Gunsmithing

Bar-Sto Precision Machine has been making barrels since 1967 that are considered by many to be the best barrels on the planet.

You know the ones, ”That’d be a nice rifle if the barrel wasn’t so rough”

This year they came out in full force at SHOT Show 2023 with 18 new product offerings. The largest and most impressive, in my opinion, is the Master Gun Workstation

We finally wrapped up our Primary Arms pistol lower build, out of all the orphan parts. We had a lot of fun completely disregarding color schemes as we perused the sale pages and bought whatever was in stock. Which ended us with a 2A lower, radian safety, mag pul grip, and an AR Gold Trigger. Oh, and a CMMG RipBrace since this was a pistol configuration, one of my favorite parts to hit the market this year. So finally, we can get to the point. And the point was to make a 7.62×39 pistol from AR parts.

We have been seeing a trend from firearms manufacturers lately that I like a lot. Several companies that had a really awesome, always patented, unique feature to their guns have started selling… Just that unique piece. This is simply amazing for us consumers, at least those not scared to take a hammer and Dremel tool to our weapons.

Recently, I had a rather interesting project come my way from GunsAmerica’s own True Pearce. Mr. Pearce had an original Winchester 1895 rifle, chambered in 30-40 Krag that needed a new stock fitted to it. Fitting a wood stock would seem to be something of an “old school” gunsmithing task in today’s world of synthetic stocks, drop-in parts, and buffer tube-mounted collapsible stocks. But it is surprisingly relevant to the hobby gunsmith of today.

The FCU’s have been flowing for some time now, I know. But I wanted my first build to be something magical, and that has taken time to source parts for. Finally, everything came together this week. I, for one, think it was worth the wait.

This week is a bit of an odd duck, as we rather intentionally bought a gun we intend to look nothing like factory in just a few weeks. But since we do have it, we thought why not take a look at it as it sits. We mean of course the Ruger 10/22 Charger, the red headed step child of rimfires.

With all the shenanigans going on in Washington, this is a really good time to invest some coin in lower receivers. Even if you don’t plan on a build right now, one never knows what the future will hold