Guns & Stuff

Thoughts on guns, ammo, spare parts

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Loyal reader Lightning recently commented that it is better to have a few guns with lots of ammo than lots of guns with little ammo. I agree. For many of us and I include myself in this group we are gun nuts at heart. We “collect” guns and often use the excuse that we need them for our preparedness system and ignore funding ammunition stores as we should.

How about spare parts? How many of us have extra firing pins, buffer springs, and bolt carrier groups? We will spend $1000 on an AR and hundreds if not thousands on ammunition and zero on spare parts. This should not be the case.

Granted most of us will never see a worn buffer spring or bolt but the investment is minimal. As prepper’s we do not think of what most likely WON’T happen we consider the possibilities of what MIGHT happen. A broken firing pin will render a firearm useless.

Rourke

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Cheap Bulk Ammo at Lucky Gunner

 

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Choate, Machine, and Tool offers their AR-15 Essential Spare Parts Kit for $29.99. The kit comes with an Extractor, Extractor Pin, Two Extractor Spring Assembly, Ejector/Selector Detent Spring, Selector/Safety Detent, Takedown/Pivot Pin Detent, Takedown/Pivot Pin Detent Spring, Takedown Pin, Pivot Pin, Hammer/Trigger Pin and Three Bolt Gas Rings. These are the part most often lost or most often to fail on the AR platform.

AR_essential

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15 Comments

  1. JBernDrApt says:

    I agree, I have been looking for spare parts for my glock 19 and ar. Also, should do the same for all the guns! Thanks for the link. – Keep Looking UP

    Reply
  2. JAS says:

    You can’t find a parts kit for every gun, but you can talk to your local gunsmith about ordering the parts for you. I made up a kit for each of my guns to include a firing pin, all springs, pins, c clips and detent balls. Any commonly broken or lost part should be included.

    Reply
  3. wvscout says:

    It is very importanat to have spare parts for repairs and know how to install them. Because you never know when Murphy is going to strike. Your weapon is your life, take care of it

    Reply
  4. Panhandle Rancher says:

    DPMS and similar use piano wire buffer springs (and others). These springs have a life limit of somewhere (on the higher end) between 500 and 5000 rounds. If your trusty black rifle is jamming, clean it especially well, particularly the area around the locking lugs in both bolt and barrel. If this doesn’t solve the problem consider changing the buffer spring.

    PR

    Reply
  6. goingray58 says:

    While I learn at every opportunity I am no armorer. As with a recent conversation I learned a great deal from PR about a particular aspect of one model of firearm. That said I thought I knew everything about a different firearm, until I bought an “interchangeable” part. (aftermarket) Very standard part on a presumably very standard firearm. And the part looked and felt the same, and it replaced the former part seemingly perfectly, until it as used. At point of use it was not exactly the same and eventually had to go to a gunsmith for “adjustment”, before it was acceptably functional. In my case it could be considered comical, but under different conditions it could have been tragic, and in either case it was more expensive than expected.

    My point is this. Interchangeable parts are always the same, except when they are not. Depending on the parts and the function parts mfg’s deal with tolerances in the thousandths of an inch. When you add things like the pressures generated on detonation, it can be very important for the thing replaced to match exactly as to size and capability..

    I would never discourage anyone from becoming more knowledgeable or planning for parts. I would advise approaching the matter with caution.

    We say two is one and, one is none right ? I would also put, that having more than one fully functional device for whatever the use case is, is essential. Often in time of need or especially extreme need, we don’t have repair time, until later.

    Maybe at the time of manufacture and purchase is the best time to buy the part, and if the model is new parts may not yet be available. While I am learning, I expect I will maintain multiples for a purpose, and learn as I can .. while employing a buyer beware mindset. I might also gain a kit and then replace it as practice, on the gaining device, to ensure its function. Then put the original back in, and pack the new parts away with some degree of confidence.

    Random thoughts
    GG58

    Reply
  7. Badger359 says:

    Having a logistical component to all our preps be it (armory, quartermaster) etc should in pace period. in regards to fire arms consider planning just in case Hillary wins this election, she’s already fire her shot across our bow “wanting to ban all assault rifles, hi-cap mags with the end goal of complete disarmament. Get your items NOW. That includes getting your ballistic plates.

    Reply
  8. Panhandle Rancher says:

    You AR shooters probably realize that there are at least two different fire group pin sizes between various manufacturers – and that those pins are intended to be driven out from one side and not the other. Like ole Davy famously remarked, ‘be sure you’re right and then go ahead.’
    PR

    Reply
  9. JBernDrApt says:

    The more I learn the more I learn I don’t know. You guys teach me a lot. Wish I knew more. I could always learn so much just by hanging around you guys – think you should adopt me Lol! – Keep Looking UP

    Reply
    1. Panhandle Rancher says:

      JBernDrApt,

      I’ve had several adults offer to be adopted. I send them to speak with my kiddos whom I helped ease leaving home separation anxiety by copious amounts of hard physical labor. That strategy worked with my father (whom I loved dearly) and sped my departure from home after age 16. He set me at work at about age 8 and never let up until I departed. How much I learned from him and many times wish he were here to explain how something should be done (or even why).
      PR

      Reply
      1. goingray58 says:

        PR
        Nothing wrong with work.. Mine did that as well .. as did my grandfather.. It did provide education and belonging. Work done as well as can be managed provides a satisfaction all it’s own. Once in a while we are offered some approval or appreciation by someone we might respect, and one might live and toil long on that…
        I find that those who will not bend a back next to me are most often not worth any time I might invest.. Still we try to tech them, to invest our most precious resource in them to see if they will carry it forward, and return the favor.

        No i think being adopted by you would be just fine.. Likely your children and some very good citizens and love you for it as you did your father. It’s a powerful gift.

        One the parts .. I dug around in a vendor’s boxes this weekend to get some of what you mentioned.. Sight tools, Shell extractors.. sling hooks.. I’ll have to work out a couple lower kits now .. and a buffer spring kit .. next..

        Reply
        1. Panhandle Rancher says:

          Thank you for the sentiment GG58. No long weapon should ever be without a sling.

          I’m always amazed when discovering older parents with adult children living at home – and my wife has a brother living with his mom – she does his laundry, buys his groceries, and the only thing I can tell he does, is to complain. I quit visiting the dear lady whom I truly like way too much for her to be a mother-in-law because I can’t abide that youngest son. Her older son went into the USAF and came back a man. None of that whining out of him. Oh and she babysits that whelp who probably talks back to her. My mother-in-law is the classic enabler. I’d throw the bum out on his ear.

          As Christians we are apart from the Old Testament law but instructions in how to live have been no better put than with theTen Commandments and most of the old Judaic laws as well. Honor thy father and mother, he that will not work shall not eat … Words to live by that gendereth good character.

          And as a nation we do so no longer, and we are reap the wages of our behavior in spades. It is as it should be, for the wise and loving father will always upbraid his children.

          PR

          Reply
  10. secondrecon says:

    Roark I am glad to see you do this NOW . From my past life running around in the bush it was necessary to carry spare parts because of no resupply , We carried extra complete bolts buffers and springs , Then carried the extra parts also, a few springs pins and trigger parts weigh almost nothing . In your parts kits you need new mag parts as well , bottoms, springs and followers. And another thing you need is a good cleaning kit with a steel rod and a broken shell extractor in your kit, Murphy has a way of knowing what you have and what you don’t .

    Reply
  11. Panhandle Rancher says:

    Good point secondrecon. I too have ventured far from reasonable logistical tail and understand spares.

    The broken cartridge case extractor I completely endorse, the steel rod, perhaps. The fine flexible pull through from OTIS works ever so well for routine cleaning and will not scrape that hard chrome bore (I pun). There are times a hard rod is useful (again a pun of sorts) and metal rod can be used to tap offending objects gently from the barrel and on the head of the stuck case extractor (if the bolt extractor doesn’t grip it and remove the offending piece of brass). At some point with spares, one might as well haul a second rifle. Then again where I once journeyed, spare rifles were all too common. Several aftermarket vendors sell modified pistol grips with a hinged end – great place for all of those small items. Olympic is one such vendor http://www.olyarms.com/shop/accessories/grips/f3a.html.

    PR

    Reply

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