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Thread: Is This Kit Worth It?

  1. #1
    Team Guns Network Silver 04/2013 alismith's Avatar

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    Is This Kit Worth It?

    Just found this in a catalog and thought it looked interesting, but I know nothing of completing kits, nor of the quality of polymer composite materials.

    I was wondering if this kit would be worth the money and effort.

    http://www.chkadels.com/AR15-Lower-R...-Percent-33484
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  2. #2
    Guns Network Contributor 04/2013 El Laton Caliente's Avatar

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    The guys in California built a lot of 80% AR receivers, but most I saw and heard about were not polymer.
    We found out what "dealing" with progressive lefties is all about. Our side gives up something, they give up nothing and the progressives come back in a month or a year and want us to give up more... rinse and repeat...

  3. #3
    Forum Administrator Schuetzenman's Avatar

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    OK, I've been a Molding and Tooling Engineer since 1987. I make my living squiriting plastic in molds and having molds built for my employers. Plastic is nice material, however ... it is limited in strength no matter what reinforcement you put in it. It does better in warm weather than cold. The colder it gets, the stiffer it gets and the more brittle it gets.

    I own Glock handguns but I don't see the potential for stresses on them that a rifle with a long barreled upper can put on a polymer lower. For 80 bucks you can get an aluminum 80% lower all be it without the jigs to finish it. To put perspective on the price, I purchased an Anderson stripped lower from Aim Surplus had it shipped to a local dealer that charges $27 for a transfer fee and still had less cost in it than $80 bucks. The Anderson was $39.95 shipping extra. Aim has the standard one and the integral trigger guard type for the same price.

    http://www.aimsurplus.com/product.as...er&groupid=577

    http://www.aimsurplus.com/product.as...rd&groupid=577

  4. #4
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    Ditto what Schuetzenman said ...

    The only reason I could see to do it is if you want a DIY project ... I built a couple AK's that way and for that reason back when AMD-65 and Romanian kits were cheap ($69.95 stick in my mind) ... and I see no reason to build one in polymer.

  5. #5
    Team Gunsnet SILVER 05/2012 deth502's Avatar

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    +1 to the above. i also built a lot of ak's back in the day. back then a cheap century was $300 and up. i could buy a kit, a flat, and all the necessary us made 922r parts and still be under $100.

    paying $80 for a plastic lower... that you then also have to put labor into, all for more money than you could get a complete aluminum lower for, its not really an option. only reason i could see to buy it would be for the aluminum hat guys who think they need a "ghost gun" that bad but dont have the ability to do any real machining.

  6. #6
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    BTW ... My cousin and a few of his friends got together last summer and had a build party that lasted a couple hours a day for about a week. They drilled out 80% aluminum receivers with a drill press and they bought completely un-assembled 20" A2 parts kits (meaning they had to install the barrels, pin the sight posts and assemble the A2 sights in the upper ... and as newbies they lost several springs, detent balls and pins in the process).
    They had bought a ceracoat kit to finish the receivers and a couple guys tried to get fancy by doing some etching on the blank side with a dremmel ... one guy had tried doing his family crest but it was a complete failure and in the end he said the uppers all turned out fine but the lowers were "functional" at best and not anything he would really want anyone to see ... but now that they have a some experience and better idea of what their doing a couple of them might take another run at it just for fun while the others just bought stripped receivers and called it an "experience".

    I told him that since money wasn't an object, when he gets the AR down, they should try an AK build ... I didn't tell him that with all the tools and info available now there really isn't any reason why they couldn't build some nice AK's ... Half the fun is in the research and figuring it out on your own ... not like back in the day when we were building AK's and figuring out the tools riveting jigs and all.

    I remember Schuetzenman and some of you guys turned out some AK's that were nicer than anything you could buy off the shelf ... My first one turned out "functional" and the others were better than the first but oddly enough the first one is the only one I still have, and still not anything I'm proud of ... one of these days I'm going to tear it down and rebuild it, hopefully nicer than it is.

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