Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles AR in .308

Forged is much cheaper I like cheaper as long as the function, quality and safety is still in tact.

Who else makes a forged offering other than Palmetto State???? I have see an Aero Precision lower but no upper by them.

Palmetto makes the cheapest sets I have seen ( although cheaper isn't always better). The Aero Precision lowers work with DPMS uppers. If I were going to build another one I'd look at the CMT or MEGA .308 receiver sets.

The heart and sould of your rifle will be in the barrel and BCG. Skimp there and you are asking for issues. There is no reason to spend $1500-$2000 building a rifle with DPMS parts. Might as well buy a DPMS and get a warranty with it. With .308's you need to put a little more money forward to get the most out of the rifle.

You built yours right?

I'd appreciate a post sometime on what you used and why you chose that stuff. .308s are foreign to me. And it seems like the factory offerings are pretty expensive for spotty quality.

Yes, once I prove to myself that cutting the barrel to 17.5" with rifle gas and JP lightweight BCG is the secret to a well tuned .308, I'll be glad to do a write up. Haven't shot it since the barrel work, I think it's going to be smoooooth.

Sounds good.

MSTN does rifle gas with 17" barrels, but that's 5.56. VooDoo has 16.5" rifle barrels that they said are troublesome without a LW BCG and fiddling with buffers, again in 5.56.

Armalites are also forged. At some point I'll start up load development again for this one, which is wearing a Rainier Arms Ultramatch 18" barrel. Rainier turns them from Shilen blanks.

see that is the thing sub $2000 range is a maybe.... The first SR-762s had problems as well, anyway they fixed it mine is after the fix and is a keeper but now I have another 11.5 pound full up rifle....why didn't I just keep that FAL I sold in 2001!!! Glad I passed on the SCAR 17 for various reasons.

The built it route is definitely the way to go unless you have 3.5-5K to drop on a high end .308.

Forged vs billet; back a few years ago a friend and I were using a few uppers and never had any problems. CMT opened the Stag line and uppers were harder to get. A few companies started producing billet uppers and lowers, then all of a sudden, "salesmen" started telling me the higher priced billet receivers were of much better quality. Couldn't find a straight forged upper in the house, I needed to start using billet. Horse puckey, it's simply a money maker for them.

Stick with forged unless you like a billet design, that's the only reason to go billet.

Blue, I just built one with the VooDoo UL 16.5 rifle gas and it runs like a top with standard bolt and buffer plus adjustable gas. I tried the LW bolt and lightened buffer and it did not like to run. I have not given up yet but shooting a match this weekend so I want it to run.