Armalite – Page 11

November 1, 2017

AR-18 Upper For Sale

Well there was what was described as an AR-18 parts kit for sale on gunbroker. When I first saw it the seller had an F rating. The description also mentioned that the parts were in Europe.

I still am confused about what part of the AR-18 actually is the “Machine Gun”. The parts kits that Numrich sold some years back were first sold with the uppers cut and the lowers intact, not unlike the current SAR-80 kits. The ATF changed their minds and had Numrich recall them to cut the lowers up.

I invite your comments and speculation about whether an AR-18 upper is legal to own or if it could be imported into the country?

I saved the sole picture from the auction so after it goes away this post will still have some value.

Buy it now price was $995 and the auction was ended early. Who knows what happened behind the scenes?

July 24, 2017

SAR-80 Kit Build – Receiver

My first foray into building my SAR-80 receiver was to reweld the upper back together. Using a gas torch and being completely out of practice led to less than stellar results.

I know it’s possible as Henderson Defense built one as a post sample and got it running well. Although they mentioned having to take the BFH to it to straighten out the warping.

I decided to start from sratch and ordered some 18ga 1008 sheet steel off of Amazon.

I tried to bend it in a cheap harbor freight brake and it flexed too much. I resorted to milling a piece of 6061 aluminum to fit inside then beat the corners into a more square-ish shape. Felt like Boris building an AK from a Shovel.

I cut up some pieces to weld inside to guide the cam pin and to retain the charging handle. The combination of my crappy AC flux core welder and the this sheet steel led to me needing to reweld these multiple times. I now call this one my “Ugly Build”.

At this point it still needs the rear sight welded on and the charging handle spacer piece rewelded.

New Record Auction for an AR-180?

Possibly. It’s the highest I’ve seen and I follow them pretty closely. $4026.01 Wow!

See It For Yourself

It is about as close to new as you are likely to see. A true safe queen. Early gun, Three digit serial number. Obviously highly desirable, especially by the two that went at it at the end. What a fight.

Imagine what it would have brought if it had the original box!

I hope one of my readers got it.

April 30, 2017

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.

February 7, 2017

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.