AR completion

When the Stag 2HL upper came in the mail, I immediately slapped it on the lower, only to find that I couldn't...

The front pivot pin slid into the upper, and snapped into place like butter, but the rear takedown pin would go about half way into the upper, and stop. I'd read about poor fitting uppers and lowers, and decided to go Stag all the way to prevent such malfunctions, clearly I'd failed.

I turned on my laptop and went searching. I found people with similar problems, who were easily able to resolve them... by remilling the lower... uh... no. Not only do I not have access to a mill, but if I had to send it to a shop, there was no way it would be back in time for the Victorville shoot! I wasn't panicking, there was a way out of this, and someone knew it. I posted to the calguns forum and quickly got a few replies with advice on how to go about fixing the issue.

The next day, I hit Osh, and picked up some metal sand-paper. Closer inspection of my upper revealed that the rear pin hole in the upper was too high by a few fractions of a millimeter. This caused the takedown pin to kant up as it passed through the upper pin hole, and not be able to exit the lower on the other side. So I spent some time with the sandpaper, and 30 minutes later, I could push in, and remove the pin without the aid of tools! Sweet. If only I could test it out before going to the shoot...

I didn't want to be one of those guys who shows up, and spends half the day working on his equipment to get it running when he should be enjoying himself. I also wanted to get it sighted in, but knew I wouldn't be able to manage that until the shoot. Oh well.

I'll just have to hope everything goes off smoothly!