I've been working on this rifle for a little while and it's finally finished.

A few months ago a good friend of mine wanted a lower which had never been barreled so he could build a pistol.  I told him I wanted the receivers off his S&W M&P Sport because I liked the integral trigger guard and upper which had no forward assist.

I thought they looked cleaner.

Once the trade was done I went to work by lapping the upper receiver with my brownells tool and some 180gt lapping compound.

The barrel I chose was an 18" rifle length gas port 7 twist SS by White Oak Armament.  It is the 5SPRR model here.  I also chose to use the BCM KMR13" rail system to familiarize myself with it's installation methods.  WOA's barrels are also dimpled at the gas port position to ease installation of a low profile gas block.

The VLTOR A5 recoil system was also picked because I like adjustable stocks and wanted to see how much improvement in recoil reduction it provided.  Only one of my ARs use an A2 tube, so gaining a 2nd rifle buffer spring as a backup to either gun isn't a bad idea.

The trigger assembly is a CMC 3.5 drop in unit with a very nice pull weight.

I finally finished off the top side with a Vortex Viper PST 1-4 MRAD in a PEPR mount.

When I was finally ready with all the parts to get the gun built, I took the barrel to Christian and George of Snipe Custom Arms.
Christian had previously done some barrel work for me when he cut my 16" Noveske 300BLK down to 7.7 for my 9/11 Noveske Build

I can assure everyone that reads this, there are very few people I'd give a 2012 production Noveske barrel to be cut and threaded by.  He followed my layout perfectly to get it where the Yankee Hill silencer mount tucks under the NSR 7 when the can is installed, providing a nearly seamless look.

Christian knew I wanted to clean up the front of the barrel by doing a single contour in front of and behind the gas block.  It was finally decided that .700 would work well for both so he went to work and I watched

Once the barrel's OD was finished, it went to the bead blast cabinet and that's when the transformation occurred and it became much nicer than I'm used to in an AR.

While he was blasting the barrel, I noted the A5's buffer tube and and spring sounded "noisy" so I asked him if the buffer spring could be blasted after the barrel was done.  I highly recommend it to anyone looking to make their gun's cycling smoother and quieter.

Here are some of the photos I was able to take while the gun was being assembled.





The finished rifle



A range test will be done soon with some M855 I have.  Christian was a German sniper so I expect to get a bit of good training from him while we go out and punch paper.

Looks good

You'll notice the KMR handguard uses a barrel nut that doesn't require indexing for the gas tube.  That means you can torque it to the preferred level, about 35 to 40 lb-ft in my case, without any fuss.  SLR handguards have this same feature but tighten with a simple 1-1/4" open end wrench.  - CW

The reason I tried the BCM on this one was simply to get an idea of it's installation, but I'd prefer to be able to test fit everything before placing any amount of permanency to the build.

I do like the included barrel nut wrench, but I'm thinking the future builds will probably get Noveske NSRs.

I did another little write up here.