In this last installment, Army Reserve Team Armorer Master Sgt. Joe Carlos (ret.) reviews AR-15 build experiences at Camp Perry.

by Joe Carlos

When I became Armorer for the Army Reserve Service Rifle Team I inherited 85 National Match uppers built for the Reserves by a competing military team. The Reserves were too broke to have their own armorer they paid another team to build uppers for them! I wonder if you could find any race car driver who would allow another race team to tune his engine?

One of the first things I did was machine rest the whole lot for accuracy and found most to shoot in excess of one MOA, which is too fat in group size to be competitive. I started tearing the whole lot of them down and rebuilding them from the bottom up. Since the Team had no parts I simply recycled what I had inherited and put the rifles back together right. Eventually, I was able to cut group sizes in half from what I had inherited and spent very little money in doing so.

I had noticed when I had the guns on the machine rest during initial evaluations that function was often sluggish but bolt ring and other quick tests revealed no obvious reasons. Obviously, I took the front sight housings off during the rebuilds and noticed something odd with the gas ports that were now visible.

Read more in our February 2014 issue. Back issues are available.

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