Brownells is killin' the game, Wrenchman MLOK free float handguards for $99.99-109.99

The handguard arrived yesterday but I didn't get a chance to assemble the upper until late last night.

First impressions are that it is very well made and the machining is beautiful. There are no large Brownells logos, just the Wrenchman logo, patent pending, and the "M" which is a requirement from Magpul in order to manufacture anything MLOK related. There are no T slot markings, which is not important to me but may be to others.

The barrel nut is easy to time, they include a little tool to help but I didn't use it, I just eyeballed it and verified by sliding the handguard over the barrel nut and making sure it aligned perfectly with the upper receiver. Now that it's installed, I gave it the ol' kung fu grip squeeze and there is very little flex to it.

In comparison to the 10" MCMR rail from BCM, the Wrenchman is a little more T H I C C, and is slightly heavier, but not enough to matter. I actually find the additional width to fit my large hands slightly better.

I used to have a plug for getting the MCMR rails for between $130-145, but that source has dried up and they are typically $179.95 most places. It will be another week or two before I'm healed up enough to go put some rounds through it, but if it holds up and I don't experience any shifting of the rail, which I don't think there will be despite not having any anti rotation tabs, this will probably become my go to rail. I certainly won't replace my MCMR with one, but for the price these seem to be a darn good option.
Attachment 43575

Mine came in this afternoon...finally upgraded from a quadrail on my venerable 6920.

Mounted the Wrenchman to a new BCM receiver and my 11.5" BFH barrel. There's a noticable weight reduction compared to the DD 10.0 Lite rail it replaced.

Reinstalled the original Colt barrel (trimmed to 14.5") along with the DD rail back onto my Colt upper. Now to buy folding BUIS and a LVPO for this one.


Before and after...https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...610f70a744.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...17a86a0562.jpg

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kwb377

Mine came in this afternoon...finally upgraded from a quadrail on my venerable 6920.

Mounted the Wrenchman to a new BCM receiver and my 11.5" BFH barrel. There's a noticable weight reduction compared to the DD 10.0 Lite rail it replaced.

Reinstalled the original Colt barrel (trimmed to 14.5") along with the DD rail back onto my Colt upper. Now to buy folding BUIS and a LVPO for this one.


Before and after...https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...610f70a744.jpghttps://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...17a86a0562.jpg

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Looks good. 11.5" uppers are the cat's pajamas.

Decided to go ahead and get the 12.5" Precision version earlier this week for the 14.5" upper.

They must have realized they priced them too low initially...price had gone up since I ordered the first one last week, and just noticed it went up another $20 or so since I ordered this one on Wednesday.

I've only put @200 rounds through the short one, but so far it's rock solid. https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/201...fc1853e9f8.jpg

Just ordered a 15” precision model of these, currently $30 off at Brownells ($129). Replacing a 9 inch carbon fiber which I loathe on my 16 inch Alexander Arms 6.5 grendel. Price is quite a bit under comparable 15 inch rails in the market.

https://www.brownells.com/rifle-part...rod124922.aspx

Well, I didn't need to see that...

...or the sale on Faxon barrels.

Obviously this stimulus money is not going too far

Well, that 6920 upper receiver won't be sitting idle anymore. Lightweight carbine upper here I come.

I used an unfired 6920 upper I had sitting around as the basis of the ultralight build. For reasons I don't fully grasp, the people at Colt put Rocsett on the barrel nut. That made disassembling the 6920 upper a bitch on stilts.

After soaking the barrel for 7 hours we managed to use a custom-made barrel wrench that some very smart people carefully manufactured to get the 6920's barrel nut off and proceeded with the build.

The Faxon pencil barrel and gas block installed with no problems.

The Wrenchman was...interesting. The barrel nut the Wrenchman uses could stand to be made from a better quality steel. As it is, it's fairly soft which means the corners a wrench is supposed to bite on round over easily. The finish strips right off with even relatively moderate contact, too. You are going to want to hit it with some cold blue once you get it on there. Their polymer alignment guide isn't quite as precise as I'd like. After getting it happy it was apparent to the naked eye that the barrel nut needed to be moved further to get the gas tube centered up in one of the relief holes for it.

Then once we put the rail on it was clear that it needed yet more of a turn because the rail was misaligned with the upper.

Given that I only paid $100 for it and that it is going to be used on a general purpose teaching/beater carbine, I'm not terribly worried about it. It should be just fine. Still, if you're looking to build something for more demanding purposes you probably want to look at one of the more expensive rail options.

@TCinVA

Have you used any of the ALG rails, and could you compare the two? Those always looked like a decent lower priced rail to me.