Tag: AR-18

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Backing Out of the Upcoming AR-18S Auction

RIA Auction

Just wanted to thank all those that contacted me with well wishes and to buy a few things but I am announcing that I no longer plan to go after this gun. I have learned a lot about this gun including the fact that it is somewhat famous and several people with deep pockets will be pursuing it.

I want to let my readers know first so that they may put their hat in the ring if they so wish.

Here is what I know about the gun in question.

It was sold from Armalite in 1985 as an “S” model and was either a mule or part of the companies collection.

It was became somewhat famous when it appeared in the Small Arms Review article “The Lost Armalites”

The black and white photos make it hard to tell if the upper on the gun is the same as when it was sold in 1998 but I think it is. Is the upper the same as when it was sold in 1985 is the real question. One can never be sure.

While this gun surely belongs in my reference collection I can not justify the expense at this time and I intend to pursue a “Normal” AR-18 as my first machine gun.

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Making a run at an AR-18S at Auction

I have decided to make a run at this AR-18S that will be in the up coming Rock Island Auction.

Click Here

In order to finance that I am having a massive sell off of my collection. I have AR-180 parts, guns, scopes, retro and preban AR’s. Too much to list but I am in the mood to let go of some stuff. That doesn’t happen often so get them while you can.

Email me for details and your wish list.

Wish me luck and I hope I won’t have to compete against any of you for this cool gun.

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SAR-80 Kit Build – Barrel

The SAR-80 kits are at their new homes (except for Chuck’s, I am holding it hostage so he will have to come visit Tucson) and I can’t believe how similar they are to AR-180’s.

Most of the discussion about the builds is happening over at the new builders forum, Armorer’s Alliance. There are two threads going right now here and here.

Mine will be documented here as well.

First we start with the barrel. Since barrels can no longer be imported these barrels were cut into pieces with a chop saw. Did I mention that these were brand new guns before they were demilled for importation. What a shame. The old barrel pieces need to be removed so that new barrel dimensions can be put together and a new barrel made. The barrel stub can be removed in a number of ways and since I have the tooling I chose to hold the stub in vice blocks and use a reaction wrench to separate the trunion from the barrel.

Once I got the trunion off I discovered that it is different from the 180.

Next to get an idea of the dimensions of the original barrel I set it up next to an original 180 barrel. The similarities were striking. I guess I should not have been surprised since this gun was originally designed by Sterling and was known as the Sterling Automatic Rifle. The chamber end matches exactly and the dimension to the front sight base boss looks very close as well.

Lets see if the 180 barrel fits in the trunion. Yep it sure does.

Lets see if the length to the front sight base looks close. Yep that works too. If fact everything lines up with this original 180 barrel. Know we can put together a set of prints using some of the measurements from the 180 barrel and the remaining SAR-80 barrel pieces.

       

I have ordered a barrel from numrich for the 180B and plan to modify that to fit this gun rather than use this original 180 barrel.

Next up, what the heck are we going to do with the upper? Weld? New from scratch? Join the discussion at the Armorer’s Alliance and lets work it out together.