Home Forums Hunting & Shooting AR and Tactical Rifles Tyrone Goes Dumpster Diving

Not really, but I did buy a cheap upper.

I've been wanting to get a .350 Legend upper or rifle but I haven't wanted to spend a lot of money on one. I figure a .350L barrel ought to be good for at least 4,000 rounds so if I shoot deer with it every year it will last me about 1,000 years.

So when I saw the Davidson Defense 'Aviere' 16" AR-15 .350 Legend NIT Upper for about $225 assembled, I pulled the trigger on it. Service was good, they shipped it the next day.
When I got it, I went over it. It looks nice. I got the Mlok I wanted along with the sling attachment points.

I pared it with an existing lower, a PSA BCG and a T-handle. The upper was very difficult to pair with my lower that pairs flawlessly with BCM uppers. It was so tight, I had to beat both pins in with a tack hammer. Hope my lower doesn't stretch!
I stuck a Vortex Viper 1-4X on it and called it good.


Then I slugged the barrel with a .358 wadcutter. It started out tight, got to the gas port and was looser until the muzzle. There it was so tight I removed the flash hider, thinking they had put the wrong one on it. I drove it out and the slug measured .355". Then I scoped it.
The rifling lead looks good, just some lube from the slug.


Moving to the gasport, it looks good too, again just a little dirt from the .38 slug. None of the "custom" port chamfering you see from custom barrels but good nonetheless.


The rifling looks good overall, much better than I expected. Very little chatter and the lands are sharp & crisp.


Getting to the muzzle, I find out why the slug was so tight there. The barrel looks like it was cut off with dull tooling and left uncrowned. You can see how it shredded a patch. It's evenly bad all the way around. I don't have anything to fix it, so I'll shoot first, fix later. You never know, it may shoot good enough as-is.

What, no lecture yet about what a piece of shìt it is and how the bolt should have been shot-peened?

Just kidding. Shoot the piss out of it and enjoy.

I took it out and shot it without fixing the crown. Bore sighted it, got it in the X-ring on the 3rd shot at 50 yards. It was very windy with gusts well over 25mph. Took it out to 100 then shot these groups. Top is Hornady 165 FTX, bottom is Winchester 180gr PP. I wanted to clock these loads, but the barrel is too short to mount my MagnetoSpeed.


I adjusted the sights to hit 2" high at 100 with the FTX and then shot a group at 200. About 3" low with no sight adjustment. I can live with that and call it point-blank to 200 with a COM hold on Mr. Antlers.

Later, I had some time to run to Harbor Freight and pick up a ball burr or something to crown the barrel with. They didn't have those, but they did have a set of Dremel stones, including a round one. Perfect for dressing the muzzle.
The Dremel proved to be too fast, so I chucked it in a drill.



It only took about 20 thou to clean it up.


Borescope shows it's a clean, even crown with nothing snagging patches. It's gotta shoot better now.



The cases are obviously 223 basics blown out a little to make them rebated rims. The mouth is very thin, like a 44-40 case or something. I was hoping I'd be able to hand load .357" bullets in this case, but I could not even seat a .355" by hand in a fired case. Tight chamber, very little clearance.

I am surprised how heavy this 16" upper is. With a sling & scope on it, mated to a lower, it weighs in at 8lb 6oz.

Was it worth being a scumball and going dumpster diving?

I guess, if you don't mind fixing a little and using a 2nds or 3rds upper receiver and all you want to do is blast a deer once in a while. We'll see if it stretched my nice lower. It jammed a lot, but all I have is GI & 7.62x40 magazines. GI fed best, but tended to place the 1st cartridge of 3's base too low. I ordered a genny wine 350 mag.
We'll see how that goes.

As far as the cartridge goes, I can't think of an AR chambering I prefer the 350L to except maybe 450 BM. So it ranks 2nd from last. IMO it's still the best option out of a rifle for straight wall states with a .35" minimum.

For deer blasting, the ammo is cheap enough that I probably won't handload it.

Mr Antlers better lay low!!!

Now to see how well it shoots with a crown…

Naa.

Tyrone and I may disagree on a lot of issue, but he's got a good eye for rifles.

If he can't make it shoot, then I'll concede it's a POS.

I'm thinking that as thin as these case mouths are, the case really headspaces off the tapered body.

For comparison, a 350L mouth is 11 thou, a random 308 mouth is 16 thou and a .44 Mag is 15 thou.

Here's the chamber & case drawings

good job on fixing the crown. I have used a brass screw and lapping compound before.
Let us know how it shoots now that the crown is fixed

Finally got it out to the range again. This time using the Winchester 180s because I couldn't find any more of the FTX.

It definitely shoots better after the crown repair.

This is 3, 3 shot groups on an SR-1. The X-ring is 1.35" for reference. 1st one lower left, then adjust and the 3 shots covered with masking tape, then I went up a 1/2 and shot the last 3. Yes, 2 shots are in one hole. Not spectac, but minute of a deer.


Picked up a 10rnd SS Duramag. Out of 3 loadings, I got a failure to fully chamber the 1st round twice and a failure to fully chamber the 2nd round once. The Hornady FTX fed better, wish I had more.

You can't kill deer with an AR unless you have one of those $4k Wyoming Arms.

Nice photos. What borescope are you using?

Teslong