SmallCaliberCentral

In the process of building a couple of ARs and was looking for some advice from the varminting crowd on what they have done for their AR builds. I've been told PSA makes a great LPK for the money and that Geissele triggers are the cat's meow. Do you recommend building an upper or buying a complete upper for a first time builder? I've seen some work from WOA and BC USA and they look really nice. I haven't decided if I want to go with a .223 or .204 Ruger / .20 Prac/Tact platform yet. I do love the 20s so I'm open to suggestions. Thank you for any information you can share as I like to be well informed when making my purchases.

WOW!!! What a loaded question. Let me start by saying, I have six AR target/varmint rifles and all of them have the Geissele SSA-E trigger. I've used Black Rain, CMC, Timmney, etc. and nothing comes close to the Geissele. If you decide to build a .223 & you like the looks, you'd be hard pressed to beat the performance of an out of the box Rock River varmint or predator upper. I have a 24" RRA 1-12 varmint upper in .223 that with factory Federal 55 grain BT's will shoot 1.75 moa at 400 yards. Their guarantee is 3/4 inch @ 100 yards. If you're building a .204 ruger you don't have as many choices. If I were going to buy a 204 upper it would be a White Oak (WOA) or a Precision Firearms which has a Lilja barrel & a 1/2" moa guarantee. You can't build a high quality 204 upper for the cost of these. That being said, except for the RRA, I've built all of my varmint/target ar's using WOA barrels, fluted or not, with Seekins IRMT-3 V3 upper receiver & Seekins SP3R V3 hand guard. I like the triangular shape of the rails & the fit to this receiver is idiot proof. All's needed for the barrel is a 1 1/8 wrench. No having to align gas tube holes. I use a crows foot on a torque wrench & torque to 60 foot pounds. One thing about lowers, I like to use a billet upper to a billet lower and forged to forged. I'm not particular about LPK cause I'm not going to use the trigger anyway. Same goes for BCG as long as it's of good quality & you head space the bolt. Primary Arms has very good things on sale regularly. I bought a couple WMD nib-x bcg's for 99.00 each for them a couple weeks ago. As for stocks, whatever feels good to you. I know this wasn't part of the question but I ran a post about Sightron SIII LRMOA-H scopes & had a lot of views but no replies. My buddy's and I have sold our Leupold's & replaced them with these in either 6x24x50 0r 8x32x56. The clarity is awesome and the LRMOA-H reticle blows the Leupold VHR away for variable long range work. If you go to the Sightron website and go to this scope under SIII, click on technical to view this reticle. I've got a place that will have Sightron ship them directly to you for 749.00 or 799.00 respectively. Sorry for being so long winded but I hope you can find some use out of this.
Jim D

Thank you for all the information and feedback. Again, entirely new to this process. I have 3 Spikes receivers and I'm just trying to figure out what I want to do with them. My buddy has 2 RRAs and I have shot them both. Excellent firearms! I wanted to go through the experience of building one though. All the trials and tribulations so to speak. Thanks for the tip on Precision Firearms, never heard of them before. I had heard of Seekins but it is so hard to tell what is good and what isn't from the bazillion different parts manufacturers out there. Building one somewhat unique to varminting I have found takes a little more coin to ensure you get the accuracy you need to shoot the little suckers way out there.

Would you suggest a first time build an upper or buy a complete? And thanks for the heads up on the Sightron. I have looked through a few and have found them to be very, very good scopes.

Another cocked, locked, & loaded question. In my case I wanted a good looking good shooter that I could say " I BUILT THIS MYSELF FROM SCRATCH". I have ALS and needed a hobby so for a couple months I studied the internet through you tubes, articles, forums, etc.& taught myself about building AR's. I have sent a lot of my parts to X-werks in Arizona & had cerakoted before install. I don't pretend to know everything about AR's but when I get in trouble with something it's to the internet I go. As to your question, I have some beautiful varmint/target AR's that shoot probably better than a RRA or other brand but at about or close to double the price of a RRA. But I have all the bells & whistles I could buy, fluted match barrel, cerakote, nib-x bcg, stocks, etc., even a far as the buffer spring. They are heavy though, about 12# with scope & mount. One thing I want to give my opinion on is the stock. There is several fixed stocks that I like but if I were going to use a collapsible stock there would only be one choice, Magpul UBR. No shake rattle & roll, just rock solid. Downside is it's a little heavy. Just my old 2 pennies worth. So, that is totally up to you & how much you want to dish out to build your wife a beautiful rifle. HA! Jim D

I purchased a 204 upper from the folks at Model 1 which uses E.R Shaw heavy bbl. SunDevil lower w Timney 3lb trigger , mil spec carrier.spring, Spikes T-2 buffer and a Vortex crossfire scope.

.3MOA accuracy at 100 yards was my best group w hornady 32gr factory loads. Had fun exploding ground squirrels over 300yds last spring.