Paradude54

Sounds good to me. I don't drink much anymore, but do enjoy sharing stories and making new friends.

Thanks for the kind greetings. MSG Jano, we'll have to get together sometime and compare war stories. I'm 50 as of last year, so it's anyone's bet as to who's the oldest here.

I joined this forum and then for some reason forgot about it. Anyway, I got an e-mail today about ads on the forum, so I went over to check it out, posted a couple of times in the gunsmithing area and noticed that I'd never even introduced myself on here. Anyway, I'm medically retired from the army, spent the first 4 years as an 11B (infantry rifleman) in the 82nd Airborne and the rest of my time in the 5th Special Forces Group as an 18B/18E (SF weapons & communications specialist). Now I have a fairly complete set-up in my shop for gunsmith work, still missing a milling machine though. I've spent years taking course after course on everything from flintlock rifles to AR-15s and most things inbetween, though none yet on knife making. I own some land in Colorado that I had planned to build on and move there, but the political climate in CO is an odd thing, it shifts directions way too often. Besides, all of my family is either in VA or GA, so TN is a whole lot closer, so now I'm looking at finding some land out in the boonies somewhere in TN or KY, but it's got to have some flat spots since even though I love hills and mountains my wheelchair doesn't. Plus I want my own range on it and plenty of area to hunt. I'm also a ham radio nut and active in a local ARES group (Amateur Radio Emergency Services). So if you're into ham radio I'm K4IDK. Oh, and my name is Robert.

I've done this with every AR-15 that I've built and it does make a difference. It doesn't matter who makes the upper, that area of the forging or casting is not going to be square unless they've done it themselves and I do not know of any factory that does this on stripped uppers that they sell and very few do it on the guns that they build themselves and sell you. The barrel extensions, as Dolomite pointed out, have a locator pin in the way, but I've measured a number of them with a depth dial indicator around the circumference and could not find any discrepencies of note on the ones that I've looked at, so I don't look anymore.

Hamilton Bowen does great work, good teacher as well. I've taken his class on single actions a couple of times.