Building Confidence

[Gatorade]

Tools are . I had a set of Lyman punches already, I had an old beam style torque wrench but that would work just fine. I never used a magwell block and found it easier to squeeze the pins in and flip the receiver as I built it. I researched the crap out of how to use wood blocks to hold the upper receiver instead of an AR specific vice block. Barrel nut wrench was going to be the only tools I really needed to buy. I was very reluctant to buy specific tools because I was only going to build one AR. Before the first was finished, I had already started on the second. But I still didn’t want to buy the tools because I didn’t need more than the two because they were different calibers so I had all my bases covered. After I had torqued barrels close to a dozen times from building and swapping barrels, that the gas tube was a bitch to align every time, I cracked an upper receiver. So those free wood blocks cost me a $79 upper and hours of frustration. The next day I ordered the upper vice block with the alignment tool. It made all the other assemblies a thousand times easier. I got a DPMS barrel wrench that only did barrel nuts. $20. A do it all wrench would have been around $50. I still cringe when tightening the castle nut because I am not using the correct tool for the job and they do loosen up on me because I never really get them tightened appropriately.

So just a suggestion, buy the tools you need. If later on you don’t find yourself building six or seven more then you can always sell them off. If you are sure you won’t be building more then I can loan you some of mine. I will pay to ship them over and when you are done just ship them back. Probably a Priority Mail box will do it so $12-$15. Also AR15.com has a tool lending section if you need tools I don’t have. As mentioned you can borrow a torque wrench from an auto supply but some hand guards don’t require the nut to be torqued. Some even have proprietary nuts that need proprietary tools. You won’t know till you start buying parts. Start listing the parts you are going to used so we can get an idea of the tools you may need.