Recommendation Request - Cheap Free-Float Tube

April 28, 2020, 03:39 PM

Rob Decker

Hi!

So, I have a pair of CMMG's dedicated .22LR barrel/BCG kits with the 16" barrels. This is a Dad's Birthday Present Gone Wrong project, where I was going to build us matching clones of his Magpul'd 6920 in .22LR.

Idea being, with the dedicated .22LR kit, to take apart a couple of old, outdated AR-15s (my first two rifles actually) and, with the use of some stripped uppers, slap these uppers together with a pinned front sight block and flip up rears to match the setup he's got on the 6920. Throw on a PSA Special Romeo 5 that I got for nothing, and good to go for plinking, right?

The project ran off the rails when my local guy broke his jig for drilling and pinning the FSB. Without that, I'm not sure how I'm going to mount the handguard - until it occurred to me that I could probably just use a free-float tube hooked up directly to the receiver extension. Doing this requires me to spring for a full MBUIS as opposed to just the rears, but hey, threaten me with a good time.

Punching "cheap free float tube" into Google yields all kinds of options well under $100, and this is a .22LR plinker, not a door kicker / parajumper / Hindu Kush / Zombie Apocalypse rifle. I don't need it to be bombproof, just halfway decent. Hell, it doesn't even really need machined for MLOK or Keymod, it just needs rails or some other provision for putting a front sight at 12 o'clock and a bipod at 6 o'clock.

Does anyone have experience with an inexpensive free float tube of the type I'm talking about?

April 28, 2020, 03:47 PM

David W

I have both an 8" and 10" ALG rail like this. I used the 8" for my CMMG 22lr, 10" is waiting for a use. Rock solid, easy to mount up as well, would recommend them.

April 28, 2020, 04:11 PM

hrcjon

alg or midwest industries would be my two first recommendations.

April 29, 2020, 02:06 AM

RNshooter

https://www.midwayusa.com/prod...545182639?pid=944031

Nordic makes this one. I like it a lot.

Bruce

"The designer of the gun had clearly not been instructed to beat about the bush. 'Make it evil,' he'd been told. 'Make it totally clear that this gun has a right end and a wrong end. Make it totally clear to anyone standing at the wrong end that things are going badly for them. If that means sticking all sort of spikes and prongs and blackened bits all over it then so be it. This is not a gun for hanging over the fireplace or sticking in the umbrella stand, it is a gun for going out and making people miserable with." -Douglas Adams

“It is just as difficult and dangerous to try to free a people that wants to remain servile as it is to try to enslave a people that wants to remain free."
-Niccolo Machiavelli

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all. -Mencken

April 29, 2020, 06:57 AM

Chris Orndorff

I have used two "Matrix" handguards from joeboboutfitters.com and was quite surprised at the quality. And the price!

May 02, 2020, 11:40 AM

Howsabout a factory handguard at a closeout price? CDNN has CMMG free floats for sale half off, 90 bucks. Make sure you get the ar15 version and not the 308. Don't know who exactly makes them but its the model they put on a lot of their factory guns so I can't imagine they're that bad. They just index by friction but the barrel nut is heavily crosshatched.