Don't panic
Just don't be nervous.
We will not compare the force on the trigger, the accuracy of the stock barrel, dipping it in the mud, shooting with the cheapest cartridges, hitting in long bursts until the fore-end catches fire - no trash. There is one parameter in which the ARka (that is, a rifle based on the AR-15/M16) obviously outperforms the AKMoids beloved by the people. The key word is “modularity”. Of course, simple and fully functional brand new AR-15s can be purchased in the USA for less than 600 bucks, but these models do not always suit users: some don’t like the sights, some don’t like the barrel length or body kit, and some don’t. I'm happy with the stock trigger mechanism.
Smith & Wesson M&P15 Sport II Semi-Automatic Carbine
Therefore, many handy American citizens strive to assemble their own rifle with their own hands. Let me remind you that components for AR are produced by dozens (if not hundreds) of companies all over the planet - the USA, Canada, China, the Philippines, Italy, the Czech Republic, Germany, Turkey, etc. Even Russia is on this list.
We purchase spare parts
On the American market, the prices for barrels are divine - from any manufacturer, of any desired length, diameter and caliber. And this part is not considered “the main part of a firearm”; there is no overly reverent attitude towards it. It's just a consumable. I shot it and bought a new one.
Prices for the cheapest barrels for AR-15
It is clear that barrels for high-precision models from a renowned manufacturer can cost an order of magnitude more, but why such expenses? A recreational shooting carbine, even with an inexpensive barrel, will be fun to shoot holes in targets at a hundred yards, and that's all you need from it. The bolt carrier and bolt are also consumables; they are not even numbered. It is advisable, of course, to buy a chrome-plated or stainless steel one, but you can get by with the simplest blued option - however, you will have to clean it more often.
The next step is to purchase a complete receiver. Actually, this term is incorrect; ARK does not have this detail in the domestic sense. The upper part (to which the barrel is attached) is colloquially referred to as “upper”, and the lower part (where the trigger is located) is called “lower”. By the way, you can also save money here. The so-called “eighty percenters”—lovers made only 80 percent—are in steady demand. It does not have a sample for the trigger, there are no holes for the hammer and trigger axles - these last 20 percent of plumbing work are proposed to be performed by the buyer.
80% lower
Ideally, to carry out such work, a milling machine is required, but you can get by with a drilling machine, and some craftsmen are completely content with a regular electric drill. Since a license is not required to purchase a DIY firearm (an unfinished gun is not legally part of the firearm), "80% lower" is in steady demand. The price for such a “half-baked item” starts at $50 (and if you run into a sale, it’s even cheaper).
For little money, the manufacturer can make any designations on the lover
Another plus is the ability to create weapons for a non-standard cartridge (for example, for a pistol 9x19 mm Luger) or for certain magazines (for example, for Glock).
It got to the point that “80% lower” could be bought in completely “non-weapon” online stores like Amazon - in the “art objects” section. Advanced designers have gotten into the habit of creating cute floor lamps and other fashionable household items from spare parts.
At the same time, home-made people who did not have access to gun shops, but passionately wanted to assemble the legendary “black rifle” with their own hands, managed to make a profit there.
All that remains is to purchase a stock pipe, a plastic body kit (at least the simplest one, which is sold on Aliexpress), a bunch of springs and pins - and you can start assembling. At the same time, on video hosting sites you can easily find a lot of detailed and very professional recommendations on this process.
Such weapons, which are not listed in sales databases, are called ghost rifles by the press. Some states in the United States require registration of such weapons with the police, others do not, but prohibit resale - in general, the attitude is quite relaxed. In addition, “the consumer votes with his pocket” - the price for a “self-assembled arch” can be one and a half times lower than for exactly the same one from the store.
In general, if your hands grow from the right place, there is a very real possibility of building yourself a decent rifle for reasonable money.
"Printed" AR-15: How I Made My Rifle
This is my " ghost gun ( gun control advocates and adopted by gun . It is a semi-automatic rifle with no serial number that law enforcement does not know about. And the affection I feel for it is... stems from the fact that I made it myself, in the WIRED office workshop.
I managed it almost alone. I had no knowledge of weapons , and my skills in working with tools were no better than those of a Cro-Magnon man. In doing so, I made a metal, working AR-15 rifle . More precisely, I myself made the “ receiver ” - the basis of the design, the part that US law defines as a “ firearm ”. Ghost Gunner automatic router .
Ghost Gunner is a $1,500 computer-controlled milling machine. It is sold by Defense Distributed, a company that advocates for gun .
She became famous in 2012 - 2013, when she began printing the first pistol on a 3D printer, known as the Liberator . And while everyone around was arguing about the political and legislative issues surrounding this idea, DD switched from plastic to metal.
Ghost Gunner carves objects from aluminum based on a computer model. The first deliveries of this unit began this spring. The DD group wants to make it easier for people to make gun from a material comparable in strength to industrial designs.
I received the Ghost Gunner in May when it was given away as a press test. In short, apart from a small hiccup with the hardware, it worked very well. gun control debate , where making an untraceable, reliable, and lethal weapon like a semi-automatic rifle requires very little money or expertise.
That being said, Ghost Gunner is an evolution of home gun , not a revolution. gunsmiths have been making guns at home for years, fitting receivers to fit prefabricated elements of various rifles. The previous article about the Ghost Gunner was full of comments in the vein that anyone with a drilling machine could make such a receiver in their garage.
I decided that I wouldn't be able to fully appreciate Ghost Gunner unless I tried out all the gun . So I set my sights on all three methods: using a classic drill press, a commercial 3D printer, and a Ghost Gunner .
Ingredients for making AR-15
Nobody makes ghost guns from scratch. Usually everyone makes one component that is only monitored by law - the receiver .
The fact is that this is the basis of the weapon . It holds the stock, grip, magazine, bolt and barrel together. The serial number of the weapon is applied specifically to the receiver , because it wears out the least during the use of the weapon . Like a bicycle frame or a computer motherboard, it is the core of the machine around which everything else hangs.
In principle, buying an AR-15 is not that difficult. But you can make the receiver yourself, and buy the rest of the spare parts freely, because they are practically unregulated. I ordered all the parts except the receiver from the Ares Armor website and they didn't need anything other than a shipping address. They even accept payments in Bitcoin.
the receiver itself anonymously - it will be 80% completed. gun control law . There will not be several holes and one notch. Moreover, although the purchase and sale of ready-made “ ghost weapons ” is prohibited by law, their manufacture is permitted.
Drilling machine vs Receiver
I have already mentioned that I am not friendly with tools. So this part of my experiment didn't go very well.
I rented a drill press for $250, paid Ares $97 for a set of matching drills and cutters, and another $110 for a set of steel guides.
The lack of experience even at the school level took its toll. It turned out, for example, that I had the wrong vice—I had to go across town and buy it for $80. Then drilling turned out to be not as easy as it looks in the videos.
I watched the tutorial video, put on my gloves and goggles, attached the piece of aluminum, and turned on the drill.
At first everything went great, I could feel the aluminum dust on my teeth and see how the drill left a polished, sparkling crater. But then I noticed that the vise was shaking noticeably, and because of this, my holes were moving so much that they became almost diagonal.
Then, when I wanted to use a router bit to make a groove between the two grooves I had made, I discovered that they turned out to be different depths, and I didn’t even notice it. The bottom of the depression began to resemble the surface of the Moon. The working drill began to protest loudly, it shook like a train about to derail. Our cameraman, Patrick Farel, a former bicycle mechanic, watched my efforts from behind his camera with a discreet grin. So we agreed - I had to do everything myself.
Five and a half hours passed. After which the head of the drill fell off. I don’t know if some kind of protection worked, or if I just broke the expensive equipment that was rented from Farel’s card. I screwed it back on and after a few minutes it fell off again. Then they explained to me that the drill was not designed for the lateral load that I gave it when using it as a cutter.
At this point I gave up. All I had was a sad-looking piece of metal, riddled with a labyrinth of crooked channels. And my left hand bristled with aluminum shavings where the glove had worn through.
3D printing of an AR-15 rifle
I left the drill press, went to the editorial office and took out of the box a brand new Makerbot Replicator worth $2800. Compared to the machine, it was as if I had been transported to the future in a time machine. I plugged in the printer and within minutes it was printing a tiny coffee table.
On The Pirate Bay I found plans for a AR-15 receiver ready for 3D printing. The physibles section of the site, which appeared there in 2012, had dozens of different spare parts for weapons . I downloaded a drawing that Defense Distributed made in 2013, and which they were then forced to remove from the site.
I loaded the diagram into the printer program, prepared to print and pressed the desired button. I was sitting in an empty editorial office, it was already dark, and I could not tear myself away from how a spare part for a weapon .
After 6 hours the print head overheated and needed time to cool down. It only took one button press from me. Then I left, and when I returned in the morning, I found the completed spare part lying inside the printer.
But despite the fantastic process, the result was flawed. One side of the part was coated with a support material, which was supposed to prevent the product from spreading before it hardened. The process of removing this plastic was long and painful. The same material filled small holes in the part.
Judging by the YouTube videos, it is quite possible to print a working receiver that will withstand hundreds of rounds. But I did it poorly - this was explained to me by a weapons whom I visited two days later. In any case, I gave up and did not bring this project to a working weapon .
Ghost Gunner
A new generation of automatic machines are being touted as machines that will allow anyone to do anything. But from the very first moments it became clear to me: this machine is intended for making weapons .
Ghost Gunner is a black cube with two stepper motors. The device was so heavy that I could barely take it out of the box. It didn't have any fancy lights or buttons like the Replicator . Its appearance corresponded to its strict purpose.
It works either with GRBL, a general-purpose open source application, or with DDCut, a Windows program made by DD. The Ghost Gunner comes with instructions for making a receiver using DDCut.
After installing the program, I discovered that making the receiver was ridiculously easy. DDCut crashed into my 80% finished box, and I just followed the instructions on the screen (and clicked Next 22 times).
For an hour, I had nothing to do but admire how Ghost Gunner carved the part with inhuman precision. Sometimes the program would tell me to change the position of a part, tighten or loosen bolts, change a cutter, or clean off chips.
The device worked for almost four hours. But 3 steps before the end of the work, GG encountered a problem. The probe, which was supposed to measure the position of the part, did not work, and the machine stalled. I had to break the agreement and call Cody Wilson, the founder of DD.
At first he upset me that I would have to start all over again, and admitted that this was a flaw in the design of the car. But then he came up with a better option - he sent me a file that repeated the instructions only for the remaining steps. And 20 minutes later I pulled out of the car a sparkling, perfect part for a rifle - warm, like a loaf of bread, just out of the oven.
Building my AR-15
The part looked much better printed, and incomparably better than the one I cut with a drill. For an expert opinion, I went to Bay Area Gunsmithing, where two gun .
The part that I drilled myself was immediately rejected by Nathan Rinder, the owner of the workshop. The holes I made didn't match the other parts, and there were some I never finished. True, according to him, he has seen worse attempts.
He also rejected the printed part. He noticed that one hole in the drawing was placed incorrectly, and noticed several other inaccuracies. He explained that this part would require several more hours of work. Plus, the idea of a plastic part scared him.
And the detail cut out using Ghost Gunner deserved approval. He was not very impressed, but he said that it would be completely safe to both assemble the weapon and shoot from it.
Over the next hour, I assembled an AR-15 .
I looked at the video instructions and assembled the weapon . Sometimes Rinder gave me advice, drew attention to the fact that I was trying to insert something at the wrong end, etc. And finally, the last part clicked into place. My AR-15 was ready.
And then something clicked in my brain. I realized that I had turned a collection of abstract details into an object capable of killing someone. The receiver turned into a weapon . I remembered that I now need to think about where I am pointing the barrel.
Rifle shooting
After three days at the range, I loaded the AR-15 with a 10-round .223 magazine and fired it for the first time. A deafening explosion silenced the birds and echoed off the wooden walls as the butt dug into my shoulder. I saw a hole in the target.
“Well, it’s booming,” said Rinder.
I shot some more, then another, then the magazine ran out, I replaced it, and finished another one. Then a misfire occurred - it turned out that this happens with new weapons , they need to be lubricated. Overall, the gun performed great all morning. We shot all 40 rounds, then shot another 60 rounds at a nearby shooting range where SWAT soldiers were training. There were no more misfires.
Getting rid of ghost guns
The next day I flew home to New York. rifle with me on the plane . I couldn’t leave it at the WIRED office either - this could be classified as transferring ownership of a weapon without a serial number, which would be a crime. I decided to saw the receiver , but it turned out that by law it had to be destroyed with a torch - to remove enough metal so that it could not be repaired.
receivers I made to the police. When I got to the police station and explained what I needed, they looked at me with a mixture of boredom and slight misunderstanding. It turned out they had never encountered homemade weapon .
The police officers gave me a receipt, took the receivers into storage, and I said goodbye to my “ ghost gun .”
Now Ghost Gunner is still in the warehouse of the WIRED office. He can make another receiver at any time. DD has already sold over a thousand of these devices - and each of them is a small and easy-to-use weapon factory .
Budget
- drill option, including drill rental and all necessary tools and parts: $1334
- 3D printer option: $3604
- Ghost Gunner option: $2,272
Source
Why so ma...?
And now that we roughly understand about AR modularity, a question arises. Why are there so few of them in Russia - and why in the foreseeable future will our AR platform not be able to compete with AK? After all, there is experience in producing this platform in the Russian Federation. The VPO-140 carbine (aka “Vepr-15”) was produced for several years in Vyatskie Polyany from components; at the same time, the barrel on the weapon was domestic, chrome-plated.
With quite acceptable accuracy, the “pig barn,” as the shooters affectionately called it, had increased survivability and made it possible to safely fire cheap domestic ammunition with a bimetallic bullet casing. Also, the ORSIS company, better known for bolt-action rifles, made a very good option called AS-15. Finally, today the St. Petersburg company ADAR is also working on arches, and the manufacturer promises that all structural elements will be domestic. For aesthetes, the St. Petersburg residents made an option not only in a plastic body kit, but also in wood.
“ADARka” - Russian ADAR 2-15 carbine in a wooden body “for SVD”
Alas, the legend drilled into our heads “the Americans abandoned their M-16s and grabbed AKMs” is still playing against us. But the main thing is that the cost of the AR platform is still too high. The Smith & Wesson M&P15 Sport II carbine in the USA can be found for $500, and in the Russian Federation, prices for the most affordable Chinese CQ-A M4 clones from NORINCO start from about 90-100 thousand rubles. But any kind of “homemade work” is criminally punishable under the laws of the Russian Federation. Therefore, the same plus that works so well in the overseas civilian market has no meaning in our country.
However, I still want to hope for the liberalization of domestic legislation and that over time, ARs will become a much more common and popular weapon - and not only among athletes, but also among ordinary amateur shooters.
In general, comrades, be bold in mastering the weapons of a potential enemy!
RA-15: the best thing that could happen to the AR-15 in Russia
The AR-15 platform has been a curiosity for shooters in the post-Soviet space for a very long time. And there is an objective reason for this - the production of civilian weapons has long been carried out at the facilities of defense enterprises, the lines of which are tailored specifically for AKs and its various variations. We also cannot ignore the financial side of the issue. Thus, any AK-based carbine is approximately half the price of the most budget export AR-15. But more often this ratio is much higher.
However, time passes, and this platform has become quite in demand among shooters in our country. Companies such as Orsis, ADAR, Soyuz-. were among the first to respond to the increased demand. The target audience for the AR-15 platform was not only competitive shooters, but also ordinary gun enthusiasts.
RA-15: the best thing that could happen to the AR-15 in Russia
At the beginning of this year, another rifle was announced - the RA-15. Behind this rifle is a very well-known person in narrow circles, my good friend Dmitry Chuchaev. And if you are interested, it was Dima who at one time made the hunting versions of the PKM and DShK, and now he has launched the AEK project, and it is he who is behind the production of hunting carbines based on Glock and LLC Glock.
When I asked Dima directly why he decided to start designing and manufacturing weapons based on the AR-15 in the country of Kalashnikov, he answered without hesitation:
“In the USA, they have launched the production of very high-quality AK-based weapons. I decided - why not make AR no worse than in the USA?”
But let's move on to the rifle itself.
The RA-15 is a classic carbine on the AR-15 platform, however, like any independent small arms model, it has its own technical features. One of the first questions a potential buyer will ask is “What am I paying my money for? For a set of spare parts that was brought to the Russian Federation or a product of our own production that undergoes strict technological control of parts?”
Lower, upper, barrel nut, barrel action, forend, fire selector, cocking handle, all pins (front and rear), gas block and piston - all these parts are of our own production, with our own technical documentation. Barrels for carbines will be ordered at production from Molot. The question regarding the trigger remains open - it is not yet known which trigger will be installed on production RA-15 samples. However, after the sale of the first batch, Dmitry plans to organize production exclusively from domestic components.
And if we touched on the topic of differences between the RA-15 and other carbines on the market, then let's talk about them in more detail. Thus, the RA-15 has a monolithic upper; the forend is attached to the upper using a dovetail design. The fire selector has a short stroke of 45 degrees, the barrel action (this is the removable part of the barrel with which the lugs interact) has a changed feed angle, and is also completely milled without two recesses. The cocking handle has been moved to the left side.
Pins on an AR platform are a separate type of perversion. If during installation you did not lose the springs a couple of times, then you have achieved indisputable skill. In the RA-15, the front and rear pins are made with caps for better handling. The front pin is inserted without any tools.
The gas block has small dimensions - after all, the smaller the dimensions, the less chance it will hit the fore-end when fired. Also, during the changes, the adjustment of the gas block was improved. Thus, these and other changes had a positive effect on the reliability of the carbine’s mechanisms and its weight.
Now the carbine is undergoing pre-production tests, mainly they come down to shooting the barrel, accuracy and performance of the product’s mechanisms when firing more than 27,000. The accuracy result is now 1-1.5 arc minutes per 100 meters of gross ammunition.
And since we’re on the subject of the barrel, it has the following characteristics: the barrel is chrome-plated (however, there are plans to carbonitrate the barrel), the guaranteed service life declared by the manufacturer is 20,000 shots, the planned barrel lengths are 310 and 420 mm, the twist is 11, threads on the barrel for installation muzzle devices - 14/1. However, Dmitry is already testing a “closed type” diesel engine, mounted on a carbine using a bayonet connection.
Personal impressions from working with this carbine are the most positive. The RA-15 is a balanced, fairly lightweight - weighing only 2.6 kg, maneuverable and very ergonomic carbine. Despite the fact that the RA-15 is currently the lightest AR presented in Russia, this does not affect the accuracy of the carbine during tempo shooting. In other words, despite its light weight, the carbine is very easy to control and hold while firing. Some dissonance is caused by the rather loud sound of the shot and the soft recoil. The carbine is reliable and has shown itself to be excellent when working with bulk ammunition from various domestic manufacturers. As one of my friends said:
“With this AR you can get into sports out of the box”
The RA-15, in fact, is already a “custom” product, but the user, based on his own preferences, can upgrade his carbine. This applies primarily to choke tubes, pistol grips and buttstocks. There are now enough companies on the domestic market that sell accessories and spare parts for AR-15 carbines. Thus, interchangeability is not a problem with this rifle.
If we talk about when to expect the carbine to go on sale, it is currently undergoing the final stage of pre-production testing. Accordingly, the first batch of 500 carbines will be available in the near future. The carbines will be supplied to gun stores, and pre-orders are also available (here is Dmitry's page where you can chat about pre-orders). Now the manufacturer undertakes the following warranty obligations: 10,000 shots or a year warranty. The delivery set will include a product passport, which will contain a diagram of the carbine and operating instructions, the carbine itself and two magazines.
To summarize, I would like to share my plans for the future. The first batch of RA-15 will be available in .223Rem caliber, but in the future Dmitry plans to master the production of these carbines in .308Win and 5.45x39 calibers. And I hope everything works out for him!
Dmitry Migalin | Author's articles on military topics
