper from Lantac USA. (LantacUSA.com, It is a total "slick side" with no brass deflector, forward assist, or dust cover. In addition to the side handle, it is also built to accommodate a regular charging handle. I like the idea of giving the shooter his choice of charging method.

I also like the fact that this receiver is fat right behind the threaded section for the barrel nut, providing superior rigidity and support for the nearly 2/3 of the barrel extension that lives aft of the threaded section. If you are purchasing a sidecharging receiver, you’ll need aside charger bolt carrier to go with it. The Young Manufacturing (Young Man- Middle, AR-15 Match Rifle upper.

Top, 32" gain-twist Palma upper shoots 90 grain bullets at a smoking 2,800 fps. ufacturing.net, unit is the ticket and is a true match carrier at a very reasonable price. My studies have shown that true match carriers shoot groups 8.8% tighter than stock low-bid carriers. See my article, "AR-15 Upper Quick Fixes: Match Bolt Carriers" (May 2014.) For those wanting a billet receiver without side charging, I recom-

mend Sun Devil (SunDevilMfg.com, These are available with any combination of forward assist and dust cover and have heavy walls right behind the barrel nut threads for improved support of the barrel extension. When I was conducting my study of receiver squaring (see next section) I found these Sun Devil units to be nearly run-out free, requiring no machining. Concerning receiver squaring, I will be submitting a full article on this soon.

The front of most receivers, including those for bolt guns, don’t come from their manufacturers properly squared for those of us interested in precision shooting. I knew that gunsmiths building custom bolt guns had been squaring their receivers for years, so I decided to set up a study to see if squaring AR receivers would result in any accuracy gains. I determined that properly-squared receivers resulted in a 14% average reduction in group sizes compared to their machine rest performance before squaring.

When I was shooting in competition I would have killed for that kind of accuracy gain! Tool under the receiver fits in a hand drill but added to run out, resulting in receivers becoming less square. Warning, this is probably not something hobbyists want to tackle at home using one of those tools that fit in a hand drill. After measuring a factory AR receiver and following the tool’s instructions, I performed the "squaring" procedure. Remeasuring afterward found run out significantly higher!

My advice is to seek out a gunsmith familiar with receiver squaring on a lathe to do the work. Ammunition If you are an AR shooter who only fires ammo seated to fit in a magazine, skip this section. For longer ammunition typically used for long range competition, the Length To Land gauge from Dead Center Sports (DeadCenterSports.com, is helpful. This unit performs the same function as the older Stoney Point, re-introduced by Hornady as the Over All Length Gauge.

Both gauges use caliberspecific dummy casings to determine how far forward of the casing rim a rifle’s throat is located in reference to a specific bullet. Getting just the right amount of jump with boat tail bullets (the seating sweet spot) or the optimal jam for Very Low Drag (VLD) bullets is key to tight groups and the LTL Gauge helps establish a starting point. When I took these measurements with the Stoney Point, I often wanted a third hand while the LTL Gauge operates comfortably with two.

Both gauges require the operator to develop a sense of feel when advancing the bullet. The gauge’s inventor, Mike Harpster, demonstrates at youtu.be/q-YJkig7Fxk The bullet seating sweet spot is not performed just by taking a LTL reading. This only provides a starting point. Finding the sweet spot requires range testing to compare group sizes from ammo with bullets seated at different depths.

I discuss further in "Bullet Seating Sweet Spot" (June 2016.) Getting this right shrinks group sizes by about 20% and is so important that I perform this load work up on a machine rest for every upper I build or rebarrel. The customer gets a free box of long range ammo set to the sweet spot of his barrel. All he needs to do is set his die to duplicate. Regarding long range ammo, Sierra is marketing two .224 heavyweights.

The 90 grain Match King boat tail (Sierra #9290) has a ballistic coefficient of 0.563 and is a redesign of their 90 grain bullet first introduced in 2005. Unfortunately, those first 90 grainers were seriously flawed and often blew up on the way to the target. Sadly, shooters got confused and thought all brands of 90s did this. The competitive shooting community was poised to drop the older and vastly inferior 80 grain bullets but that froze for nearly a decade until Sierra finally fixed their 90 grain bullet.

I have torture tested this new bullet and have been unable to get one to blow up. It requires a 1:6.5 or faster twist and shoots well in all barrel brands I have tested, Bartlein gain-twist barrels particularly. If you find 90 grain Sierras for sale, make certain you’re not purchasing the older design which did not have a factory point and looked like any other open meplat Match King of that era.

The new, factory-pointed 90 grainers have a high ballistic co- Top, new LTL (Length To Land) Gauge by Dead Center Sports.

224 heavy weights. Left, 95 grain Match King. Right, 90 grain Match King. efficient and fights wind drift with about 24% greater efficiency than the older 80 grain bullets. Only time will tell if that will influence shooters to make the switch. If I were still actively competing it would be an easy choice. The result of my testing is in "Sierra’s New Match King" (October 2017.) Sierra introduced an even heavier .224 Match King in January 2018. This 95 grain bullet (#1396) has an impressive 0.60 B. C.

I haven’t tested this one yet but expect to soon. I’ll submit an article when I do. My concern is how much pressures will go up with the new bullet, resulting in reduced powder charges and slower speeds, at least in modest-volume .223 cases. I suspect gain-twist barrels will help with some of that pressure. The Palma match is an international long range (800-1,000 yards) precision competition that been around for along time.

Since it is fired at a slow fire cadence it is no surprise that bolt guns have traditionally been the go to. Historically, this was a .308 Winchester match. There are a number of requirements, including a specified bullet weight of 155 grains. The .223 Remington has since been allowed with similar bullet-limiting rules. Most shooters use an 80.5 grain bullet. A few years ago the folks in charge of the U. S. rules relaxed the bullet limitations to permit the use of heavier and more wind-resistant projectiles.

The only time the older, light bullet requirements are still in place is during the official international Palma championship. If your state association wants to run a Palma match, heavier bullets are now permitted. Needless to say, shooters using both calibers jumped on these rule changes by quickly switching to heavier and more ballistic bullets. 90 grainers are leading the pack with .223.

Many shooters used to AR-15s don’t wish to switch to a bolt gun with strange ergonomics for occasional local or regional Palma matches. Since I was already build- Far On top, 10 rounds selected at random. Bottom, the 10 best rounds selected from the 40 remaining rounds.

ing AR-15s with 20" gain-twist barrels for Service Rifle shooters and 26" gain-twist barrels for match rifles, employing 90 grain bullets was the next logical step to lengthen gain-twist barrels to 30-32" suitable for Palma. Customer satisfaction has been very high. The Competition Machine Spacegun Buttstock has been popular on these AR lowers for Palma and Match Rifle. If you are employing a conventional receiver it will need to be squared.

Also in demand for both disciplines are quality, thick-walled Sun Devil receivers. And some kind of Length To Land gauge is obviously key to load work ups using the Sierra heavy bullets. Notice multiple products covered here intersecting. For more information, "Gain Twist Barrels For Palma" (December 2016) covers more. Although available for years, I still see confused expressions when I mention Hornady’s Lock- N-Load Ammunition Concentricity Tool.

The confused are usually doing nothing to gauge or manage cartridge concentricity and may not even know what that term means. One of my admonitions to customers is no gunsmith or barrel maker can create a firearm to accurately shoot "crooked" ammo. Tiny groups demands ammunition straight with the case’s center axis. If the bullet is at an angle off center, it will be deformed when entering the back of the barrel and fat groups result.

Sadly, most factory ammo isn’t perfectly straight and unless the handloader is taking a few extra simple steps reloads will likely exhibit similar run out, a measurement of how far a bullet is seated off center. Managing cartridge concentricity is easy, fast, and the tool is cheap. It works on factory and handloaded rounds. Machine rest targets demonstrate better performance. My scores improved noticeably after I started "spinning" my rounds in a gauge.

I discuss this further in "Better Ammo" ( April 2016.) Cleaning Another point missed is AR-15s normally shoot better clean. "Clean" includes having the bolt carrier assembly produce more consistent lock ups from daily maintenance and lubrication and proper, careful bore cleaning avoiding damage to the delicate lands. Yes, delicate. While made of steel, lands are only the thickness of paper and rubbing them with a cleaning rod can causes more wear than the passage of bullets.

As a military shooting team armorer for over a decade, I replaced as many barrels due to cleaning rod damage or pitting from total neglect than from being shot out and shooting team members shoot far more than most troops and other gun owners. Stainless barrels are soft and more susceptible to cleaning damage than chrome-moly. Smart guys have helped us by inventing bore guides that fit in the space normally occupied by the bolt carrier. I liken bore guides to seatbelts or studded tires.

They help but none are foolproof. To illustrate, most one-piece AR- 15 bore guides have a hole through their center roughly 0.25" while .22 caliber cleaning rods usually measure about 0.20. Guide bore holes are fat because so many .22 bore brushes measure about 0.245" in diameter. The distance from one land across to the other is normally 0.219" while tighter Krieger and Bartlein barrels are 0.218. My machine rest studies show taller 0.218 lands shoot better with all the bullets I’ve experimented with.

See "Barrels For Custom AR-15s" (July and August 2017) for more details. Grooves normally measure 0.2240" so bore brushes are significantly fatter than the confines they are employed in. The tighter section remains on the cleaning rod. The larger portion replaces the bolt carrier assembly during cleaning. This sizing is on purpose because the brush needs to abrasively remove baked-on fouling. Most run their brushes wet with a moderate solvent.

Brushes are commonly made of bronze, which is copper with some tin alloyed in. Avoid using "hot" copper solvents with them as they’ll "eat" brushes. I use Hoppe’s No. 9 on my bore brushes and the patches preceding. The reason that the bore in one piece guides is so fat is so that the solvent on the bore brush will actually reach the barrel and not end up just rubbed off inside the bore guide.

The whole bore cleaning process is a matter of protracted discussion in "AR-15 Bore Cleaning" (January 2015.) I am certainly not the first person to discover bore guides are on the fat side. The smart guys at PMA Tool (PMATool.com, have a solution with their two-piece bore guide. The part that fits inside the upper appears like other guides with a fat hole so brushes can travel without losing all their solvent. The second, smaller piece stays on the cleaning rod tight with only a few thousandths clearance.

Start by pushing the rod with brush or patch through the rear of the main bore guide and stop when contact at the throat is felt. The smaller section on the rod is advanced forward into the back of the guide where it locks up tight inside. Cleaning then proceeds as normal with the rod en-

closed much tighter by the smaller section of the guide. While it is still not perfect, PMA’s guide is a big improvement. For you grown ups, it’s also available for the AR-10. Alternate Ammunition Experimenting with the Stoner platform and non-standard calibers has been going on for decades. Even I am guilty, starting back during my team armorer days. A fair percentage of our team members were not hunters, had no experience with bolt guns, and didn’t desire to experiment with them.

I confess that had I not grown up in Pennsylvania—the last state in the Union to disallow hunting with semi-automatic rifles—I wouldn’t have a single bolt gun in my safe either! Go ahead, call me a snob… Back then, before 90s were available, people shooting 1,000 yard Service Rifle matches with AR-15s only used 80 grain bullets and they are on the edge at that distance. Hotter calibers used in Match Rifle are more wind resistant.

A few team members interested in Long Range matches had a plethora of personally-owned (and grossly overpriced) bolt guns running the gambit from hot 6mms to .300 Winchester Magnum. All of them had fancy paint jobs that I dubbed "disco stocks" because they looked better suited for the dance floor with John Travolta than on a rifle range.

Go ahead, call me a snob for the second time… I looked for a Match Rifle solution that would be user friendly for our AR-focused team that wanted a competitive 1,000-yard option by studying wind-resistant calibers that were Stoner compatible. 6.5mm-.284 was the current flavor of the week for long range bolt gunners then.

Blueprints of the cartridge pleasantly surprised me with its rim diameter being nearly a carbon copy of the .308 Winchester, which is what Stoner designed the AR-10 for, eliminating bolt modification. Too, recoil wouldn’t pound shooters used to .223 too much like a Magnum would. I provided specs to Pacific Tool and they made a reamer allowing heavy bullets seating just a little longer than magazine length.

I used a 26" Satern 5R chrome-moly barrel turned to Match Rifle specs, a JP Enterprises handguard, and big Nightforce scope. Upper-to-lower fit was tight using tips described in "The Accu-Wedge" (April 2017.) Tenround machine-rested groups were sub-minute, velocities similar to bolt guns, with not unpleasant recoil. I took the finished product to Quantico for the annual Interservice Match and spent a full day shooting it.

In another life I had set a record there for 1000 yard Service Rifle with an old M14 and hot 180 grain loads that held for nearly a decade until bested by an Army Marksmanship Unit shooter using an AR-15 and 90 grain bullets. The "disco" gunners with their fancy painted stocks guffawed with weakly-disguised snickers at the audacity of trying to compete in Match Rifle class with a gas gun! I asked if someone would care to give the AR-10 a try and one of our High Masters stepped forward.

This was a guy who shot 1,000 yards only once per year at Interservice and had never fired an AR-10 before nor a 6.5mm-.284 rifle. By day’s end the snickering stopped when that shooter with his ugly gas gun outshot every one of the "disco" crowd. The story would be better if he had won the entire match but my gas gun shooter was edged out by someone on a competing team. The AMU’s reaction was noteworthy.

From the time that AR-10 came out of the case until my High Master had fired his final record round there was a crowd of AMU big wigs standing behind him intent on what was happening. Guess what? The following year the AMU showed up with AR-10s for Long Range. They approached things a bit differently. AR-10 (M110) rifles had limited military service in the Gulf, having 20" barrels chambered in 7.62mm.

You can outfit one with a detachable carry handle and iron sights as a legal Long Range Service Rifle, which is what the AMU did instead of Match Rifle like I did. Both of us were successful. All this happened between one and two decades in the past. The current flavor of the week is the 6.5 Creedmoor which is not as hot as the 6.5 that I had used. It is AR-10 compatible and cartridges are magazine length. It also being chambered in "disco" guns and hunting rifles.

Attitudes have changed from those early 1,000-yard gas gun experiments for sure. Gas guns are prevalent and not just with AR-10s. Strides in the "mouse gun" have been furthered with improved 90 grain bullets, especially in Service Rifle where AR-15s are mandated to use 5.56/.223. While the older, lessefficient 80s barely remained supersonic at 1,000 yards, the newer 90s arrive strong and may shoot out to 1,300 yards. Shooters have been searching for a more powerful cartridge to use in AR-15 Match Rifles.

Fatter casings with more powder volume have been tried as have some 6mm rounds. Nothing has seemed to stick, however. In early 2018 the .224 Valkyrie became the flavor of the week. It features a short, fat casing that will work in 6.8mm SPC magazines. It also requires the fatter bolt face. What is truly unique about the cartridge is that shortness allows seating 90 grain .224 bullet to AR-15 magazine length!

Federal is loading rounds as fast as they can for it with claimed velocities around 2,600 fps, the same I get with 90s seated long in .223 Remington though 20" gain-twist Service Rifle barrels. Most of the Valkyrie groups I’ve seen are around 1 MOA, which is not bad considering. I believe I could get better accuracy with gaintwist barrels and careful assembly procedures but am not motivated to

do so yet as I build National Match rifles and don’t think the Valkyrie has enough advantages to make it suitable for shooting in that discipline. I was about to write the Valkyrie off as just a novelty but believe it has potential for military and police sniping. I don’t know if it will ever catch on for sniper work. Even if it doesn’t, brisk sales seem guaranteed for the foreseeable future.

The .22 Nosler is another new AR-15 cartridge that came out about a year prior to the Valkyrie but hasn’t enjoyed the same hype. I first read about the .22 Nosler in an article by Aaron Carter (July 2017 The American Rifleman.) The .22 Nosler, like the Valkyrie, uses a 6.8 SPC magazine but retains a standard AR-15 bolt which I prefer. Like the Valkyrie, the .22 Nosler uses a fatter case. Unlike the Valkyrie, the .22 Nosler case has not been shortened and is the same length as .223.

Where the Valkyrie case holds about one more grain of water than .223, the .22 Nosler holds about five more. Loading data for the .22 Nosler is available on line and powder charges with 77 grain bullets are running between 3-3.5 grains heavier. I see The author has had good results with JP Enterprises (JPRifles.com, Middle, handguards removed to show the float tube which surrounds (with clearance) the barrel. Bottom, a quad rail version of an AR-15 handguard is now allowed.

Note, some of these units cause the gas tube to be bent significantly up and out of alignment with the bolt carrier key. This causes fat groups and lots of fliers. published velocities varying between sources. Expect a velocity gain from the .22 Nosler over .223 between 150 and 250 fps.

I don’t know of anyone having shot 90s in the .22 Nosler but if the heavier bullet experiences similar velocity gains the .22 Nosler, it could duplicate AR-10 6.5 Creedmoor ballistic performance in the "mouse gun." I am in the process of building a .22 Nosler on an AR- 15 Sun Devil upper in Match Rifle configuration and will publish accuracy and velocity results in this magazine. 90s in the .22 Nosler must be seated longer than magazine length, similar to .223.

Handguards Back when I was competing in Service Rifle, M14s had to look unmodified. Internal modifications such as match barrels and triggers lightened to 4.5 pounds were permitted. Similar rules were written for the AR-15. One of the downfalls of the AR-15 for precision shooting was front sling swivel attached to the barrel. Float tubes hidden under A2 handguards with the swivel attached there allowed the barrel to float with no pulling on it. The rifle appeared the same.

A few years ago the CMP and NRA both changed their rules on legal handguards. Unfortunately, this created differing rules. An NRA-legal handguard might not be at a CMP event. There are dozens of handguard designs on the market and trying to pick one that is legal under both sets of rules requires research. Worse, the CMP has a history of changing their rules, such as from 2016 to 2017. Adding insult to injury, none of these handguards provide an accuracy advantage over the older and proven float tubes.

Most of them look cool with rails on four surfaces, called quad rails instead of handguards. I don’t know of any Service Rifle competitor attaching anything to these rails and don’t know if such accessories would be legal. To top it off, some quad rails cost three times as much and some of these contraptions cause serious accuracy impediments. The problem is some replacement barrel nuts are too thick and block part of the clover leaf the gas tube passes through, forcing a bend in the tube

Author prefers the newer version on the right which has two large ports per side located at 3 and 9 o’clock. Top-Grade Ammo on the left is newer. to bypass. If during function the carrier moving forward forces the key to capture this misaligned tube, it will cause accuracy problems. My article "Gas Tube Alignment Revisited" (May 2018) discusses this in detail. Shop smart! Recoil Reducers I sometimes have customers supply recoil reducing devices that screw onto pre-ban barrel threads.

Most help with felt recoil., however, I also test machine-rest for accuracy. Until recently, all recoil reducers degraded accuracy. Harrell’s Precision (HarrelsPrec.com, offers threaded Tuner Brakes, combining recoil reducers with accuracy tuners. They didn’t initially offer 1/2 x 28 thread, so I requested this for pre-ban barrels. Giving these are popular, they thought my suggestion wise and included this thread on their next production run.

The first version of the AR-thread Tuner Brake had holes all around to vent gas. I found the tuner part worked and was able to shrink groups a noticeable degree. After finishing tuning, I removed the Harrell’s unit for a stock A2 flash suppressor and accuracy with it was superior to the best group fired with the Tuner in place. It’s worth considering the tuner’s bottom holes could promote a dust signature when firing in the prone position in dry conditions.

I put the original version of the Tuner Brake aside and concentrated on other projects. A year or so later a customer approached me about building an upper and he wanted to use one of the Harrell’s units. I told him of my less-than-stellar results and he said he had purchased a nextgeneration unit that had two large ports each at 3 and 9 o’clock with no bottom vents. I agreed to try it but wasn’t optimistic. However, after the same tuning process the machine rest revealed stellar groups!

When I removed the tuner and substituted a regular A2 flash suppressor, the groups worsened. This new unit is called the Tactical Tuner Brake For AR-15. Reducing recoil and enhancing accuracy is a win! Books In late 2016 Glen Zediker released Top Grade Ammo, his second book on ammunition. I believe the newer book is an easier read that the original Handloading For Competition. Forced to choose, I don’t know which would win out. I strongly recommend that anyone wanting to load better more accurate ammo read both.

We’ve covered a number of topics of interest to varying disciplines and all but one got "A" grades. In fairness, that single item still gets a "B". The benefits of gain-twist barrels were mentioned several times but were not given a category of their own because this is on "new" AR-15 products and these barrels have been around more than twice as long as Stoner rifles. I’ve used them for a quarter century and they get an "A+".

I strongly recommend combining again twists with some of the products discussed here to build better rifles. They are marksmanship’s best-kept secret. To see again-twist barrel split lengthwise exposing the rifling, stop in my store in Building 910-A on Commercial Row at Camp Perry during the CMP Service Rifle National Matches in late July. I will also have most of the items covered in this article on display. As always, should any of my 16 readers have questions or comments, contact me directly at AG