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FL450 wrote:Thanks for the info, I am going to try to keep the build under 800 for my first. I can get to know the weapon and my preferances. Later I can modify or sell for money towards my next build.

I find that parts build up rather than get sold, and it has worked out well for me doing that. My personal carbine has a 1:9 16" HBAR on it. I like it a lot, but it is a little bit heavy. It used to have 1:9 M4 barrel from ER Shaw on it, and when I swapped the barrels out, I just put the M4 barrel on the shelf and let it rest a little bit. Then when I got to building my wife's carbine, I saved some money on it because I already had a perfectly good barrel for it. With hers, I went all lightweight (barrel excepted), and used all MOE furniture, the standard A2 front sight, and an A.R.M.S. #40-LP rear sight, and it is sporting my old EOTech for a primary optic. But even that EOTech is a little heavy, so at some point I'll swap it out for an Aimpoint Micro H1. I made it as light as possible (without buying the pencil barrel) because I figured my wife would enjoy it that way more. That 16" bull barrel I said we had laying around belongs to my son. I asked him once why he doesn't just sell it. He said he thought he might use it some day. Actually, it is a complete barreled upper. He's not using it, but he won't let go of it either.

Regarding the pencil barrel and accuracy, its not that they can't shoot accurately.....it's that as the barrel heats up, the group sizes open up, and as the temperature cycles, the group size does too. If the barrel stays hot, then you can count on its consistency, even if the group size is a bit big. But it is hard to be consistent if the heat cycle fluctuations happen quickly, and consistency is what gives confidence in a rifle's accuracy. The M4 or HBAR barrels can get just as hot, but because the heating/cooling takes place over a longer period of time, the group sizes are more consistent..........at least in theory. But unless you're at the range burning through 200 rounds in a couple of hours, it probably is a moot point. Also, the skinnier the barrel relative to its length, the greater the amplitude of its harmonics—which can also mean larger groups.

But when cyphur said "minute of man," that is actually speaks to the "practical accuracy" I was talking about before. If you're hunting white tails with your AR, you don't really need to be able to print 1/4" groups at 100 yards. But you do need to be able to put a couple of rounds into the boiler room, and that area is only several inches across.....say 6" to 8". That's pretty hard to do with a 2 MOA gun at 400 yards, and that much more difficult at 600 yards.

Hence my statement about a 400 yard effective range. The military says it is 600 yards........but they aren't hunting, and they would just as soon wound an enemy as kill him (which really is the whole rational for a low to medium powered cartridge in an assault type of weapon in the first place). The max effective range for the M249 SAW, firing the same cartridge, is considered to be 1,000 meters. But that is for suppressive fire, and nobody is going to be sniping an individual at 1,000 meters with an M249. I mean, you could try, but it would be mostly a waste of ammo. For my money, the AR15 is a general purpose rifle. Sure, you can hit and wound a deer at 600 yards with one.....but is that what you want to be doing when Jesus comes back? I have more powerful, more accurate rifles for shooting at longer ranges if I needed to. Also, if you're shooting a 2 MOA gun, that's a 12" circle at 600 yards, and it is irresponsible to shoot a white tail at that distance if 12" groups is the best you can do......not even counting wind-bucking into the equation. Yes I can shoot at a man 600 yards out with mine—and probably hit him, since my AR536 scope's reticle is graduated to 600 meters for an AR with a 16" barrel, and a 12" circle is a small enough area to shoot into to wound and maybe kill a man. But how often are you going to be shooting at people 600 yards away..........short of being in an all out war? Realistically, most people are going to be using an AR15 for the shooting range, plinking, and hunting/varmint control. It's nice to know that you have a militia capable rifle, and I certainly own my ARs (and AR10) exactly for that purpose, but unless the balloon goes up, they'll never see anything except primarily recreational use; followed possibly by home defensive use. All of that is likely to happen inside of 400 yards, and particularly for hunting hog/deer sized game, inside of 200 yards.

That was my rationale for specifying a 400 yard limit. To each his own, and there's nothing morally wrong with shooting game animals at a greater distance.....so long as you can be certain of a 1 shot kill. Most of us just aren't going to shoot game at that distance, and if we did, we'd want a magnum caliber bigger than .223. I'm just not that confident in the limit of the 5.56/.223 cartridge to be effective for hunting hog/deer sized game beyond 200 yards, and smaller game to 400 yards, and that colors how I am willing to use it for hunting.

That said, I love all of my rifles. I'm more of a rifle guy than a pistol guy. As much as I love them, if I had to limit myself to one long gun, it would be my AR15—because other than perhaps my Gunsite Scout, my AR15 is the best all around multi-use rifle I have. They are perfect for that reason. But all of that said, each one of us has to figure out what we think we're going to be using it for, and build it toward that use.

Just to put those distances in perspective...... the first picture below was taken from the window of a deer blind I spent a day in west of Jacksboro a few years ago. The red circle has a huge dead tree trunk, located at the top of a ridge. I lasered that distance at 229 yards that morning, using a Leica CRF 1200 laser range finder. The blue circle has a tripod feeder, which I lasered out at 139 yards out. The dispenser underneath the barrel was about head hight to me, and I am 5'10" tall. There is a fence around it which is about belly button high to me. The tree growth is mature scrub oak and some mesquite, and that big white tree trunk is of a species unknown to me, but you can see that it is quite a bit taller than the scrub oak around it. The second picture is a detailed closeup of the circled items, cropped out of the original picture, so you can see the proportions for yourself. In the first picture, there is a small white disc almost directly below the feeder, about halfway between the blind and the feeder. That disc was a white metal marker disc on a pole, marking an underground gas line or something, and it was about 8" or 10" across. The lasered distance to that disc was 63 yards.

Anyway, the first picture ought to give you a realistic appraisal of whether or not you think you should be—responsibly—hunting anything non-human beyond 200 yards, let alone 400 yards, with an AR15.

Unless you plan to build a varmint specific rifle, a 16" barrel is plenty sufficient. I'm not sure what almostfree means by a lightweight barrel, but the 16" barrels are generally available in 5 profiles, from slimmest to heaviest: Pencil barrel, M4 profile, HBAR (heavy barrel), and Bull barrel.

Generally speaking, the fatter the barrel, the more accurate the rifle will be if you're looking for "match accuracy;" but most AR15s are not capable of match accuracy without putting a lot of extra money into them. My son has a varminter with a 24" air gauged Wilson stainless steel barrel, and it will shoot 4 rounds into .25" at 100 yards.........but it also weighs 17 lb and it is not a practical rifle to use anywhere except from a bench. We have an extra 16" bull barrel laying around here somewhere, and even at only 16" long it weighs a ton. It's a 1:9 DPMS barrel, and it is capable of astonishing accuracy, but it was too heavy to carry around and made the rifle really front end heavy. What you really want is good practical accuracy, which means "can you shoot into less that 2" at 100 yards?" That translates to less than 8" at 400 yards, and that is at the outer practical ballistic limits of the cartridge.......inside of 300 yards being far more realistic for very small game, and for deer and hogs, inside of 200 being more responsible. The bullet depends on velocity for upset to occur, and the velocity bleeds off relatively quickly. Someone shooting in my direction from 400 yards out with an AR15 would certainly make me keep my head down, but from 400 yards out, an AR10 in .308 would be absolutely terrifying. So at the shorter distances that the 5.56 cartridge is best at, a shorter barrel like a 16" will develop plenty enough velocity and energy to be effective, while keeping the weight of the rifle from getting ridiculous.

Most 16" M4 or HBAR profile barreled ARs with either a 1:9, 1:8, or 1:7 twist will shoot into 1.5" or less (from a rest) with match ammo, and between 1.5" to 2" with either M193 or M855 ball. When I say "Most," I'm including all the homebuilts like the two AR15s I have now, as well as factory Colts and other high end factory built guns, which will possibly be more accurate than a home built gun using lesser quality components. Unless ultra light weight is your primary driver, I would stay away from a pencil barrel. They heat up quickly, and the groups will open up quickly as they heat up. But as with everything, the shooter plays a part, and a great shooter with an average rifle may likely outshoot an average shooter with a great rifle.

If I were you, and I were doing my first AR build, I would go with either the M4 or HBAR profiles in a 16" length, and of the two, I'd probably opt for the M4. Either of the 1:9, 1:8, or 1:7 twist rates will serve you fine. Both my and my wife's carbines have 1:9 twists, and both of my son's have a 1:7 twist, and they all shoot M855 ball about the same. I had a long conversation once with a CS guy at Brownells about twist rates in 16" barrels. He was an older guy and a long time Brownells employee, but before doing that he worked at Lake City arsenal, and all he did all day long was wring out different AR15/M4/M16s with different loads, as part of the arsenal's testing and QC program. He claimed that he easily fired as much as 1,000 rounds a day. His personal AR had a 1:8 twist in a M4 profile. Anyway, he gave me an interesting tidbit about the 1:7 standard in the American military. It was not standardized on that twist to handle match ammo better....although it does.....because most of our military does not shoot match ammo.......but rather it was because individual American infantry soldiers shoot a lot more tracer ammo compared to the militaries of other nations using the same platform, and tracer requires a tighter twist to stabilize better. The armies of our NATO allies who use M16/M4 rifles mostly have 1:9 twists because that twist will handle both the 55 and 62 grain ball just fine and they don't really use much tracer in their individual infantry weapons....using it primarily in SAWs and the like. There's no reason NOT to have a 1:7 twist, but neither is it absolutely necessary unless you're going to shoot a lot of the 77 grain and heavier match bullets. But a 1:9 twist will handle 68 and 69 grain SMKs all day long, if you really MUST shoot match ammo. Point is, you have lots of choices, and almost all of them are good. But I really would avoid the pencil barrel unless you are really trying to build the absolute lightest rifle you can.