Got it seated with a rubber mallet and a piece of wood, which brought me to my next problem, which I had wondered if it could happen, and promptly ran squarely into.

Tightened and loosened the barrel nut a couple times to seat everything and burnish the threads. "Mollyed" up the threads and went for the final torquing down... At 35 ft/lbs one hole was just barely too far. At 60 ft/lbs I was only 1/3 of the way to the next hole -- to get it to the next hole was going to be way over 80 ft/lbs. So I had to back off and only tighten to ~25 ft/lbs to align a hole for the gas tube.

Is there a fix for this, or is that light a torque OK?

As an aside: I wanted to learn how to build an AR (and have a good excuse to buy new tools ) but I didn't want it to turn into the adventure it has become:

  • Defective flash hider
  • Defective Spikes lower
  • And now can't torque the barrel to the suggested range

If defective parts and strange situations come your way after you're familiar with a process that's one thing, but this has been an exercise in frustration.

O2