The Prepper Broadcasting Network - Matter of Facts: Playing with Adult Legos

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

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Welcome back to Matter of Facts podcast on the Prepper Broadcasting Network. We talk prepping guns and politics every week on iTunes, Stitcher, and Spotify. Go check out our content at mwfpodcast.com on Facebook or Instagram. You can support us via Patreon or by checking out our affiliate partners. I'm your host, Phil Rabelais, and my co-host Andrew Bobo is on the other side of the mic, and here's your show. Welcome back to Matter of Facts. I'm back behind the mic with Andrew I am dying of the man coal but I'm gonna soldier through and uh try to put on a show for y'all tonight that doesn't involve me coughing myself to death if I could pull that off for the next 45 to 50 minutes I really feel like we should get you the

the meme of uh but did you die because you just contradicted yourself there yeah yeah yeah i mean no one has ever i mean the man cold it's it's it's called the man cold because you act like you're dying when you're really just stuffy yeah i i have not yet figured out like why it is that people with the that men with the man cold turn into such wretched babies at the first drop of a sniffle and a cough. But it is a vibe. It's not a vibe, but it happens.

Just up your whiskey intake. Maybe that's the whole side. You. I need to drown the germs in whiskey. Andrew, that might work. I did that in college one time and I still think it's, I still think it works. I was like, I can't remember what it was I was sick with, but

I don't remember what it was I was sick with, but I remember I was really sick and I just upped my intake of whiskey and drank a lot. And I was was better like i felt completely better within like the last like within like a day or two so i'm holding it that the whiskey helped i doubt it science has not proven it yet um but who listens to science nowadays so we just make our own opinions science also says that uh rice crispy treats are healthier to eat than uh ribeye steak so i'm kind of losing a lot of faith in science these days yeah yeah so the title of the episode is playing with adult legos which i humorously wrote as a reference to you know ar-15s and the wonderful world of building them from scratch because they are literally adult Legos. Like, there's almost nothing you can't find to put on an AR.

And Daniel Beatty is in our comments saying, stay away from Jim Beam. Oh, my God. That is a bad memory. I don't dream. Jim Beam and I are not on speaking terms. Me and his buddy Jack Daniels kind of sorta, but definitely not Jim B. Yeah, that's me and Jose.

Jose kicked my butt like he sucker punched me one night and I still haven't recovered. But I guess I should have. I mean, you posted pictures of yours. You brought pictures of yours. I guess I could have probably threw pictures of mine in, but it is what it is. I mean, that's what... We don't need to see... The interwebs doesn't need to see what I have.

Yeah, well, mine are... Well, both of ours are legal for legal purposes. But anyway, I think the place to start, though, is to talk about this concept of building versus buying, which actually one of our patrons recently brought up with us. He kind of asked me is in the vein of, do you build or do you buy? And you and I did not see a hundred percent eye to eye on that,

which shouldn't come as a massive surprise because we don't agree about quite a few things, but it's all about the, the why behind it sometimes. So like my way of looking at building versus buying when it comes to ARs really comes down to like, what, my way of looking at building versus buying when it comes to ARs really comes down to, like, what is your, what level of investment are you willing to make? Which isn't monetary, it's attention. So, like, if you buy, I would argue, like, a mid-tier plus rifle.

So, no, we're not talking about, the poverty ponies the super cheap stuff we're talking about like you know spend 800 to a grand on an ar-15 and we're just talking about the rifle we're not talking about optics and all the other stuff that adds cost like 800 to a thousand bucks somewhere in there you can get pretty decent agree disagree yeah now at at that price point i fully expect this ar to be properly gassed i I expect it to have a nice, consistent ejection pattern. I expect it to run. I don't expect it to rip the rim of cases off. I don't expect it to misbehave or have issues with double feeds, jams, or anything else. I expect the thing to just munch ammo and spit it out. to just munch ammo and spit it out. And at that price point, I feel like that's reasonable and rational. The problem comes in that if you are going to build the rifle yourself,

you're responsible for all that. So you're now in the driver's seat of you put this thing together. If it's over-gassed, you have to recognize and remediate that if it's under-gassed, if the ejection pattern is a little wonky. If anything about this rifle is not behaving itself, you have to be willing to invest the time and the attention and the effort into figuring out, diagnosing, and remedi like using cost necessarily as the dividing line, because yes, you could spread out the cost of building a rifle over time, but you could also save your money for six months and accomplish the same thing buying. But to me, it comes down to, are you willing to put the effort in and make sure the gun runs right? And if you're not, I say go buy one mid-tier better and then accessorize to your heart's content. But if like me, you're even remotely mechanically, like if you can tie your

shoes, you can assemble an AR-15. It's not that hard, but it's, it's a time of, it's an attention investment thing from my perspective. What do you think? Um, I mean, I do agree with you to a point. If you have the money, I mean, I look at it at a monetary value, and I also look at it at just what you want. And when I built all of mine, it was it's, it was, it was monetary and it was with the purpose, with a purpose. So if you're going to spend a thousand dollars on a rifle, that's great. If you have that, if you have that to spend drop right, right now, do it. Cool. That's awesome. Uh, but if you might, where I get to where going off of a building versus that is if you decided to, you get this rifle and the first thing you do is

you're like well I'm swapping the trigger out oh I'm gonna swap the muzzle brake oh I'm gonna swap the rail like you just build one like now you go now you went from a thousand dollar rifle say to where now you're upwards to I mean if you get a good Geissele trigger I mean that's a good couple hundred bucks if you get a good rail I mean those can go anywhere from like a decent rail can be anywhere from like a hundred to, I mean, I've seen them for 500. If it just all depends on what you want and your purpose, but you could easily rack up to just having that rifle to about two grand, if not more on swapping out all kinds of parts. And that's where I say build is because if you, if you want

to get it and you plan on just leaving it stock and that's like, you know, you're like, oh man, I've always wanted a BCM rifle and you spend the money, you save up and you buy a BCM rifle and it's exactly what you want. Great. Keep it, keep it the way it is. And I, I mean, I'm all for that, but as soon as you want to start throwing parts on and swapping stuff out, just build a new rifle. Either build a second one or if it's your first one, build it. Because it's just the amount of money that you're throwing in. And then the amount of spare parts that you're going to have laying around too after that. The other thing about building is if you're going to build that AR,

thing about building is if you're going to build that ar um i think that i hope that you already have it in your mind that there's going to be troubleshooting involved i mean you're going into that knowing that so that's not a big issue for me uh but the thing i like about building is you can you you can put the money you can put your money where you want it at the time of if i mean if you have a thousand dollars saved up and you're like i'm gonna just build and buy parts you can pick and choose and find out well this is this i'm gonna buy this barrel this is the this is the length i want this is it's super it's light it's this this and this yeah it might be three hundred dollars okay well cool that's three hundred dollars okay well i'm not really too concerned about my lower my upper receiver so you know what aero precision hands, best bang for your buck.

I don't need a Noveske or a BCM upper, upper, lower receivers. I can, you know, just get along with that. Okay, cool. Well, I want to put money in a good trigger. So I'm going to go Geissele or Geissele or whatever. Pick your trigger. They're just the ones that I've always went with. But, but yeah, I mean, so that's

where I get, that's where mine is. I mean, I'm all for buying and that's it. But yeah, as soon as you start swapping stuff off, just build and, and building is fun. It's a lot of fun to me. It, uh, it's challenging. Uh, it's, it's interesting cause you can do your, if you do your homework, uh, you can buy and you wait for sales and stuff like that. That's what I do with one of my builds is, Hey, I'm just going to, I'm going to buy

parts just on sales. Whenever I see Christmas sales, Thanksgiving sales, all these sales that pop up around the year, I'm going to just buy parts. And eventually I had one in a granite. I had a rifle already, but still it's, you can build them. I don't want to say necessarily cheaper than buying one but you can get exactly with what you want your it's a purpose built it's a purpose-built rifle to your needs so that's i mean so i think we had we agree but just up to a certain point

yeah it really is up to a certain point because like, like, I wouldn't even dissuade a person if they bought a rifle off the rack. I wouldn't dissuade them from changing parts, necessarily. I would dissuade them from getting into the barrel, the gas system, the bolt. Because to me, what I feel like, and in my experience, what has the greatest impact on the functioning of a semi-automatic rifle are the magazines. Which, anytime you have a misbehaving firearm, the very first thing you do is go get a known good magazine, shove that into it, and let's start there. Because magazines are usually contributing factors, if not the cause, of most misbehavior. But I would venture to say, if you want to change things like the pistol grip, the stock, maybe even the rail to a degree,

although I feel like if you buy a rifle that you don't like the rail, you probably should have bought a different rifle. Not that that's a difficult thing to change, but just because it's kind of a, I mean, it's a little bit of forethought to avoid having to go that far like if you want to decorate it with optics or put a or you know i think you should put a sling on a rifle but didn't come with one so i guess my point of view is like there's a certain amount of accessorizing in ar i wouldn't dissuade a person from but the minute you start

playing with major components things that i feel like directly impact the way the rifle runs at that point i'm going to say why didn't you just build it yourself because the minute you touch the bolt the barrel of the gas system and the barrel is by extension part of the gas system because your gas port size your gas port location all that the minute you touch any of that, you're potentially making a rifle that's not going to shoot the way the manufacturer intended it to. And you're right back in the driver's seat of having to diagnose whatever comes from those modifications you made, which at that point, I'm just like, why didn't you just

build it from scratch? The thing is, is if you're going to, if you're going to build, if you're going to buy a rifle to keep stock, by all means, spend the money money save it up to buy a thousand dollar or so rifle if you're going to plan on swapping parts out and you want to start with something that has like i mean take i just think of modern warfare like the video game it's like you have this rifle then you're like accessorizing all kinds of crap like if you're going to if you're going to buy a rifle to accessorize and to like swap you know swap triggers out and all that stuff just go online and buy like a ruger buy a cheaper buy a rifle to accessorize and to like swap you know swap triggers out and all that stuff just go online and buy like a ruger buy a cheaper buy a cheaper ruger buy uh buy something

that's you know four or five hundred bucks that kind of hurts my heart a little bit to have ruger referred to as a cheap rifle yeah well you know now you see who bought them so but uh or no remington that was remington sorry not ruger okay i'll give, uh, but yeah, so if you sit there and, but if you want to swap parts out or if you plan on swapping anything out, triggers, I don't care what it is. If you, any, any parts at all, just spend like buy a cheaper rifle, spend five or $600 on a rifle versus a thousand because you're going to have a thousand dollars into it before you know it. So, yeah. $600 on a rifle versus $1,000 because you're going to have $1,000 into it before you know it.

Yeah. Now, I will say the title at the bottom says Building with a Purpose, although this kind of applies to buying, too, to be honest, to me. Andrew, you and I have talked about this, especially from the audience multiple times over the years.

I'm not a firearms collector, necessarily. I buy guns because they have a purpose to me because they fit a use case there's nothing i own with well there's a couple i own they have some sentimental value but by far and large i don't buy a gun because i i want to shoot it i buy a gun because it does something that the rest of the guns i have don't do as well so like, like, I say build with a purpose, buy with a purpose. Like, if you're going to build your own AR, it makes sense that you sit down and you first ask yourself, what do I want this thing to do? And that becomes your guidepost for what parts you pursue, what you put into it, where you put most of your money, because, you know, like you said earlier,

you might, based on, let's say, a theoretical accuracy you're chasing, you might be perfectly comfortable with like three MOA, three minutes of a three inch group at a hundred yards. And if you're, if you can accept that there's very little to be bought by putting in a crazy expensive match barrel, that's going to be heavier and it's going to cost a lot more when that wildly exceeds your accuracy target. You could spend that money somewhere else that would be more to your use case. Now this might sound like needlessly nerdy, but I am needlessly nerdy about these kinds of things. I've built two ars and both times i sat down to build i sat down with a plan i researched every part purchased most of those parts all at exactly the same time like i didn't come into this and say like randomly grab stuff you know i'm saying like

i came into this and said i'm building this to do a very specific thing, and if it doesn't help me do that thing, I don't want it in the rifle. Does that sound needlessly nerdy? No. Just needlessly. You're just pedantic. You're buying the best quality part that you can find for your need. I mean, I'm a gun collector. I mean, I've slowed down on buying

because I've been putting money into my truck, uh, just getting that ready for camping and stuff like that. But, uh, I I'll buy, I'll buy something and I'll sit and just because I think I like it. And then down the road, I might sell it, which I haven't sold very many guns, uh, because that's blasphemy. And I try to stay away from that kind of crap but that the atf now now says you have to have an ffl to sell guns but please continue yeah so i mean but like uh my 6.5 creedmoor bolt action savage i mean i bought that because i want a gun that could reach out to a thousand yards uh if i need it and granted i've never needed it do i need it well will i ever need it probably not I've never needed it. Do I need it? Will I ever need it? Probably not. Have I trained on it? No, that's going to change hopefully this summer, uh, with a couple of

classes I have in mind, but, uh, my 45, 70 lever action, I bought that. It's a, I mean, it's a, uh, it's a straight wall cartridge, which where I live in Michigan, there's a stupid line, imaginary line to where if you go above that line, you could hunt with a rifle cartridge, such as a.30-06, stuff like that. If you go below that line, they call it the shotgun line, basically, where you can hunt muzzleloader, shotgun, or straight-wall cartridge. So I bought the.45-70. Well, I've always wanted a.45-70,

but I bought it for the intention of hunting down more south of Michigan. Now, actually, I just shot a doe a couple weeks ago up at my parents. So they're above the line. I brought it because where I was sitting, there's a lot of brush. And there's a lot of brush, and it's thick. A 300-grain 45-70 projectile punches right through a lot of that stuff without many issues. 45-70 projectile punches right through a lot of that stuff without many issues. In fact, the doe I shot, I shot through some thick brush, and she dropped in her tracks.

Granted, the heart shot, the taking out the top of the heart, that did a good job too, but I've seen them run for a very long time on nothing, on no heart at all. So it put her down right away, and the hole was about the size of a quarter which was pretty crazy um but you know and then i got a 30 30 lever action i my one of my bucket list guns is a four is a 357 lever action you know and so i'm a gun collector but i do think that people should have some purpose-built stuff uh purpose-built rifles and whether that's a lever action whether that is a bolt action semi-auto like ar platform whatever it is if just it's a purpose-built rifle is great especially with the ars being what they are being legos basically and you have any 10 and a half inch uh truck, something that's small,

if it's a 5.56 caliber, 300 blackout, what have you, having that ability to maneuver with a shorter barrel is awesome. Try to take a 10.5-inch barrel and clear your house and then take a 16-inch rifle and do the same. It can be done, and with. It can be done. And with practice, it's, it can be done. I've done it, but it's just a little bit harder. It's, you have to be more mindful of the extra six inches. Plus if you have a suppressor like I do, that extra five to six inches of the suppressor. So now you're looking at a 20 inch, inch long gun which you know you run to other

issues on that but uh yeah purpose built uh i would say everybody should have at least a good a couple good purpose built rifles or shotguns i mean you can definitely purpose build a shotgun too which i have so now the one thing i want to warn people of before we get into, like, specific, because I recently started doing some modifications to my two ARs recently. I haven't touched much gun-related in over a year, but suddenly got back into it. But scope creep. And this has nothing to do with, like, rifle scopes. scopes so the one thing i want to try to caution people against is this idea that i build this farm to do a thing and then i want to do this and this and this and this and this and this and that and that and then before you know it the rifle is not good at anything because it is so wildly

compromised and trying to fill every freaking mission there is. And that is not just like firearms. You can apply that to all kinds of different things, but it's just, it's the idea that like scope creep is something that happens. It happens in any kind of, any kind of project management is something we have to push back against all the time.

Say, this is what we set out to do. this is what we set out to do this is what we set out to build and if we want to keep moving this line and sooner or later you're going to get to the point where the thing you build won't do anything because you've compromised it so awfully so anybody yeah anybody that's ever seen like the mall ninja specials the ars with like the five tactical lights and the two slings and the four optics stacked up on top of each other, there's a meme there. And it's a funny meme, but there's also some truth to it when you see somebody that they keep throwing parts at their rifle because they wanted to do new things, not realizing that the part you just threw at it made it to where it wouldn't do the first thing that you built it for yeah no i agree i mean it's my my ar it it's dedicated i mean i built it when i first started building it i built it in mine to

uh for night vision i knew i was going to get into it so i started with a higher amount a higher red dot mount stuff like that so and it's it's dedicated to that's that's the rifle i grab if i'm running my nods now like the shotgun that i have i have an rmr on my shotgun and i have it set up to where it's it's a good it's a it's a battle it's a battle shotgun i mean it's something i would take with me if i had to but is it good for nods i've been i've tried and i've been training trying to train with it under nods and i mean the nicest thing about shotguns is if you point and if you point in that general direction hopefully something's gonna hit but still you know so so yeah i mean you definitely don't want something i mean i'm all for multiple rifles so if you have to build multiple rifles to

stay away from the whole uh the scope creep and to say hey i got this one for this reason this one for this reason i don't care you can have 15 different rifles all for a different purpose. And that's fine with me. Yeah, I guess my way of thinking is like, you're more likely to be in that situation and that be a workable situation than you are to have the one rifle to rule them all. So I'm throwing this up on the screen. And for those of you that are listening to this in audio, you really should check us out on YouTube and Rumble every now and then, because sometimes we do episodes where we talk through images, and that's where this kind of thing comes in. But basically, this is just pictures of the two ARs that I've built,

both of which have had some recent modifications, because to kind of talk you all through where I started with this, when I first built the very first rifle, which is actually the one on bottom, that rifle originally was meant to be the one rifle to rule them all. It was the only AR I had, and it was meant to kind of be the jack of all trades.

So at the time, it was built on pretty much the same platform it is now. It's arrow precision uppers and lowers because, like Andrew said earlier, there's a really fine delta point between cost and performance, and aero-precision is that for uppers and lowers as far as I'm concerned. So aero-precision uppers and lowers, aero-precision rail. I think toolcraft bolts is what I've always used because dirty little secret tool craft makes a lot of the bolts you're buying for more money than tool craft charges that has other people's logo put on it don't believe me do some looking into it

had an 18 inch fax and barrel in it and a little bit of magpul furniture nothing really special alg act trigger which i'm gonna go out on a limb and say that, like, within the mil-spec trigger arena, ALG's ACT is really hard to beat dollar for performance. I mean, I've shot some really janky, clapped-out M16s in my life, and the ALG ACT right out of the box, it's a very, very nice upgrade over a mil-spec trigger for not a lot of money. I mean, it is a Geissele.

Yeah, it is basically a Geissele on a budget. And originally when I built this rifle, it did not have that 1.6 LPVO on it. It actually had the Vortex Strikefire that's now on the other rifle. So that whole rifle was built to be kind of like the Jack of all trades. And then sometime later, I built another one. One to build at the time, it was built as an AR pistol. So had a stabilizing brace, had a Sylvan Arms folder on it, had a 10.5 inch Faxon barrel in it. Same upper, same lower, same rail, just a little bit shorter, a few inches shorter rail on the pistol. Had a CAC can on it, I want to say it was like a 3.5 inch, and that was just to kind of direct all the blast forward from that 10.5 inch pistol barrel.

And same ALG ACT trigger in it and at that time I pulled the Strikefire 2 red dot and the magnifier off of the 18 inch rifle I built put it on that and I put the 1-6 on the 18 inch. And that is as these two stay for quite a few years. The AR pistol was built kind of to be a truck gun. You know, when I go on long trips, especially in the truck, I had built this thing to just perfectly fit, fold it up into the storage area in the back of its coma. You know what I'm saying, Andrew? Like behind the passenger rear seat, that kind of longer storage area, it fit into there like a glove with a couple of spare magazines. And it was built as my truck gun.

And then sometime later, I got another firearm that really fits the truck gun a little bit better for my uses. So I had this extra AR sitting here that kind of wanted to occupy the same space as another firearm I bought, the Scorpion. And then someone smooth talked me into dipping my toe into night vision. talked me into dipping my toe into night vision and I realized that in order to have a firearm that was going to play in the dark one of these two had to undergo some kind of modifications and since I no longer needed to have a very very short folding AR for a truck gun it kind of gave me the impetus to turn what was the ar pistol into a good old what they what is commonly referred to in firearm circles as a gpr general purpose rifle so i ripped the whole thing apart stuck a 16 inch fax and barrel into it um just got a bird

cage flash hider on it because why not not? I mean, the fricking things are cheap as hell and they work great. Uh, ended up putting a, um, Bobro engineering riser on it to Jack the entire optic stack up, I think three quarters of an inch, which gave me the center line that I really kind of need for messing with night vision. Um, put a stock on it ditched the folder because honestly the folder was adding over two inches length of pull to it and i don't know i mean at the moment that i got away from this thing need to be as compact as possible as a truck gun i also kind of got to the mode of just make this thing into a carbine don't care if it folds it. It is going to be as long as it's going to be. Eliminate a failure point.

I've still got the Sylvan Arms folder lying around just in case I ever need it for something. But that's kind of where I wound up. And obviously I ended up putting a laser module, a Holosun LS321, which we never did get to compare my LS321 to your Steiner toe-to-toe Prepper Camp, but I was reasonably impressed with the Holosun LAM. I mean, I think the performance for what it costs is not unreasonable at all. No, just when China attacks, they're just going to shut your stuff off. Yeah.

No, I don't know. I mean, well, I mean, before we know it, Pre Prepper Camp 2024 will be here so maybe we'll get another chance but uh yeah no I mean that's a good purpose built rifle really I mean so yeah

oh the other the about the only thing that's still pending on this is I really want to swap out this rail mounted stream light light with a uh probably an arisaka so that it's compatible with like all the sure vars tail caps and clean up the switchology because right now i'm just running two two separate pressure pads back to back or nose to butt on top of this rail and it's just it works it's not the greatest setup it takes a lot of space though it does take a lot of space and it's just it works it's not the greatest setup it takes a lot of space though it does take a lot of space and it's just like says not the cleanest it's not the cleanest way to do this

not to mention like you can see this um that's actually an arisaka i think that's called the scout no no the uh the little thing on the bottom of the rail oh the little nub yeah i i got one of those, too. I don't remember what it's called, but yeah, those are nice. I want to say they call it the finger stop. I can't recall. But anyway, it's from Arasaka. But the whole point is that you basically put it between two of your fingers,

and it works as an index point for your hand, so it always goes back in the same spot. And I know that if I land that right between my ring finger and my middle finger on either hand my thumb is sitting directly between the two pressure pads so i push my thumb forward i hit the laser pull it back a little bit i hit the light it doesn't require me to change my grip but it's still not as nice and clean and ergonomic as it could be. So the Switchology will be getting cleaned up at some point. But other than that...

You need a suppressor. Yeah, well, see, remember that whole discussion about building with a purpose? I had the thought of getting one of Faxon's 14.5-inch barrels that has their built-in three-prong flash suppressor so that I would have like 16 inch overall, but I'd have, I wouldn't have a 16 inch barrel plus a birdcage on the end of it. And the reason I didn't is because I think at some point in the future,

I'm going to finally cave in and pay the bribery money for a suppressor. I think it's going to have to happen. Yeah. I mean, that's why, that's why I, uh, for the years of building, that's why i went 16 inch just because of i wasn't sure what so i knew i was going to get a suppressor i wasn't sure which one especially with well because my first suppressor was an aac 30 caliber and so i had everything set up to where i could just throw that on really any of my rifles. Uh, but now I have a surefire, uh, surefire five, five, six. So I'll probably, uh, I'll probably swap out the

barrel on my five, five, six to like a 13, seven, uh, or something, and then get the war comp, which I have, I mean, the war comp, uh, and get it pin and welded so that it's to 16 inches. And then, you know, obviously that'll save me a couple inches or so. But, yeah, I mean, that's the reason why I didn't go pin weld, just because of the fact that I didn't know what suppressor I was going to end up with. And then, of course, a lot of them, they're not all direct threads, so they have their adapters and all that stuff. So the nice thing, though, is there is a suppressor.

I cannot think of the name off the top of my head, but there is a suppressor out there that does connect to a birdcage. There is one. I have seen it. I cannot think of the manufacturer to save my natural life, but I've seen it. Pretty cool lockup, actually, on that thing. I mean, it's one of those things that's like, it's going to drive me crazy. As soon as we're done with the show, I'm going to have to find it.

But I remember looking at it, and I thought to myself, I'm like, that is so unnervingly simple. I wonder why somebody else didn't think it up before these guys. You know what I'm saying? It's clever so yeah that is that's what i wound it this is what i took a 10 and a half inch very purpose built pistol and ripped it apart and salvaged the upper the lower the rail the bolt and rebarreled it changed the furniture and this is what i'm turning into is just a good old-fashioned general purpose rifle that can play in the dark uh it's hold on sorry sorry it's the uh i believe it is the griffin armament that sounds familiar gpn griffin armament A2 Attachable 556 Suppressor. That does sound familiar.

Yeah, so I think that's what it is. $745. That's not awful, honestly. No. Anyway, as you were. So what the hell is an SPR? And we have actually debated this quite enthusiastically recently in the Signal chat, which is just for the patrons,

and if you're a patron and you're not in the Signal chat, you should be. And if you want to be in the signal chat which is just for the patrons and if you're a patron and you're not in the signal chat you should be and if you want to be in the signal chat you got to have a talk with me about becoming a donating member but anyway we had a good old chat about what an spr was and you know our resident firearms nerd historian, Stuart, who was standing there next to Stoner when he thought up the freaking AR-15. Old fart. I love you, Stuart. But I got to give you hell. It's part of the gig.

But, you know, he pointed out to us that SPR actually comes from, like, DOD. Like, they have a specific use case for what designates an SPR. have a specific use case for what designates an SPR and in the broader firearms you know community an SPR is pretty universally understood to be something that shoots an intermediate cartridge so we're not talking about battle rifles we're not talking about designated marksman rifles we're not talking about sniper rifles we're not talking about something that's shooting 30 cal short action or long action we're talking about something that shoots ostensibly 5.56 that has a little bit longer barrel a little bit longer legs a little bit more magnification than average so that it can push out a little bit farther but something that still uses the same

ammo the same mags as everything else ostensiblyibly in a squad. Like that's where this philosophy comes from, is that you have, you take an SPR and you embed it into a squad of, say, M4 carbines with 14.5 inch barrels, so that one person has the ability to reach out and touch somebody a little bit further away. From my point of view, and this is kind of where I would love to say this rifle is pretty much done, but I don't know if it is. I took it from what it already was, which the only thing I've changed recently has been the trigger and the bipod. And I added the bipod. And that's really been more to kind of lean this thing more into being an SPR because I already have a really well-built, very functional general purpose rifle. I don't need two of them. And this thing already have an 18 inch barrel. It's already got a little bit more legs, but I put a Magpul bipod on it,

mostly because I, I mean, I've shot with a bipod and I've shot without, in my opinion, it definitely helps me with the consistency over range and the magpul bipod is both very affordable and fairly lightweight i don't care if it's an atlas i don't care if it's like the not the most rock solid bipod out there it's all cost performance to weight and i didn't want anything hinging way out there on the end of the rail that was going to be super super heavy just in case i need to pick this thing up and shoot it offhand. But I also recently changed out the trigger, and you and I were talking about this. I put a TriggerTech trigger into it, which I had never heard of TriggerTech until Stuart kind of talked me through them, and I did some research, and

really, really interesting trigger design the short version is what they do is between between the two sear surfaces they actually have a roller bearing so that instead of where most triggers the way they operate is they drag two parts two metal parts against each other and then when they clear each other that's what releases the sear releases the hammer releases the striker so you have friction between these parts and no matter how well you polish them you're gonna have some friction and in order to ensure that the firearm is drop safe you have to have enough sear engagement that a serious drop can't make those parts jump apart what trigger tech has done with this roller bearing and the way they've very finely controlled the geometry is that the the trigger

has and i've i've spent some time like meditating over it trying it i do not perceive any creep in this trigger any at all all. I mean, but as soon as you realize it's moving, you've let the hammer loose. So it's got a very, very good trigger in it. I ended up getting the Trigger Tech Duty, three and a half pound single stage,

because two stage triggers just work my nerves. And I couldn't explain to you why. Just give it to me. Don't make me explain why. I don't like two stage triggers. I don't mind to you why, just give it to me. Don't make me explain why. I don't like two-stage triggers. I don't mind anybody that does like them. I just can't do them. They give me the heebie-jeebies.

And I don't even mind, like I wouldn't have minded if it had a five-pound trigger in it. I really appreciate the fact that it's not a creepy trigger. You and I were talking about this. I'm not super carried away with the reset on it though which is kind of going to be part goes back to that whole building with a purpose thing like when i think when i think back to like the timney trigger that i have in my scorpion and i understand that's a different trigger manufacturer and a completely different, you know, completely different platform, but that has both a very, very tiny amount of creep with a very short reset and a very definite reset.

This has no creep, a little bit of over travel for being honest, but the reset is really, really, really soft, which if this were going to be like a gpr or a running gun type of weapon i would be really unhappy with the trigger but in something that ostensibly i intend to shoot like off of barricades or off of the bipod most of the time the the weak reset doesn't bother me as bad does that make sense no it makes sense um i mean that's the thing is you just it's just going to take time to get out and shoot it and figure out what you like about it and if you do like it and then keep it and keep using it and stuff like that i prefer with a more of a precision uh ar i mean i guess can't really precision ars they i mean they're not nothing will get as precise as like

a bolt action but uh i mean my ar-10 i have a geisley two stage in it and that trigger is amazing um i prefer the two stage but that's me so uh but yeah no i mean yeah just do some low development for it or whatever find out what it likes to eat and then go from there. Which kind of brings us around to, I guess, probably the last little piece of this topic unless we figure out some other place to stick our noses. But when I talk about build or buy, I also apply that to ammunition because I do my own reloading. buy i also apply that to ammunition because i do my own reloading and the thing about doing your own ammunition reloading means it once again are you the kind of person that just wants to go buy a thousand rounds and trust that the manufacturer's built it properly it's properly loaded

buy the thing that suits your purpose put it in the gun and then let it eat or are you the person that wants to invent that's looking for, say, better performance or better cost or something, and you're willing to invest your time into it, and you're also willing to invest your time if it doesn't work the way you expected it to? Because, like, my last big ammunition project was this little image over here on the right. I, um, the one on the left is the ammunition project I'm getting ready to embark on. So I have two principal loads for five, five, six already loaded. They're both 55 grains. I've got a can of a 55 grain saw open tip soft points, which I had them. I mean, I had the bullets and I already

had a load for them that worked fairly well. So I just went ahead and loaded up a bunch. I think I've got six or 700 of them at this point. I actually flirted with the idea in the near future, I'm probably going to be helping a family member do some hog eradication on their property. And I considered bringing these soft points out, I am back and forth on that. Because my concern is, from what he's told me, these pigs are not massive. They're around 50 pounds. And I would imagine if I whack one in the skull with a 55 gram soft point going like 2,800 plus feet per second, I will probably have no problem taking its legs out from underneath it.

But then it makes me wonder if I should stick to a 55 gram FMJ. You know what I'm saying? Just, just to make sure the bullet stays together. Because I worry about what happens if this softpoint encounters something hard enough that it just treads. Yeah, i've uh i don't know this was years ago now but uh i read an article where the guys that they used um uh green tip on hogs but yeah i mean i've never hunted hogs so i have no idea uh i mean, I built a.300 Blackout because I was planning on going hog hunting, and then I never did. Well, my wife's uncle just popped one on his property a couple weeks ago with a.55 grain FMJ, and he said it. Well, if that works, it works. He said he hit it, and it didn't even move. It just slumped straight down to the ground.

Yeah, if it works, it works. Yeah. I mean, if I were out shooting like, you know, in West Texas where they have hogzillas, I'd be a little bit concerned about a 55 grain 556. I think what we have around here, I don't think I'll run into any trouble. But the problem is we're going to be hunting at night. So I really only have one night option available to me and that is an ar-15 um if i do this often enough i've actually been looking at uh barns they make

the tsx in several grain weights from the 60 range up into the high 70s that might be worth to have a nice all copper bullet that'll penetrate a little deeper put a little bit more energy into the target but these are the things you do when you're reloading is you you select the powder charge that is the most optimal for your operating system in your barrel you select the bullet that does the thing you want you have the ability to tune the load this picture on the right is just kind of an illustration of like what load tuning does because my experience with these two facts and barrels my ar so far has been that you know with with shooting like offhand at 100 yards i mean i'm good for about a 4 or 5 inch group. Auto bipod, I imagine I can tighten it up a little bit more.

And with some prodigious load development, I have talked to a few people who use these same FACs and gunner barrels. That say that they'll shoot one MOA if you find the right load for them. They'll shoot one MOA if you find the right load for them. So that's why I've got several boxes of 77 grains here at Match Kings to start doing some load development for. And what I did, because like you, Andrew, you know that when you're doing load development, one of the things you need to pay attention to is make sure that all your cases are the same head stamp, right? Because all your brass manufacturers, they're all just a little bit different. And if your case volume is different for the same powder volume,

it's going to change your velocities. It's going to introduce another variable. So what I did was I actually took a whole bunch of cases because I get just boxes of used 5.56 brass. because I get just boxes of used 5.56 brass. I got a box full of stuff, and I actually put them on a scale, zeroed it, filled them up to the top with water, and then weighed the amount of water all these different cases took so that I could reliably figure out after they'd all been resized so that I knew the outside dimension was exactly the same.

I was really just measuring what the inside volume was. And then I was able to say, these four head stamps are all the exact same volume. These two or three head stamps are outside of the bell curve. So now I don't know exactly which case those are. I've got it written in my notes, but I know that as long as I grab case heads that are any of those four, they are the same water volume. They are the same in, they are the same brass thickness. I can now pick through all my loose brass and say, these four head stamps are the ones that I'm using for my match load for a 77 Grand Sierra Match King. Um, I don't know. We'll wait and see how that turns out when I get done with that reloading project. I know that when I got my, uh, Bruger M77, the 308 Winchester, like that rifle shot about a

three inch group with off the shelf ammo at a hundred yards. I mean, it's a hunting rifle. It's not really, not really meant to be a tech driver. I did a little bit of work to the rifle, which really was just clearancing the stock a little bit so that it wasn't, like, pushing against the barrel real hard, you know what I'm saying? Try to let the barrel's natural harmonics, like, sort themselves out. And I polished up the sear surfaces on the trigger a little bit just to take some of the grit out of it. And then I sat down and did load development using three different powders and two different bullets over the course of a few months. And what I finally settled on was that 42.5 grains of IMR 4064 under 168 grains of Sierra Magic King will make four bullets touch at 100 yards. And that's where I stopped.

So, like we've talked about reloading before, like for me I get really I get, I don't know what the word is, I really kind of roll my eyes hard at the idea that we're going to reload to save money because you know unless

you bought components like 10 years ago when they were a lot cheaper than they are now it's really hard to beat prices if you have to go out and find your bullets and find your powder and god forbid sell your kidneys so you can get primers but what you can do is you can create ammunition that is more accurate in your weapon system than anything you'll buy off the shelf. And to me, that is always going to be the benefit, is that I can make the ammo to do exactly what I want it to do. I can make it to exactly the barrel harmonics I'm going to fire through. I can tailor it exactly to the use case that I'm after. In this case, I'm seeking ultimate accuracy. In the case of if I go back to load some of those Barnes TSXs for hog hunting, I'm trying to smash a hog's brains out. Like, no two ways about it. I want maximum lethality for pigs.

But you get to make those decisions, and it puts you back in the driver's seat of saying, do I want to build it or do I want to buy it? Do I want to take the time to make this, make this thing do exactly what I want it to do? Or do I just buy some off shelf and hope it works? It just, it comes down to a time investment for me, time and attention. Yeah. Yeah. Cause I mean, that's same thing with me is i i just don't have the time to get into reloading so i'll just buy it and it's it's it's easier for me it's less of a headache to buy uh the ammo that i like that i know that the rifle shoots uh then to to reload and and i mean but the thing those, I do have reloading components for like

my six, five and stuff like that, because I do have a round that I found that it's a, I can't remember off the top of my head. Uh, it's, I believe it's Hornady, but, um, it's 143 grain, uh, uh, projectile or bullet. And that rifle loves that 143 grain. and so i have i mean i do have some uh rounds and i do have everything i need to to reload a good you know 100 or so of those that that grain weight do i i need do i need to sit down and do it yeah i need to sit down it's just i don't have time to so i don't i'll just i just eat the money and it does suck because of how expensive uh i was joking around because i i should have i should have picked some up uh but didn't uh but the i found it online for like black friday sales online for it was like 35 bucks a box of 20

that's what it was going for when i first bought my six five not on sale it they're like 55 bucks a box now which is ridiculous but uh you know whatever it is what it is yeah have you tried federal gold medal match through by any chance no give that a whirl federal gold medal match unless something has changed that I'm not aware of, they reload their match ammo with Sierra Match Kings. And it has been a very, very rare firearm that doesn't do some of its best work with Sierra Match Kings or Federal Gold Medal Match. I don't know price-wise how it's going to compare to the Hornets you're already shooting. I'm assuming it's match ammo we're talking about, right? Yeah, so actually what it is is I have the stuff that my rifle likes. It's 6.5 Creedmoor Precision Hunter 143 grain is what it is.

Gotcha. I don't know. Is what it is. Gotcha. I don't know. I turned into a Sierra Match King convert. Simply because. That whole load development for.308.

With two different bullets. I started with Hornady. I don't have anything bad to say about Hornady's. Ammunition or their bullets. Except to say that. My one particular rifle. Absolutely. Hates Hornady bullets. I tried Hornady A-Max. I ran a bunch of them through my rifle trying to, you know, trying to get that thing to group well. It did not want to, it did not want to behave itself. So I went out of switch and Sierra

Match Kings and all of a sudden I went from a rifle that i was struggling to make it group one inch at 100 yards it immediately shrank down sub moa with infinitely less aggravation like i was at the point where i was tuning the the lead and the jump to the lands like in two thousandths of an inch increments, getting closer and closer and closer, I was chasing accuracy doing that nonsense. And I finally found a load that do three quarters of an inch. And then I tried Sierra Match Kings, and those stupid things, you load them to magazine length, you throw a charge, you don't individually weigh them, and it just spits them out of the barrel half inch groups.

Again, I know that's like one rifle, that's a data point of one, but my one rifle will eat Sierra Magic Kings all day long and reward you for it and if you put hoarding into it, it's going to be a hateful pain in the ass the whole friggin' time.

Don't understand why? Ask somebody at Ruger. I'm sure they're smarter than I am. Well, well i mean that's just like my 308 i was shooting 175 grain sierra match kings out of it uh did just great uh i throw fiocchi in it and it i couldn't get it to pattern worth crap it was all over the place with fiocchi so uh which was really weird but uh yeah i haven't shot i think i still have like three or four boxes of fiocchi laying around that i have not i just won't shoot because it i mean i guess i can shoot it just to

play but it's so i guess i guess i'm running out of gas on the whole you know built versus bought like again to me i think there's a great merit in the idea of like building your own ar i can't universally recommend it because i know i i have a friend who i've helped build an ar and like by his own admission if i hadn't been standing there helping him do it he would have never gotten it together by himself. So like there is a certain amount of, if you're not mechanically inclined, if you're not willing to learn how to do it, if you have like, you know, four thumbs and two left hands, maybe you don't go that direction. But I really think for the people that like, if you can tie your shoes and change your own oil, you can figure out how to build ar it's not complicated it really isn't i i could teach my 11 year old how to do it

and she's not a gun nut but yeah well i guess we'll keep this short and sweet that i kind of wanted to do uh something gun related and i mean in the last several months i have i have pivoted away from other prepping activities towards get these two rifles sorted out because somebody smooth talked me into getting a night vision, which is another episode you and I need to do one of these days. But with that came the fact that night vision is really cool, but all you can do is look like a moron with your friends in the dark, unless you actually rig up a firearm to operate with it. And doing that then meant other changes. But I guess we'll keep it short and sweet, man. You got stuff to do. I have to go blow my nose because Man Cold is going to kill me otherwise.

But, you know, for the listeners, for those of you who are watching this on youtube rumble like drop us a comment and tell us what you think i'm curious who out there falls on which side of the fence as far as building versus buying an ar and like if you're the person who says oh i never tried to build one my question is why is it like lack of knowledge? Are you intimidated by the process? Do you just think the juice is worth the squeeze? No judgment. There's no judgment here. I mean, I'll judge you a little bit, but not much. But I'm really just curious. But you can find us on Facebook, Instagram, although neither one of those are really great ways to get a hold of us these

days. The contact form on our website, mofpodcast.com, does go straight to our mailboxes, and I'm usually pretty good about responding to that. And if you're a patron, you've probably texted me like 14 times since we started recording, and I'll get to y'all just as soon as I get a free second. Thank y'all for tolerating our nonsense and helping support

the show. Matter of fact, this podcast is going out the door. Bye, everybody. Bye. Thank you. We'll see you next time.