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7 Comments

  1. Yeah, buy rifles, but speaking of tools to prevent small bits from flying around the room, now is also the time to lay in multiples of the little springs, detents, ejectors, roll pins and similar what-not. When those things go flying, they apparently achieve escape velocity and are out there orbiting Mars or someplace, because dang if they’re findable afterwards. One of those little shop magnets on the extendible handle and a flashlight helps find them sometimes, but not always. Often it’s a lot easier to just grab another small bit and go on. If, of course, you have the parts. And wear your eye protection whilst messing with this stuff. You don’t want to find the doctrine of “two is one and one is none” applied to your eyeballs!

    1. Had that happen to me recently. Despite my efforts to prevent it, a really small spring shot off like a rocket upon disassembly into the stratosphere of my tool room, pinging loudly off the wall, but landing silently on the floor somewhere. My gun cleaning was delayed several minutes as I searched for it.

      A neat trick to find small parts on the floor (especially on carpet) is to turn down the ambient lighting in the room and place a flashlight on the ground so that the beam is directed horizontally across the floor. You’ll be able to see things in a completely different light (pun intended), and small parts are easily seen.

  2. Back when I was gunsmithing on a daily basis, and YES springs do fly!, we had one of the construction size magnets w/ wheels. They’re about $20 at Home Depot. They’re about 12″ across w/ wheels and a handle on them and you just push it back and forth like a vacuum cleaner. Even if you can’t see the spring or pin, just roll it around the area you ‘hope’ it landed in and chances are you will pick up more than just the one you’re looking for…lol (and yes, a flashlight helps too.)

  3. I discovered Joerg recently, and enjoy him quite a bit. Bit creepy how YT knew I’d like him so much, though. LET ME SHOW YOU ITS FEATURES! I also read Martino’s book, after reading about it in the Bracken Anthology. Should have bought instead of borrowed. Oh well.

  4. I concur on the usefulness of the Real Avid pivot pin tool. I have recently built 10 PSA AR-15s. The tool makes the most difficult step of assembling the lower into the easiest. I enjoyed assembling the lowers, which I had never done before. I gained a huge amount of knowledge which will be helpful for future repairs or mods. BTW, the quality of PSA parts is excellent. I have so far had no failures to load, fire, extract or eject in the 8 I have sighted in.

  5. I have an old white bed sheet positioned in the assembly area on the table and wall that catches flying detents and springs. Dark items show up well. Haven’t lost one yet and caught several.

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