All Photos are Screenshots from This Source: https://youtu.be/0Z353BT6I18
With this year’s long weekend preceding July 4th, I found myself traveling down the rabbit hole of suggested videos on YouTube when I found something truly noteworthy. Normally, these videos have so little to do with your initial search, that most folks just close the tab or move on to something else, but when I stumbled upon a very interesting video from YouTuber, GunCraft101, I was compelled to watch it.
GunCraft’s host, John, has finally answered the question asked by so many shooters who don’t reload – “What do I do with all this damn brass?”
The answer?
Build a battle rifle.
OK, it’s not that simple, but the host clearly is both very talented, and a trained machinist. Where most people would be content to build an AR-15 from a parts kit with a store-bought lower, and the more dedicated bunch completing an 80% lower, John took a different approach.
John states that after his previous ambitious AR-15 lower built from melted aluminum cans, he wants to cast and machine an AR-10 lower from brass casings.
He starts with a bucket of various casings from a half dozen different calibers, and carefully weighs out enough to smelt into molten brass. It takes 1,425 casings weighing in at more than 11 pounds to get enough brass for the project.
Before melting all this down, he first takes some casting sand along with a rough outline made from wood, and makes an oversized mold to pour this brass into. It’s oversized, since the brass will shrink as it cools.
He then continuously adds casings to his home-built kiln, smelting them down into a molten brass compound. After scraping the
