The Rock River AR15

Sangamon County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois

The Rock River AR-15

Brent Harney speaking at the 2/2/09 SCRA Meeting
February 2009 GunNews

This gun the owner brought in is a National Match model from our friends at Rock River. Harney said this Rock River AR15 is mostly set up for the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) for the long range military shooting. Its got the heavy stainless steel barrel but it has to be about 99% of the standard service weapon which is regular M16A2. So its got pretty much the same flash hiders. An air gap stainless steel barrel that isn't standard equipment but its pretty close.

The gas tube comes out right underneath the front sight. There is a hole drilled in the top of the barrel. When it goes out it forces the gas back up through this tube and that goes into the key right here on top of the bolt and that's what forces it back and forth.

The black is not actually the whole barrel. If you look you can see the barrel down underneath. Its a surround. But its meant to keep the weight way out there for a steady shot. The heavier the barrel, the steadier it is.

Rock River is probably one of the best that Harney says he has seen lately.

The National Match sights has a smaller hole than your standard sight and it clicks. Instead of being adjustable where every click moves it a half of a minute of angle, this moves it a quarter. Its a little better adjustment so they can really zero these things in.

Harney asked the owner if he had shot it at any competitions and if so where.

The owner said CMP out at Abe Lincoln and the first time out he shot 196.  Harney said that was really good.
Abe Lincoln Gun Club's shoot is on Sunday mornings the fourth Sunday of the month and guests are welcome.

Harney does the pistol shooting on Thursday night. Harney tries to do the three gun out at Loami and the different competitions. If he's out at something like that and somebody new wants to come and try it, try it. He'll give them the ammo and let them try it.

There are guys out there who will be glad to let you shoot a Garand from World War II, a 1903 Springfield bolt action from World War I, old Mausers, pistols, you name it. 99% of the guys in here who've got something, if they've got it at the range and you want to try it out, no problem.

Harney is still in the Army National Guard, and he works on weapons. They go around to the different units and work on their weapons doing the annual gauging and making sure everything is correct on them. Harney said when they were at Galena working on weapons, they had some weapons that belonged to the VFW in the storage room. The Chief's like, "What are these?" He pulled that bolt back and got his thumb jammed in there pretty good. His thumb was doing one of these numbers, "@#$%." Harney said they call it Garand thumb because if you don't get your thumb out of the way, the gun will eat your thumb.

It used to be in high power competitions that the lines were completely full of Garands and you saw very few of what they used to refer to as the mouse guns, pip-squeaks or poodle shooters because it is such a small caliber.

There's guys shooting these things at 1000 yard matches and last year at the national matches you saw very few of the Garands compared to these.   You will see some guys really shoot these things at ungodly distances. Harney says he is still going, "Eh, not without telescopic sights" and that he can't see the target that they are shooting at.

Rock River Arms has the contract for weapons at DEA. They are built really nice.

The owner also brought in some little parts. Harney showed us a part that fits inside the bolt for dry fire. It doesn't let the back of the bolt get all pinged up by the hammer. That sits inside there and lets it catch in that. The little yellow, white and orange things are what you call a safety flags. Put this in the chamber and this bright yellow piece sticks out so that from across the room, you can see that it is unloaded and its blocked.

Harney told the owner if he got the chance to take this up to the Guns Save Life meeting and John has what they call a MOACKS tool (Mother of all carrier key staking) for you to properly stake your gas keys(s). The gas key is screwed on to the bolt carrier. If you start banging away with this thing, those screws start to back out. Have you ever seen what happens to a gun once one of these finally manages to back out? It's now a two-thousand dollar paper weight, if you're not wearing part of it for earrings. And they take and dent these in so those screws can not come out.

You have never disassembled one of these until you have taken it down to the little bitty ball bearing detents and springs in a carpeted room at Fort Brag and you have 15 people, seven SF guys and 8 guys from the Guard trying to find that damned little part before the vacuum cleaner does.

These have three gas rings. You always hear, they can't all be at the same location, too much blow by. McFarland is a competitor for AR-15's. He decided, "Why do I need to do that?" So he came out with these new gas rings. Its one ring but its a spiral like a curly fry. There is no gap. They can put it on. Harney puts it in all of his even the ones that went into the sand. I took it out!!!   But there's no gap. So there's no blow by and they're really nice. You see them in Les Baur's Thunder Ranch rifle. Some of the really high dollar competitors will replace these rings for each competition.

When these things are run in the middle of the desert, they should be run wet, plenty of oil. If you don't have oil spray on your glasses, you probably don't have enough oil in it.

To test the rings to see if they're any good, pull that bolt out, set it there and it should stay just like that. If it goes (flop), your rings are shot. That's usually the biggest thing in the Army Guard Armories that fail a weapon. You'll see a lot of them that are worn out and when you set it there, it'll just (flop).

The other thing we check for in there is the firing pin hold because they will erode and get too big. We check the depth for the firing pin, there is a gauge we run across to make sure it is sticking up far enough to hit the primer but not far enough to pierce the primer. If you pierce the primer half of your force that's supposed to be going this way goes this way. You don't want to be behind it when something goes wrong because these things can throw parts for quite a ways.

Harney continued on answering questions from members, and the attendees gained a lot of valuable information. This writeup is just a summary; to really get the effect of these presentations, you need to come to the meetings if you can. First Monday of the month in Springfield with Sangamon County Rifle Association, or second Tuesday of the month with the Champaign County Rifle Association in Urbana. Either way, you'll usually get a fine technical education on some piece of shooting equipment.

See you in March!

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