The no-go gauge is fine for a civilian bolt action rifle but only a little dirt on that close of tolerances will render the gun useless. The Field gauge is the milspec standard on every semi-auto firearm ever produced. Gene Barnett is a guy I have spent some time with and he rebarreled thousands of match grade M1 and M14 rifles for the highpower community. I've rebarreled my match M1As and other semi-auto guns with some of the most respected names in the barrel making business and they all will set headspace on a semi-auto to close with some thumb pressure on a bolt with a no-go gauge. The locking lug is indeed another part that needs to be properly sized and at the factory they would have an assortment of different sizes to test the fit.ĭon't worry what the other guy said about headspace and a Field Gauge. The washer or spacer is what we had to surface grind based on the amount of correction we had to apply to get the barrel to time properly. Then you torque it down the rest of the way to gain alignment with the gas system and sights. This is the numbered part and the way it works is you hand tighten the barrel until its about 30 degrees shy of lining up. The barrel times on the receiver via the thickness of a washer or spacer.

You can also make yourself a barrel clamp using a couple pieces of 2X4-search on youtube for a homemade barrel clamp.Īlso, I was wrong about what we machined. Mine shot perfectly-no issues.Ĭlick to expand.Used the flats on the barrel.worked fine. IIRC the torque specs weren't that high either.

I didn't use an action wrench as the flat sides of the receiver were quite stable in a bench vise with some leather jaws. You don't want a tight chamber on any semi-auto rifle. FALs' are notorious for stretching once fire brass and there is a reason for that.a large chamber aids reliability. You have to be sure to leave the headspace long-so it almost closes on a field gauge. If you get one oversized as mine was you can have it surface ground to the correct dimension at a machine shop. The factory uses a series of numbered parts of varying thickness but you won't have that available to you and might end up inly finding the correct part after a lengthy series of trial and error as you order different thickness parts. IIRC the locking shoulder was the only part that caused problems as this determines headspace and most kits only come with one.which might or might not work with your new receiver. I built one about 25 years ago-L1A1-same thing using an inch pattern Enterprise receiver.

Fal assembly tools