I see these steel threaded inserts in several of the aluminum ARMS rail products (#38, #36, #45, etc).  Seems like a great idea for achieving strong mating with steel screws but staying light weight.  I have a couple of projects where these threaded inserts would be useful; does anyone know where to find something like this?

TIA,
fiz

I tried to get some of the rail with threaded inserts from ARMS. No go.

I bet they'd be more agreeable if you sent them the specs of your project and agreed to pay an ungodly amount of money for the finished product.  [;)]  Seriously, did they give you an explanation for not selling rail sections?

They look like HeliCoils to me. Normally they're used to repair stripped threads... most often stripped spark-plug holes. The inserts themselves are inexpensive; it's the installation kit that's expensive.

A good sized automotive supply store should have them, although they may or may not have the smaller sizes.

[url]http://www.contractorstools.com/helicoil1.html[/url]

On edit: this place seems to have decent prices.

[url]http://www.thetoolwarehouse.net/shop/MAN27.html[/url]

fizassist, yea I told them I wanted to take my #39 mount and cut it in front of the second hole then bolt the piece of rail under it, thru both remaining holes, to lower the rail so I could cowitness the A2 sights with my eotech. The handguards would need to be hogged out, but I think it would work(was willing to sacrifice the #39 and price of rail piece to try because the dual mount points on the Arms mount are much better than any single mount point for close to zero remount). They responded that all mounts where milled as one piece and no separate rail sections were available(was hoping they might have some scrapped mounts with good rails). Oh well either a good idea shot down or an expensive lesson averted.  It might be doable with the piece that is cut off, but I was worried that it would be too short to securely position the sight far enough out.  I might try anyway.

Have you thought about just getting an Olympic Arms FIRSH 4-rail handguard?  It means taking off your front sight, but that's usually pretty easy.  It is more work if you have a pinned or welded muzzle break (on a postban), but the end result is perfect for putting an EOTech in line with A2 iron sights.  The FIRSH top rail is the same height as the flattop upper, so it is perfect for the EOTech.  I have mounted an AimPoint on my FIRSH, and I haven't had any problems with it losing zero.

Cool!  That's exactly what I was looking for; thanks!

fizassist, considered that, but have pinned muzzlebreak.  Probably best bet is sell the #39 mount and replace the upper with a flat top.  Thanks for the suggestion though.

Just a warning:  You many not like the EOTech that far back.  I much prefer it on the handguards.  I guess other options would be the KAC RAS or the First Samco M44 handguards.  The latter is plastic, but it is tight, and some people here claim to have used it for optics.  Both solutions just replace your existing handguards without removing the front sight (or muzzle break).

ARMS#51 SIR

for A1/A2 CH's

Hey, yeah, I forgot about that!

A buddy of mine put helicoils into some chunk of normal picatinny rail _ it worked and was reatively inexpensive