I recently pieced together a new rifle. I'm by no means a fantastic rifle shooter, and the longest range I have available is 200yards, so this was by no means meant to be a 1000 yard precision gun, but I wanted something that I could practice with that was better than I am so I could work on developing skills.

I have a source of really cheap Anderson lowers, so it started out as one of those, and I bought a stripped Anderson upper to match. I put a Larue MBT2 trigger in it, and the barrel, BCG, gas tube, and gas block are all Faxon. The barrel is their 20" flame fluted heavy match barrel chambered in .223 Wylde. Glass is a cheap Nikon 4-12.




When I first assembled it, I noticed the gas tube to gas block fit was very loose, much looser than on ay other rifle I have built. It initally had some problems short-stroking and not locking back on the last round. I determined that it was leaking gas pretty badly where the gas tube exited the gas block. I actually ended up purchasing a second gas tube, which also seemed loose, so I dabbed some loctite on the tube before inserting it (being sure to keep it clear of the gas port), and within a few rounds fired it had carboned up enough to seal the leak and the gun began cycling reliably and the bolt now locks back after the last round.

The BCG, while in-spec, doesn't appear to be anything fancy. It's nitride coated, and works as designed...but the $130 price tag was a bit steep compared to the competition. The barrel is supurb. The chamber is very tight...it intially had some issues chambering, but after an initial break-in of about 50 rounds it has smoothed out a tad and I haven't had any further issues. The heavy barrel and rifle-length gas system make recoil pretty much non-existant, and it'll punch 1/2 inch groups at 100 yards if I do my part (which you can't always count on, lol)...and thats with reloads that I developed for my bolt-action. I haven't had a chance to tune anything for this gun yet.




Overall I'm pretty happy with it. For less than $700 it outshoots me, which while not a lofty goal, is what I was going for. The target above was shot at 100 yards off of a bag. The 1" groups at the top are more the fault of the shooter than anything, but I managed to hold it together for the bottom two and I'm confident the gun could do even better if the guy behind the trigger would give it half a chance.

I’m almost finished with a Faxon build. I have the 14.5 shooter profile barrel for a lightweight build. I gave up 2.5 oz. to the pencil barrel but I don’t want to lose the performance of the shooter profile.

Anyway, this is my first upper build and I have a Faxon gas block and tube coming. That concerns me about the gas block to tube fit. Mine is a .625” low pro block. What would be noticeably loose to you during the build? Do you think it was a machining error on the block? Or an out of spec tube?
I have heard nothing but good about Faxon.

My 10.5" SBR built has a Faxon Firearms pencil barrel and I will say that I have been very impressed with it!

It has constantly printed 1.5 MOA groups with Hornady America Gunner 55gr. HP FB loads, about the same with Federal American Eagle 52gr HP varmint, it easily does under 3" groups with M193 55gr FMJ "Ball". Most in the 2.5" range.

I haven't shot any match grade ammo with it, but most other good quality ammo has been at least 1.5 MOA to 1.75 MOA.

For a 10.5" pencil barrel, I'm more than happy! It also stays fairly centered, POA/POI even after getting hot. Zero shift is very minimum even when the barrel is smoking hot! Impressive!

I have a couple of more builds planned with Faxon Firearms GUNNER barrel as the base, and a 14.5" with permanently attached flashhider pencil barrel as a base for a WWSD built.

For price, I believe that Faxon Firearms makes one hell of a barrel!


ARman

quote:

What would be noticeably loose to you during the build? Do you think it was a machining error on the block?

Other builds I've done (and I've only done three, so my experience is admittedly limited), with those gas blocks, it took a decent ammount of pressure to insert the tube into the block. In one case, I even had to gently tap it in with a plastic mallet (that one may have been too tight). This one, a .750 low profile lightweight, the tube would drop in and out freely with no resistance at all. I initially thought this might be how it was designed, but the gas leak convinced me otherwise.

I did some reading online, and found many claims that a small gas leak would carbon up and seal itself over time. This one didn't seem to be doing that, but my lictite fix seems to have done the trick as I have sveral hundred trouble free rounds through it now.

I used a Faxon 10.5 300blk barrel on my MK18 build. Also had them send me a head spaced bolt. Havent had it past 100 yet but its shooting almost moa at 100 with 220gr subs.