Last week my lovely wife, Fancy Sue, got us all setup with DPMS as a distributor. Part of that included DPMS listing Live To Shoot North Carolina in their dealer database so we show up anytime anyone in NC uses the "dealer locator" function on the DPMS website. This has been an educational process. About 2 days after she set us up, my phone started ringing with people all wanting the same thing. Everyone was looking for DPMS AR10 type rifles in stock. In particular, they wanted the new calibers that DPMS is advertising like 204 Ruger, 260 Remington, and 300WSSM. The 260 Remington being the one in highest demand. Well, DPMS hasn't begun to build those rifles and they are quoting 6-8 months delivery. One of my callers was extremely dissappointed to find out that no one had any of these rifles. He actually wanted two of them so he and his friend could work up 260 Rem loads this winter and be ready for a good season of Varmint hunting next spring. (note: I know 204 Ruger is built on the AR15 platform and not the AR10, but those requests are coming in as well)

Well, I can't stand to hear a gun buyer be dissappointed, so I asked him if he wanted 2 really accurate guns? He said of course. So I ordered up a couple of the DPMS rifles in 308 Win and we are going to convert them to 260 Rem using some extremely high quality barrels and most of the other parts from the 308 doner guns. I'll be posting some pictures and updates as we go along. When we are through, these are going to be the most accurate 260 Rem DPMS guns on the planet, and we're going to build them in 8 weeks, not 8 months. That is our goal at LTS, find ways to give our customers the highest level of customer service and solve their problems. This one should be fun. Stay tuned. The rifles just showed up today and dissassembly starts this weekend.

way to go the extra mile I like to see that some places still have great service like this. awesome keep us updated

Unfortunately, I can't post in real time, but I am documenting these two builds and will be sharing the information as we go. It'll just be a week or two old before I can get it on the web. In this first photo, you can see I was eager to get to work and started stripping the first gun before I decided I had better set the camera up.


If you can't tell from this photo how much stronger and well built the DPMS AR10 rifles are than a normal AR-15, maybe this picture will help.


The bolt carrier and bolt assembly in the foreground is from an AR15 and the one from the DPMS gun is behind it. These guns are really built to stand up to some abuse.

For those of you with weak stomachs, look away now. I tore out every pin, spring and screw from the upper and the trigger group from the lower.

Oh the carnage of it all! I suppose you might be asking why all of this is necessary. Here is why. Since we are converting these guns from 308 Winchester to 260 Remington the barrels have to be replaced. In an AR platform, the three main things that have to be top quality and mate up together with minimum tolerances are the bolt, barrel extension and the barrel chamber. You can see these parts in this picture,
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And yes, I can see that the barrel extension is facing backwards. So the whole point of getting these rifles stripped down as soon as they came in the door was to get the barrel extension and bolt sent to the manufacturer of the new barrel. He will install the barrel extension and lap the inside face of the lugs to be square to chamber. Then he'll lap the backside of the bolt lugs to be square as well and smooth as glass. After that is all done, he will do the final ream on the chamber and bring the throat to just barely above the minimum headspace requirement. Doing all of this, and using a precision cut and rifled barrel are the keys to acheiving accuracy in any AR platform. While it may sound like a lot of work, it really isn't that bad for someone with the right tools and experience. Compared to trying to make an M1 or M14 sub-moa accurate, AR's are a walk in the park.

I can't wait to see these barrels when they are finished. They will be 24" long and fully fluted, except for the gas block area. Then there will be a very effective and ominous looking muzzle brake on the end of the barrel that will look like it was machined as part of the barrel. The handguards will get special porting to help vent the heat up and around the scope to cut down on mirage distortion, and I'll be installing some nice triggers that are suited for the varmint hunting work these rifles are meant for. It is rewarding to build rifles for someone who is actually going to use them and put them to the test, and not just let them gather dust in the closet.

More to come.

nice!!

a .243 version would be very appealing to me.

a very under-rated caliber, imo

I totally agree. 243 has been a long time favorite of mine. However, Armalite proved they couldn't give away AR10 uppers in 243. They slashed the pricing on the 243 uppers they had built up until they were under cost, and still no one would buy them. The new 6.8 SPC is just 223 necked up to take 270 Winchester bullets. Back in the early 70's, they developed a round called the 6.5 x 55 that was 223 necked up to take 243 Winchester bullets. That's just a little FYI that all of this hoopla over the special forces developing the 6.8 SPC isn't really a new idea.

I've always had really good accuracy results from 243 handloads. Better than my 308's actually. I've toyed with the idea of having an M14 built in 243, but I can't make myself do it. It shoots flat, fast and accurate. That makes it perfect for anything 100lbs or less and really good for punching paper from long distances.

got a used 700 in 243, w/ a crappy simmons scope on it. shot to 1"to1-1/4" at 100 yd on a factory box of rem ammo,which is about the BEST i can get w/ any of my 308's. can easily cut that in half w/ handloads. havent got to shoot it yet past 100 though.

i might be tempted to try a rifle in 260 rem one day,just 'cuz its a 308 derivitave like the 243, but 204 ruger really does nothing for me.

204 Ruger comes straight out of the making "an old idea new again" file. Once upon a time, varmint shooters snuggled up to their Winchester model 70's with scopes that stretched almost the entire length of the barrel. When they caught sight of a prairie dog way out past 600 yards, they touched off a round of 220 Swift and the only round that traveled faster than 4000 fps flew far, flat and fast. When it hit those dogs, it carried enough Kinetic energy to rip them out of their holes and bowl them across the ground for 10-20 yards. The 220 Swift allowed varmint hunters to continue to stretch their ranges and push the optics manufacturers for better scopes and mounts. It also taught Winchester and other manufacturers about barrel errosion an how it is excellerated by extreme velocity bullets. The 220 Swift is a long action cartridge and eventually major caliber medium action calibers like the 243 and a host of wildcats put the 220 swift on the shelf as an infamous barrel killer.

Barrel technology has changed and button rifling has allowed manufacturers to make much harder rifling. Once again, someone thought it was time to push the 4000 fps barrier again and doing it with a cartridge that could be run in an AR or Mini 14 would really push the COOL factor. Unfortunately, it has the speed of the 220 swift, but not the range. Now we have the scopes to make 800 yard shots on prairie dogs, but the 204 Ruger isn't stable that far out. I'm not sure what the 204 ruger is good for, except that Les Baer has found a way to make AR's that are even more accurate in 204 than his 223. I didn't think that was possible.

At last, the 260 Remington guns are complete. I've decided that I don't get paid to build custom AR style rifles because I know all of their deep dark secrets. No, my job is deal with the parts suppliers, mainly the barrel, who thinks they run the world. After sorting through a mile of half truths regarding pricing changes and delivery, the beautiful, well crafted precision barrels arrived on Friday. There was a big problem with matching bolts they sent back that were headspaced to the barrels, but I won't get into that. Bottom line, I fixed it. So without further delay, here are the pictures.



Its the 24", fully fluted and floated barrels that make these beasts extraordinary. The DPMS receivers are rock solid, which is essential as well. The Miculek muzzle brakes really help with the recoil. I fired them with and without the brake and I would estimate a 25% - 30% reduction in recoil due to the brake and accuracy wasn't effected. These are going to varmint hunters who plan on shooting 800 rounds on a light day.





Finally, here is a picture with one of our standard LTS carbines that is shipping tomorrow. It feels like a toy.




Our next projects will be 6.5 Grendel rifles on the AR15 format and 6.5 Creedmoore rifles based on AR10's. This will squeeze another 200-300 yards out of each platform over the standard .223 Remington and 308 Winchester chamberings. Wish me luck.

I love them, very nice! I'm curious though with larger cailbers on the increase for ar platforms do you have to check your headspace. I know I do it anyway with the ar's I've thrown together. I've always had good luck. hope this isn't ever an issue I'd love for all the calibers to be easy to build.

Headspace is critical to not only making a safe gun, but also an accurate gun. For specialized guns like these, we cut the chambers to match the bolt with just about the minimum spec on headspace. Since these guns will spend their life shooting handloads, the owners expect to have the headspace values given to them so they can best tailor their loads. If you switched the bolts between these two identical guns, the accuracy opens up by more than .5" at 100 yards. Bolts, barrels, chambers and barrel extensions are painstakingly cut to match each other with the least amount of tolerance possible. You can get away with swapping bolts on standard AR's for the most part because everything is cut to G.I. specs with 5.56 chambers. If you have a bad setup, you will get stretched brass and crappy accuracy. If it goes the wrong way, very rare, you could get a serious over pressure situation or a gun that just won't go into battery. That is part of the difference between building a tack driver like these and building a gun that meets Mil-Spec with NATO chambers. These guns were both sub .5 MOA with just factory ammo. I'm sure the owners used their experience in handloading to squeeze that down even tighter. These guys are professional varmint killers.

The next experiment is to build a gun chambered in 6.5 Creedmoor and see if it can be made even more accurate. The 260 Remington and 6.5 Creedmoor both use .264 projectiles, but the case design is different. I'm told by Dennis DeMille that the 6.5 Creedmoor will out shoot the 260 Rem easily. Of course, he has some bias. Maybe we'll get a chance to build one in a few months and see.

I thought it was like that but really had no hands on to say. I know that mil-spec means so in the field there weapons all have compatible parts, in the middle of whatever might be going on. These ar's you have made are an exception to the rule only for one reason they have to be! Nice work!