Everything you ever wanted to know about buying an AR15 Lower Receiver

hey today we're going to be talking about building an ar-15 the lower receivers and kind of the ins and outs on them and what you need to know before you buy one so there's many different types of lower receivers you can buy there's a hundred different different variations the way they're built the different accessories you can put on them and typically people just go into a store and say hey can I get a lower receiver you know the guy hands in one and that's what you go with but there's a lot more to it you know and I'll just kind of talk about the differences and what you want to look for and if you're buying one maybe what you want to look for what questions you want to ask when you're buying one that may be relevant to you so up here in front of me I've got you know a handful of different types and this is just a small amount of the types of receivers that that are out there it seems like every company nowadays or making them and you know a new company pops up every week that is making low receivers people can make these out of the garage all they have to do is get enough FL with the ATF get a type seven manufacturers license and you can start making low receiver so one thing about the low receivers that you do want to be aware of is like I said a lot of people can make them so what are the differences what do you want to look for in assuring that you're going to get a good lower receiver and you're not just buying some you know thing that was kind of scrapped together and you know might cause you trouble down the road when you buy it so one of the biggest things is obviously the bigger manufacturers you got the cold to Remington's the Smith & Wesson's and companies like that have been making them for a long time and one thing that the lower receivers have to have if you're manufacturing is you have to have a serial number on them and you have to have the company name and the city it was built in so every every manufacturer who's building a little receiver those are the three required items that they have to have on here to legally produce and manufacture a low receiver these are all obviously have to go through the ATF and through a licensed dealer when when purchasing these you got to fill out the form 4473 and then it gets a you know issued out to you so you can see here this is a spikes tactical that these guys become super popular they have low receivers for a great price and make a good product they have a bunch of different markings so after they meet the requirement of the city the serial number and the manufacturer name you can put whatever kind of stamps you want in here so this one you know we have the Jolly Roger they have a Punisher that have a spider then they have like a zombie one which has been pretty popular nowadays but you can you can pretty much stamp anything on here there's companies that'll you know produce these and then little stamp you know a company stamp on there so if you have a company stamp on here necessarily that company's not making it but they might just get be getting it outsourced to them they just put the company stamp and then they sell it so a lot of these might be might be getting made in the same place but they just have the stamp of the people who are selling it so you know what's the type of aluminum and how our lower receivers made so there's two types of aluminum that are most commonly used you got your 7075 in the your 60 61 type aluminum so your 7075 is going to be about twice the tensile strength as a 6061 and that's kind of what most little receivers are made out of one thing is the 6061 you're thinking well if it's you know twice as weak as a 7075 aluminum why would somebody buy that well that's all price point obviously if you're getting a product that's not as strong as another one it's probably gonna cost you a lot less than the 7075 aluminum the material is less expensive and and so forth now the next thing is how is it produced you know how are these how would these turn from a block of aluminum into what you see here right now so there's the again the two most common types you have your your billet and then you have your forged and you know we could spend three hours just talking on this subject itself and yeah I'm not a machinist and I'm not an expert so I'm not going to go into super detail but from what I understand you know people are looking well what's a strength difference between a force and a bullet what's the price difference how is it made so basically the the real down-and-dirty and the dummy version of it is you know you have your forge receivers which are basically just stamped out of a block and that's more commonly going to be a lot stronger material than your billet your billet is going to be something that's carved out of a block of aluminum it's a lot more extensive you know sitting in the CNC machine it's going to take a little longer which in return translate to a higher price points so you're forged they're going to be a little bit stronger most likely and they're going to be a little bit less expensive now the one thing about the billet because now you're thinking well why would we why would anybody anybody buy a billet low receiver if you're getting a little more strength out of the forged and you know maybe not as much of a price point is you have a little more detail they're better looking so you know you have kind of all these different little lines and you know they're just carved out a little bit better that a little bit cleaner looking the lines are better where the forge you're kind of you know more of just like a basic look and there's a lower receiver so this one here from Seminole firearms out of Vegas you know you can kind of see all these little grooves and kind of more like a 3d type little receiver and it's just kind of a little cleaner kind of letter a little bit cool-looking guys you're willing to pay a little more money just for that better look because obviously you don't want to buy an air 15 and not have it be good-looking otherwise why would you buy it so you can see this one this is the spikes tactical hell breaker you can kind of see the you know it's kind of like the a-10 warthog look here on the low receivers kind of cool-looking so that those are just two different types now I own both the billet and I owned a forged I've shot them both you know thousands and thousands of rounds through history but might never had an issue with either one of them as far as performance wise I can't tell the difference you know when I'm shooting my ar-15 it's it's the same but I guess if you're throwing it out of trucks you're you know being a little rough on it maybe a Ford's might be a little bit better but you know for me I've been using both for years and I can't as far as quality they're both the both top top-notch so another thing about the low receivers is you know the magazine well is it tapered you know is it going to facilitate me do in-text we reload a lot of these you can find that where they have kind of like a mouth it's got you know this kind of look to it so when you're doing tactical reloads it's easier to get it in there as opposed to some of these are just more basic and it's just kind of a straight shot in and you got a you got to hit that thing right on so again and what your use depending what you can use it on its going to dictate what features what lower what kind you know what kind of aluminum now another thing we want to look at here is when picking out a low receiver is what am I going to need a my ar-15 what are the accessories how am I going to pimp this thing out what am I going to put on it do I want to have a dexterous features or not want em add extra features so obviously when you're buying that you can see some of these come with like a built-in trigger guard like the help breaker here and then some of them you know you got to buy the trigger guard so obviously if you want to have the ability to interchange these there's a bunch of companies like Mac Bowl that make these trigger guards you can get them with kind of like that v-shape gives you a little bit more room in there to put you know if you're wearing big gloves or fingers on them in the wintertime you can fit those in there where if you buy one with this I mean you you got what you got you can't change that out so that's one thing you want to be cognizant and aware of and you know take into consideration if you want to be able to interchange that part another part like LWR LWRC you can see they make these and they have pretty much everything ambidextrous now the the selector switcher on this is ambidextrous as you can see but any low receiver for the most part you can get a mad extra slow receivers you can order those aftermarket and put those on the ar-15 that's pretty common on let you know across the line but when you're looking at some of these other features like the bolt release this one's got the bolt release on both sides ambidextrous air that's something that would have to be built in to the lower receiver to be able to fit that now there's aftermarket products you can get like the Mac battle ever like you see here on the mark 18 that you can throw on there to give you that same function but it's not going to be a built into the gun it's just something that you know kind of screws on to the existing bolt release and it just it just works the you know the same way it's just not incorporated into the gun then you have your magazine release which again have addictions on this one so I mean it's something that's just convenient thing if you're you know right-handed I use the bat on mine a lot of it because the one thing you want to have em it does if anything I'm in my opinion is the ball release you know when I'm shooting and I'm doing a tactical reload I don't want to have to reach my hand over or take my hand off the front you know I can just hit it with my my trigger finger here and then just be you know right back in the in the well there and you know putting rounds downrange so that's something you want to be aware of the other thing you want to be aware of is can you put it together obviously you got to assemble these things as you can see these are all stripped low receivers so when you buy like this you got to build it okay now there's a bunch of different parts kits you can get and the parts kits are just as numerous as the lower receivers themselves you can buy these a bunch of different ways that price points are kind of all over the place you know 300 250 bucks depending what you get your basic little receivers or your parts kit just comes with all the little pins and springs you need to put it together so this is a CMM g parts kit you can see it doesn't come with a pistol grip or anything like that basically it just has the very basic parts to put this thing together now this one here the DPMS you can see it's got the the pistol grip it's got the trigger everything else and same with the spikes tactical and again there's a hundred different companies that make these Daniel defense you know Cole Smith and Wesson you know DPMS bikes calculus EMG and just kind of pin you on again what you're looking for is what you're going to pick so now one thing I forgot to mention here is we have kind of like the Glock seamount with the polymer polymer low receivers we have new companies coming like Tigger Arms based out of here in Utah you have your CMM G's this is a carbon fiber lower now this thing basically weight weighs nothing I mean it's superlight it's even louder than the aluminum ones by probably you know twice the twice the weight on the of the aluminum than the carbon fiber but as far as you know strength I really couldn't tell you wasn't going to be stronger I'm going to guess the aluminum you know we had these guys come to our office here and kind of talk to us about it they put this thing under a car backed it over didn't do anything to it they're pretty strong they're pretty light not a bad way to go obviously the price points on these are going to be a little bit less - you're flicking at 75 bucks for something like this as opposed to a spike set which is a hundred bucks and then you got your billet stuff which you get up in the 250 dollar price range Elmo so CMM g has polymer lowers so that's becoming a little more popular nowadays with you know you're kind of starting to see where aluminum used to be the most popular type of little receivers now we have polymers carbon fibers and a bunch of other different types of materials that are coming out so these are the best thing about these is obviously the weight if you're looking for something you're going to be howling up in the hills you're going to be carrying on your bag or something it's not a bad way to go it's pretty light ooh still pretty tough and you know inexpensive nothing fancy pretty basic you know this one's got the straight trigger guard here which you know some of you might not like it doesn't give you as much if you've got some you know sausage fingers and my man I hit the white the way to go for you now if you're thinking well I'd rather just skip that whole part and just buy will receiver that's already built they come like that too so I mean this one's got you know a nice stock on it this is an LM t Lewis machine and tool built up built out lower this thing is ready to go it's got the pistol grip it's got the buffer tube your stock you know your trigger fire selector switch you got to put an upper on it and it's set you're good to go so this thing is already built out you can see the pins here pop these puppies out throw on your upper receiver as long as the upper receivers all built out it's good to go nothing you need to do on this one so obviously you do that you're gonna pay a little more money I mean these things about 600 bucks as you see it right here okay if you build it out depending how you do it it might save you a little bit of money so if you feel like your time is worth more than the money and you just got the money and pay for it then you can just go with the pre-built low receiver as you saw there everybody who makes a little receiver well not everybody but a lot of people who make well receivers will also make the upper receivers for so typically if you buy like here you see a mega arms low receiver okay these guys make some pretty bad products they're based out of Washington State their stuffs good luck and it works good and it's not a bad way to go but if you buy a mega arms little receiver you're probably going to want to buy a mega arms upper typically the fit is going to be a little bit better if you're using the same you know the same company for both you can see here the tolerances on these are pretty tight you can see the gap there between the upper and the lower is is you know almost non-existent now if you take a makeup lower or this one here for example we're running a Rock River lower on this thing with a LMT upper so they're going to work it's not you know not to say you can't mix and match components but typically you're going to get it a little bit Tyler tolerances if you're running the same company but this one I've been shooting this one for 10 years I have never had any issues with it there's a little wiggle as you can see there between the upper and lower you know is that going to translate to you know maybe not as tight of a shot group downrange and might a little bit but again you know you're not engaging this isn't a snapper rifle we're not shooting six hundred yards with it we're shooting you know 300 closer typically you know as I showed you on the mega arms that's a tight fit right there another thing too is once you start putting the pins and things in this it might change that a little bit your gap might change if you throw you know your your pin in here you might might make a lot tighter it might make a little more of a gap it just kind of depends so obviously this is a good fit because it's to make it lower and make upper now if we try to throw this let's see on the spikes tactical hell breaker here you know you can see a little more a little more looser does that mean your guns not going to work no this means you know if you got OCD and I kind of stuff bugs yeah you might want to go with Omega make it lower but so bad that's that's about the tolerance that I have on this Marc 18 and that thing shoots just fine do you have like a gap or something like that and you do have OCD in the kind of bugs you you know there's aftermarket products you can get to ten those things up you got little shims with like a company makes an AK you where you can put in there kind of tighten that up makes it a little bit tighter for you so again with ar-15s there's basically you can get anything that kind of facilitate whatever it is you're looking for there's aftermarket products for everything different triggers different pin springs to kind of change it and make the air 15 how you want alright guys so obviously there's a bunch of different ways you can go when you're building your air 15 building air 15 is really popular nowadays a lot of guys do it just get it gives you the ability to build the gun the way you want it so when you buy a gun you know if you can't find what you're looking for you can just build it yourself if you guys have questions or you know have need more information on kind of what we talked about today give us a call the shop you know our numbers on our website ready to gunner calm and you can also find all this stuff on the website as well so hopefully we helped you out and answered your questions if not you know leave a comment on the on the youtube channel or just give us call the shop and you know we'll hook you up thanks for watching cool guns and things like that wait everything comes into play when you're buying a handgun so to figure out which one is the best for you come into the store we can help you out you can check them out online give us a call and we can kind of help you but again before you buy a gun you want to get your hands on and see how it fits

Channel: READYGUNNER

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Id: AuUfZB_1n_I

Length: 16min 41sec (1001 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 02 2014