The AR-15 Thread - AR-15's and Magazines

[Schmoe1]

Do you like the Smith & Wesson AR?  It was on my short list of affordable AR15s.  I was eyeballing the Ruger AR as well, but ultimately went with Palmetto.

What turned me off to Smith & Wesson was when I bought a boot dagger with S&W's name on it...complete piece of shit, granted it was a $20 boot dagger, but still, why put your name on something like that?

I'm with you on the full auto, I'd much rather be accurate and conserve ammo, and you're right, it's more involved making a gun full auto than that rampant rumor about simply filing the auto sear.

Yup, I like it fine. It hasn't let me down yet.

As I said above, I DID trade out the stock handgrips for a milspec set, because of the stock grips having no heat shields. The recoil assembly tube IS milspec, though, so if I wanted to trade the butt out, that would be a possibility, too, but I haven't found a reason to yet. The stock handgrips are the round ones I prefer (rather than the M-4 oval ones), but the no heat shield problem was a no-go at this station, so I swapped them out.


The barrel rifling is 1:9. making it suitable for the 55 grain M193 ammo AND the 62 grain M855 ammo. I'm not wild about the heavier barrel (.750 OD vs. .625 or so for the M16A1 barrel), but sometimes you take the bad with the good, and it's hard to find an AR any more with that pencil profile anyhow. I live in a pretty humid area, and the barrel finish is holding up very well. Excellent, really. The front sight base is a standard parkerized one that has developed a bit of a patina, but the barrel and the receivers are still like brand new. The only real problem with that heavy barrel is that it increases the overall weight of the gun. It weighs around 9.2 pounds with a loaded 40 round mag and the flashlight, laser, and mounts, and the red dot.

All in all, it's right about where I want it now. No useless, wasted extra Picatinny rails or vertical foregrip to get snagged up on crap when I don't want it to be snagged, or any extra bullshit other than that green laser. I might, at some point in the future, install a mounting point for a single point sling, but I have no plans to do so any time soon, as I have no real need for one. All I'd have to do is take off the recoil spring tube, install the sling mount and replace the tube and re-stake the nut, but I just don't feel like it if I don't need it.

What I don't like about Smith and Wesson is how they rolled over for Bloomberg and the anti-gunners some few years ago, so as a rule I don't do business with them, but the deal was too good to pass up when I bought the AR. Back when S+W did that dirty deal, I was carrying an S+W revolver at work, and I took it into the office and turned it in, told them I'd rather carry a Taurus, and carried that Taurus for the remainder of my time there.

To make an AR full auto, you have to get the full auto trigger group, and auto sear and spring, and the pins for all of that, THEN you have to drill a hole for the auto sear pin, mill out sections of the lower receiver to allow for it's operation, replace the trigger, disconnect, and hammer and of course install the auto sear. Then, if you don't have a FA bolt carrier, you either have to get one of those or rig the existing bolt carrier to enable it to trip the sear... not to mention all the paperwork and waiting time for BATFE approval that entails. It's far more trouble than it's worth just to make a gun whose only use is to waste ammo. I won't do it, not for myself or anyone else, either.

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Nope, not worth it at all modifying guns illegally.  For full auto or a homemade suppressor.  I will say I'd go for a suppressor before I went for full auto if shit actually hit the fan.  In that case, I'm glad the Palmetto came with a screwed on A2 flash hider rather than pin welded on.

I'm not an expert on ARs, but I kind of regret not going with the mid length instead of the carbine based on what I've read about both.  Mine has the nitrided barrel, I've heard chromed is the way to go for longevity, but again, I'm no expert.

I love the old iron sights, this Palmetto has the Magpul flip-up rear sight on a picatinny rail with a fixed front sight, but I also want to get a red dot, I've been eyeing an affordable Sig Sauer that's gotten nice reviews, but I'm split between a red dot and a lower magnification rifle scope.  I don't want to be cheap with either but I'm limited to one or the other for now.  

I agree on the hand guards with quadruple rails all over the place, I hate the feel of them.  I really like the Magpul handguard, very comfortable in my opinion but also has slots for attachments if you want.  You got the wider grips or the narrower grips?  I think that's one of the reasons I didn't go with the Ruger, I didn't like the narrower hand guards it came with. 

I regret not picking up the Sig 556 when they first came out and were right around $500, I've heard they're solid.  I considered the Springfield Saint too, but Springfield can kiss my ass after the shit they pulled.