So, I got this wild hair up my nose and decided to buy a bunch of Anderson 80% lowers and a DPMS Style .308 80% lower. I also bought the best jig I could find. So, I think the .308 is going to be the first build and the AR-15 lowers will probably just sit on the shelf for a while. Well actually I'll probably practice on one before I do the .308. I've never built a .308 from a DPMS style lower. Off to do a ton of research I guess.

Note: Research update - Just went to 80 Percent Arms and got a matched set of Aero DPMS style upper/lower in .308. This lower will be Ca. compliant and has my own serial number, my name and my city/state engraved on the lower. I was sort of relieved to see them offering this. I have read and do understand the law regarding 80% receivers. However, I can't help but believe that relatively few LEO's are well versed in it. Having a number on it might cause less confusion if it's ever questioned even if I live in a state that doesn't required me to register it. You have to know that sooner or later it will become a 50 state law.

New info: Just ordered a 22" barrel from JP.. 1/11.25 twist.

Add quality glass and a quality 2 stage trigger (HSNM) and you will always have a smile on ur face when you shoot the rifle.

I have the same barrel on my build and it is just amazing the groups i get.  I always joke that it makes me look like i know what im doing.  

I can tell you a good trigger is a HUGE improvement.  I started off with a reg milspec trigger and it shot ok but i wasnt happy with it (well over moa).  i added the JP springs and it helped.  I borrowed a single stage drop in trigger from a friend (wanna say POF) and i saw the improvement instantly.   Went shopping for a trigger and was going to get a SD-E but saw a HSNM on the EE for $140 and snagged it.  First outing with the HSNM i was straight up shocked.  my groups shrunk in half, and thats with me being a crappy shot at the time (wanna say i was doing between 3/4-1 moa.  after doing my workup loads and more trigger time, a shitty outing for me is 1/2 moa or more (at 100 yards).  I just started shooting at a new range and am going to try for groups at 500+ yards.  **g/f shot my rifle last week, as in taking her time and not just shooting, and in 25 rounds, at 100 yards, she did about 1.5-1.75 moa.   basically it was 1 giant ragged hole.

For glass, I'll probably set this rifle up as a hunting rifle in the end. While I'm getting it dialed in, I'll have my Schmidt & Bender PMII on it. For the trigger, I will go with a Geissele. It will probably be a SSA-E to begin with. Ater the upper is broken in and I have some reliable data to use, I'll probably switch to a more adjustable trigger from Geissele. I really like their SSA and SSA-E triggers as a starting point because they are highly reliable and repeatable. I buy their lower kits when I buy their triggers and I order directly from Geissele to ensure I'm getting the most current production run.

I got one barrel in from Brownell's and my two lowers from 80%. I have one for my first run, let's call it a practice run. I have a second matched upper and lower that are engraved with my own serial number, my name and my city/state. That's primarily done so if I ever want to sell it to a Californian I can. I expect other states will follow suit as time goes by.

I'm going to build the first one with the Brownell barrel and see what it shoots like, if it's acceptable then i'll call it good but if not then I'll pony up the 1,000.00 + for the JP barrel I just got a quote on.

I have my new Smithy Mill/Drill/Lathe almost dialed in. My DRO arrives tomorrow and I had to upgrade the Drill Chuck from the less than adequate one that was on it. The run-out on the chuck was within .001 and I though I was in like flint until I chucked up a known good test shaft and had .025 run-out. I ordered a new precision Jacobs chuck (always been my favorite) and changed to a JT3/MT3  draw bar spindle from a JT33/MT3 draw bar spindle. I have a MT3 3/8 mil holder that runs .001 so all is good until I need to drill the holes in the 80% lower. Yes, I could buy end mills to drill the holes but I'd rather drill them slightly under and then ream them to size. That's any easy job with a decent numbered drill set. Things are proceeding nicely at this point.

So, the .308 is almost done. It's actually ready to go to the range but it's not done yet. I got my rifle buffer tubes today but I'm still waiting on the PRS Gen3 stock to show up. I ordered 3 and they've been on back order for a couple of weeks now. I also ordered another LR .308 DPMS style 80% lower that will be the one that matches the Aero upper. The bolt and Geisselle ambi charging handle came today. I put a JP high pressure bolt and BCG in it. I also have a different handguard coming from Midwest Industries that I think I'll like better. This build is all about trying to stay as light as possible. The new lower is lighter than this one and so is the new handguard but I'm still going to mill most of the rail off the top since I'll never use it. If I find I need to mount something up there then I'll just throw it on the mill and make a mount point. The tri-pod is one I got at WalMart and works but sucks.. I have an Atlas on order. The scope is a Leupold 3.5x18 with a red dot. I think I'll put my Swarovski on this and put this on my 6.5 Grendel.

All done now except for the PRS 3 that is still backordered. I milled the trigger pocket on a DPMS LR .308 80% lower that I had engraved so it doesn't look like a ghost gun.  I also used the DPMS lower kit with trigger. On the first run I milled the pocket to spec but when I installed the trigger there were problems so I had to open it up forward so the hammer ended up 90 degrees to the pocket when released and then I had to lower the pocket to 1.275 vs. 1.25 as was spec'd. I actually took it to 1.280 and that allowed me to use shims to get the trigger to break correctly. The trigger isn't a JP or a Geissle but if you get it shimmed just right it actually breaks very crisp at about 3.5 lbs. I put the Swarovski Scope on it and changed the upper to the Aero Precision DPMS LR .308 version so the upper and lower match and I changed the Midwest Industries hand guard to a low top. I'm pretty happy with it now but I won't shoot it until I get the PRS on it and have a little more padding on the butt.

Looking good. You will like the prs stock.  I'm about it being a lighter option as the LuthAR would be lighter.  I think my 308 ar weights in around 18ish lbs.

I do have a PRS Gen 3 on my tack driver .233 Wylde. I have 36" arms and with the PRS on a rifle tube with the butt adjusted all the way out, it's very comfortable. I've never used the LuthAR, I'll have to look into them, the PRS's are hard to come by right now. Cabellas in Reno has one in stock but they won't hold it for me so I'm not driving for an hour just to find out it sold 5 minutes before I got there. I have three on back order at Midway that are overdue.

Note: Just bought a Luth-AR MB3, It's definitely lighter than the PRS.

Took her out to the range yesterday and couldn't get it to feed off the mag. I did manually feed one round but on the second one I accidently hit the battery lever and damn near took my finger tip off. Once I stopped the bleeding I put it away and blew crap up with my Benelli M4 Super 90.. When I got it home it worked fine with my aluminum snap caps so I had my neighbor make me up some dummy rounds with the ammo that I was using and they worked fine. The only thing I can figure is that I didn't have the mag fully seated. I'm going back out tomorrow by myself to my desert primitive range where I can work through issues with out having to listen to a thousand words of unsolicited wisdom from people with store bought rifles.

Just curious, do you mean it wouldnt chamber all the way, like get stuck going into battery or it just wouldnt pick up the round out of the mag?  Is this factory ammo or reloads?

The reason I ask is because i have/had an issue every now and again (maybe 1 out of every 100 rounds ) where I will be shooting suppressed fine, and then randomly the next round will go about 80-90% into battery then its a bitch to get out. Sometimes having to mortar it, but usually just grab a flat head screw driver and have to pry the bcg back to eject the round. This would be on a SPOTLESS/just cleaned barrel/receiver too.  This never happened my first few 100 rounds, but then again, i was shooting alot of factory stuff so i could get 308 brass.

When I would get home i'd check the round with my *wilson* case gauge and it showed fine.  So i figured maybe shooting suppressed was causing the issue and id just have to deal with it.  Then 1 day i read somewhere that the JP case gauge measures to Min SAAMI spec where most others are to max SAAMI spec and that JP chambers are pretty tight, which I found out early on mine was and explained why sometimes when feeding ammo, it would have the hang-ups like it did.  So i ordered a JP 308 case gauge and surprise surprise, ALOT of my reloads which measure fine in the Wilson, were way to big for the JP. Thankfully I only had about 50 or so rounds already made up and those gave me no issues, but ever since then I FL sized off the JP case gauge and have yet to have an issue.

If its just not feeding from the mag, then maybe trying a new mag is in order.  possibly old/bag mag spring.  What kind of mag?  I have about 10x of the 20 and 10x of the 25 round Pmags, 2 10 rounds but i have recently purchased the 10 round lancer and imo its much better spring wise.  I know lancer 308 mags arent cheap, and if you dont want to go that route, maybe order some wolf XP mag springs.  That or its undergassed and not enough pressure is being sent to move the bcg forward AND grab the next round.  I had this issue with my 10.5 that i used an adj gas block on.  Apparently the ammo i used to set the gas block was pretty strong, then when i went to use some others, it was causing the FTF issue.  opened it up alittle and it ran fine.  (was weird though, my ejection pattern went from 1 o'clock to 5 o'clock, and i maybe went 3/4 of a turn).

I took care of the issue this morning. I had swapped out the aero precision upper for another LR .308 upper because I didn't have the right hand guard for the Aero. It was purely an aesthetics thing and ironically, the correct height handguard came to day. This morning when I pulled the no-name upper off and checked it against the Aero, the bolt was held higher in the no-name upper by almost .030. and it was loose fitting. I put the Aero back on it and it now cycles perfectly with snap caps, which also ironically, finally arrived today.

I can fix the other upper by welding up the take down pin holes and milling the proper amount off the base of the upper and the re-drilling the take down pin holes. If I ever get really bored, I might just do that. Lesson learned here is to always buy quality parts from companies with great (not just good) reputations and don't shy away just because of cost. I have 5 stiches in my finger tip that cost me way more than that an Aero upper.

So if it wasn't the .030 then it was the loose pins or maybe a combination of the two. I'm pretty sure it was the upper being out of spec though.

Of course there's always the possibility that neither of these were the problem, I'll find out for sure at the range tomorrow.

just curious. how well does the Midwest Industries handguard pic rail line up with the pic rail on top of the Aero M5 upperl?

After I got the handguard with the right height rail and shimmed the barrel it fit fine.

Ran 40 rounds through the rifle at the range. It ran perfect except that I forgot to notch the upper for the empty mag catch. It's hard to believe it's a .308 it is so smooth and recoil is really minimal. I actually think the recoil is at least as easy as my 6.5 Grendel. I ran 30 rounds through it at 25 yards then took it out to 100 yards. The last shot was the bull but I do have the rifle sighted in or at least sighted in at this stage of the break in. I'm very happy with the rifle and the way it shoots with one exception. I used the trigger out of a DPMS lower kit and it's pretty crappy. I have a Geissele SSA-E that I'll put in it. I also have a new 80 pct lower coming and should have my z-axis DRO installed on the mill by them. My Z-axis is in .040 increments so it's really hard to get the floor plate right without the DRO. With the DRO I can get it within .0001.