I just completed an AR build using Aero Precision stripped lower and a Aero Precision completed upper. Everything went together smoothly and seem to fit perfectly when joined. I wanted to check the operation of the rifle stripping the live ammo from the magazine.  When the bolt catch is released, it cleanly strips the cartrage from the magazine and chambers the load. However it is nearly impossible to manually cycle to round by pulling back the charging handle. Each time it requires me to remove the lower from the upper and tap the bolt back with a plastic pin and soft mallet to remove the cartridge. I have not fired the rifle yet. Is the the bolt and chamber just tight from being new? Will it loosen up after being fired or is this something I should resolve before taking it to the range?
This is my first AR and some experienced assistance would be greatly appreciated
Thanks

Remove the upper and bcg.

The best final chamber gauge is the barrel. Drop in cartridge, or case, to hear the nice light solid kerplunk sound. tip it over and it should fall out easily.

what ammo?

Take the kid gloves off and give it a yank. You're not going to break it. It's a military style weapon.
Take it to the range, lube it up, and let the rounds fly.

I say this with love - hand your boyfriend or husband your purse and just yank the charging handle.

It's a weapon of war. Treating it gently or worrying about hurting its feelings is misplaced.

The time to worry about cycling and ejection is if it fails to eject or fails to cycle under actual firing conditions - not under hand-cycling conditions.

Does the charging handle easily pull the bolt back with no round in the chamber?

It shouldn't hang up on a chambered round.  If it does something's not right about the chamber or bolt (headspace issue).

As suggested earlier.  Drop a round in, tilt the muzzle up and see if the round falls out from effects of gravity.  

The rounds that you remove by the way you described - to the bullets have either:

a. smudge/scraped looking marks spaced regularly around the bullet a short distance up from the case mouth (bullet contacting the lands in the barrel)
b. a small ring/scratch looking mark around the bullet just above the case mouth (bullet hitting barrel where the diameter is smaller than the case mouth area of the chamber but the lands haven't started yet.)

Are you trying to chamber 55 grain ammo?  I missed what bullet weight you were using.

Is your barrel chambered for .223, .223 Wylde or .556X45?  Sometimes, it makes a difference.  The heavier bullets (are longer than the lighter bullets) and if used in a .223 barrel they may be son long that they contact part of the barrel when the cartridge is chambered.

By longer, I mean the diameter of the bullet is larger farther out in front of the case mouth than would be with lighter bullets - yes, the overall length is longer, too, but only so much of the bullet can stick out of the case mouth and the cartridge still fit in and feed out of a magazine.

I had this happen to one of my builds. I thought the upper was out of spec. It took a ton of effort to pull the charging handle back. Turns out, the FCG was out of spec, and the carrier was hanging up on the topside of the trigger. Replaced the FCG, and it was fine. Pull out your trigger, and see if the problem still exists.

Heh, in all fairness, if a factory round is stucking in the chamber, that's an indicator that something is amiss.  If it's reloads (hence I'm asking what ammo), it could just be a poorly sized casing.  But if it's factory ammo, this could indicate a headspace problem (too tight), and imply reliability problems (bolt not fully closing all the time), in his future.

I have two builds like this.  One is an 18" Lothar Walther barrel with a Wylde and the other is a PSA CHF midlength 16" barrel chambered in 5.56mm.  I agree with most of these guys, just take it to the range and pop off a few rounds.  If it feeds and extracts correctly and there are no signs of overpressure then personally I wouldn't worry about it.  You probably just have a really tight chamber.  I will bet you will be pleased with the accuracy of this rifle though, as both of mine are near 1/2MOA.

Thank. I will to that tomorrow morning and see what happens

I tried manually cycling with reloaded ammo. I'll give it a try with some factory reloads.

I'll have you know I don't carry a purse-it called a Man Bag. I'm just being careful as  don't want to get gun grease on my pink dress. Actually I don't have the strength to overcome the "jammed" bolt and I don't want to start banging on the charging handle. Maybe a factory round would allow the bolt to retract.

My barrel is a 223 Wilde and the reloaded ammo I tried cycling is 55 grain.  The charging handle retracts the bolt fairly easily with out round stuck in the chamber. I'm now thinking it's to reloaded ammo that is causing the round to bind.

Does it cycle without a cartridge in the chamber?

An oversize firing pin tip or underside firing pin hole will lock up an action.  For the same reasons an ar won't fire out of battery, because the firing pin is too short to strike the primer if the bolt isn't fully in battery, if the firing pin sticks when it's fully in battery, it won't allow the bolt to unlock and be pulled rearward.  I struggle to explain the concept, but I know from experience that if the firing pin taper locks in the bolt near the end, it's amazing how stuck  the action will be.

Also if you're going to beat on a known problematic rifle, get some snap caps.  Patching walls or floors is aggravating. 

I want to thank all those who responded to my problem of manually cycle my new AR.  Not only am I new the to AR platform but I'm new to the AR forum. Once it was pointed out the issue could be in my 223 reloads and not in my AR I was up early this morning ready to check out the ammo. First I loaded a magazine with factory loads and was easily able to manually cycle the rounds. Then I checked the cartrage overall length of the factory loads against my reloaded cartrages and found my reloads slightly longer. Obviously the longer reloaded bullet was binding in the chamber.. After re-seating the reloads to the same COL as the factory ammo the reloads cycled like butter.
I like to think I would have eventually come up with the fix to my problem on my own but having the combined expert input of knowledge certainly made the task easy. Thank you!

Enjoy your first AR. You will now acquire black rifle disease and soon you'll need a bigger safe.

Shoot it and see how it goes. I bet it'll work fine. Probably just needs some breaking in.

Last night I  ordered another stripped lower and parts kit for a 308 build. I'm a out of room in my safe and completely out of control! Is there an AR equivalent to Alcohol Anonymous? Wait a minute. I think I'm asking the wrong group of guys.

This is quite common.  Most AR sizing dies require you to essentially bottom out the die while under load, to get a correct resize.  Glad you got it fixed.