im supposed to look into the future and read a post you make 4 minutes after me?
It was explained in my first post. For the cost of a turnkey (i.e., complete, off-the-shelf) rifle, I bought the exact same thing (same brand upper and lower) plus a ton of accessories.
But, for the price of a turnkey rifle, I've gotten the same rifle, with a better bolt carrier group, better charging handle, better buffer, tac sling, a KAC RAS, and 12 Pmags.
Maybe I misread the tone of your post, but come on, the "reloading doesn't save any actual money" line is thrown around on a daily basis on the reloading forum. It makes your money
go further, but
very few people actually
spend less.
And the general wisdom with ARs is that the same thing holds true more often than not. Especially since with some dealers, like CMMG, you can swap parts around or leave some off if you can get a better deal elsewhere.
Also, most of the "kit" deals really aren't deals if you ask me. It's about $660 with shipping and transfer fees for a Del-Ton stripped lower and a kit with a chrome bore. And you end up with the equivalent of a rifle Del-Ton sells for something like $790 all told. A used Del-ton... well, if it were 6 months ago, you could find a like new one for just about $660 with all the fees, if you were patient and lucky.
About the only way to really save a good amount of money there is to buy as many parts as you can used, and put together the upper yourself too. That can save you a good $300-400 instead of $100-$150, but you end up needing a lot of fancy tools, which kick the savings back down to $100-$150, unless you build more rifles in the future.
I pretty much only managed to put my rifle together so cheaply due to being lucky, and snagging some great deals before others could. If I hadn't been in the right place at the right time so often, it probably wouldn't have been worth the 2 months it's taken just to order everything, versus buying a rifle off the shelf.
