With having been wanting a 357 lever action for a while, and perpetual backorder and crazy price increases when I never seem to have the money when I do come across one, I decided that I would just make a 10mm AR carbine instead. I mainly wanted it to hunt whitetail with, and the distances that I get to hunt here in the Appalachian mountains, I generally can't get more than about a 65 yard shot anyway, and typically is inside 35 yards, I wanted to try the 10mm.

While I haven't gotten to hunt with it yet, I think it's going to do really well. I've been able to work up some handloads with it and am getting very respectable velocities with both 155 and 180 gr pills. ~1770 fps with the 155s (which is over 1k ft lb--near what a 5.56 at 2950 fps energy is) and the 180's are just over 1550 fps (960 ft lb). The 175 gr hardcast is very near the same as the 180's. Close enough that I'm not even going to get out my notes on it to write the numbers down here.

I'm sure that should do pretty good on a deer.

When I was making it, I wanted to do some changes to try to improve on it.

For starters, the Chip McCormick trigger I initially used was too light and there was a couple of occasions where the gun was rocking on a bipod and doubled on me. So, I stopped shooting and replaced it with a heavier Rise Armament LE415 trigger, which solved that.

Another main reason why I wanted a trigger with a "cassette" style housing was to better reinforce the interior pocket of the gun. Since blowback pistol calibers are notorious for wearing hard on fire control pin holes. And since I generally load on the spicy side of my reloads to start with, I didn't see how it could hurt anything trying to make it as rigid as I could inside of there.

Another thing that I did, which was probably overkill, but I also made a steel plate that I put on the exterior of the lower around the trigger and hammer holes. It's just a thin piece of sheet metal that will reinforce the outside of the trigger pocket too. Since I added some width to each side of the lower, normal hammer/trigger pins weren't long enough to reach through each side fully and seat flush. So, I got some 5/32 stainless steel rod, cut to length, threaded the ends and used it like the KNS antirotation or other antiwalk pins that are on the market. The hardest thing about that was not breaking the tiny #4-40 tap trying to thread the little holes.

Again, all of the reinforcement of the fire control pocket may not be necessary, but when I make something, I generally try to improve it any way that I can. Since I made it to be a work gun, my kids or grandkids may end up with it someday and I want it to still work as good 75 years from now as I do this fall when I'm using it. So, I spent a little extra time on it than I normally would have.

While it looks like simple antiwalk pins, the steel sheet on the exterior acts in the same manner as KNS antirotational pins since both the hammer and trigger pins are both supported with the same piece of steel. Plus the cassette style fire control box internally, that's improved the best that I could think to do it.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

Next issue that I worked on, since I am loading pretty hot, was to calm the ejection down. It was spitting the empty shells out probably 15 feet away. Which is excessive by any stretch of the imagination.

Aside from using a 308 cal flat coil chrome silicone buffer spring (which helped but still didn't resolve it completely), I tried a 10oz Kaw Valley buffer.

While that too helped, it still wasn't as good as I wanted it to be. So, I decided to do a rifle length stock. But since there are no super heavyweight rifle length buffers, I had to make my own mods to it too.

I used the 10oz KV buffer that I started with, but added a rifle length extension onto the buffer weight to bring it to the correct length that the rifle buffer needs to be. This also added about 2-1/2 more oz to the buffer weight making it very close to 12.5oz now, helped keep the bolt closed longer and slowed it down and make ejection more acceptable.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

I later added a sleeve to have the buffer spring seat further rearward than normal which increased the pre-load a little more and again, helped with ejection.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

Since I'm old, I remember the ban years when we couldn't own collapsible stocks and such. I'm still partial to rifle length stuff anyway because they just feel better shooting, but also, I have kinda long arms and rifle length fits me better. I have owned several Ace skeleton stocks and have always loved them. I especially appreciate the foam cover over the tube on cold wet mornings in the woods when I am about to snuggle in on a shot in the tree stand. So, I made this one similar to it and used the foam cover, but I used an extra gearhead works brace on the back of it and I pretty much made my own ace style ultralight stock for it. Since money is tight these days with how much inflation there is and gas prices and grocery bills, I'm just making due with what I have right now and not going out and spending a lot on a commercial stock when the one I did works for me. With all the extra weight that I added in the back of the gun, it's surprisingly almost nearly perfectly balanced in front of the receiver where the barrel meets.

After shooting it after those improvements that I made, I must say that it shoots good and feels good and I'm overall happy with it now. Recoil is no worse than any other AR that you'd shoot and overall the muzzle is surprisingly stable when you pull the trigger which may help with a quick follow up shot if I need to. With any luck, I'll find out soon enough how it does.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/3vnKbWE.jpg?1[/img]