Luth-AR is a powerhouse in the modern gun world. In addition to offering an extensive line of black rifle parts and accessories, Luth-AR also makes a surprising lot of the stuff you buy from other folks as well. One of their latest offerings orbits around the Colt Model 601 — A Luth-AR Retro M-16 Kit if you will.

This new drop-in assembly sports a slick-sided upper receiver with period-correct A1 iron sights, a chrome-lined pencil-profile barrel, and an early 3-prong open-tipped duckbill flash suppressor. This is the plug-and-play component that allows you to build up your own vintage M16 variant at home. Owning, collecting, and shooting guns is cool. Building them up yourself is a uniquely American pastime.

Before Luth-AR Retro — In the Beginning…

Gene Stoner and a few others contrived the 7.62x51mm AR10 back in 1956. Their mission was to design an infantry rifle that incorporated the same advanced materials science and engineering that was pioneered in World War 2 aviation. The following year, they shrank the gun down to accept the .223 cartridge, itself also the brainchild of Gene Stoner. The subsequent AR15 changed the way the world looked at guns.

That earliest AR15 sold first to the Federation of Malaya and, afterwards, the US Air Force. Then the Army got on board and bought these guns like there was no tomorrow. Now, more than half a century later, the M16 is a longest-running combat rifle in American history. 

Throughout it all, the basic AR15 action was stretched, compressed, tweaked, molested, and transformed. The most modern versions are indestructible, festooned with electronic widgets, and heavy. However, along the way, we have gotten away from exactly what sold us all on the gun in the first place. Those early black rifles were diaphanously lightweight and inimitably maneuverable.

Family Tree

The Colt 601 was the first AR rifle used by the US military. Production began in 1959 and extended through 1963. Somewhere around 14,000 examples were produced. There is a fairly famous photograph of President Kennedy pawing over an example in the Oval Office in April of 1963. Less than a year later, at least one of the Secret Service agents on Kennedy’s security detail was packing a 601 when the President was shot in Dallas.

The furniture on the first three hundred 601 rifles was made from raw Bakelite. Afterwards, Colt used the same furniture but painted it with a rugged green epoxy paint. They eventually finished these components in flat black.

In 1960, USAF General Curtis LeMay used a Colt 601 at a barbecue in Maryland to explode a few melons recreationally. LeMay was so smitten with the lithe little rifle that he ordered a bunch of them for his Air Force security personnel. The Army later got all covetous, and here we are.

In the past, building up a 601 meant haunting the Internet for used components of dubious quality and provenance. Now, thanks Randy Luth and his merry mob of mad geniuses at Luth-AR, we can build these rifles up from scratch using top quality new components. Getting there is half the fun.

Randy Luth The Pioneer

Have you ever seen an AR rifle with a rail on the side? Randy Luth did that first. Ever used an AR-variant to hunt something? Randy pioneered that as well. He founded DPMS and then spun that company off before starting Luth-AR. He’s also a friend and a genuinely nice guy.

Randy invests in the infrastructure to keep Luth-AR at the cutting edge of the market. After struggling to find a reliable source of vintage upper receivers, he bought the forging dies to make them himself. Dissatisfied with the retro handguards available on the commercial market, Randy tooled up to produce his own. Luth-AR triangular handguards include aluminum heat shields riveted in place just like the originals. Screws would be cheaper, but rivets are more durable while remaining true to the originals. 

Luth-AR Retro Build

Luth-AR’s new 601 upper is spot-on perfect. Randy’s crew makes the A1 rear sights in-house. The 20-inch thin-profile barrels start out as Vortakt blanks that are rifled 1-in-7. The originals were 1-in-14. However, modern heavy bullets in the 62 to 77-grain range invariably tumble through those old, slow barrels. The faster twist rate stabilizes most anything that will fit down the bore. These Luth-AR barrels also have chrome-plated bores and chambers just in case you might need to spend a year running these guns in some sweaty Southeast Asian jungle someplace.

The barrels are manganese phosphate finished for a proper vintage look, and the 0.625-inch non-F marked front sight base is a dead ringer for the originals. The early-style 601 triangular charging handle is markedly smaller than the M4 version with which we are all familiar. The duckbill flash suppressor actually works better than the closed birdcage sort. However, the design was changed after Uncle Sam found out that grunts were using it to twist the wire off of ammo crates. 

The triangular handguards look and feel exactly like those I used for real back in the day. Luth-AR offers them in either black or green as the Spirit leads. The bolt and bolt carrier are all hard chrome-plated, just like those old Colt versions back in 1963. Naturally, everything is a drop-in fit on any standard AR lower.

Luth-AR Retro Nostalgia

It is amazing how handy and maneuverable these guns were before we started hanging so much stuff all over them. There are lots of ways to mount optics on this gun, but that’s missing the point. You don’t build up a 601 clone because you want to HALO into Helmand Province with it. You build this rifle up just for the pure unfiltered nostalgia. Running those old iron sights reminded me of the good old days when my eyes were sharp, my back didn’t hurt, and I was both bulletproof and immortal.

Of course this rifle was completely reliable. Thanks to the 1-in-7 twist barrel, my 601 clone shot straight with everything from Winchester M193 55-grain ball up to ultra-modern Black Hills 77-grain Open-Tip Match loads. Recoil is positively recreational. It is really cool hearing and feeling the sharp twang of the buffer cycling right past my ear as well. If you know, you know…

Not satisfied to just punch tight little clusters of holes with this sexy little rifle, I mounted the parts up on a transferable full auto lower receiver for a little quality range time as well. Now that brought back some memories.

Full-Auto Novelty

Back when these rifles first saw service, giving every individual grunt a real-deal fully automatic rifle was a bit of a novelty. Most Vietnam-era troops would load their 20-round box magazines with 18 rounds to maximize reliability and then run their guns on full auto or nothing at all. A tooled-up infantry platoon all rocking and rolling at once produces a breathtaking volume of fire. 

We’re not quite so profligate these days. In fact, modern grunts are trained not to use the full auto function on their weapons except under the most dire of circumstances. However, that was not always the case.

I have a fairly well-exercised trigger finger. I had forgotten how much full it was running a stripped-down full auto M16. The gun cycles at around 750 rounds per minute on rock and roll. Pay attention to technique and lean into the thing, and you can keep your rounds in a pie plate at reasonable CQB distances.

Luth-AR Retro M-16 & C7

There aren’t a lot of countries in the world wherein you can order a bunch of parts through the mail and build up your own M16 clone on a serialized lower receiver. That’s a big part of what makes America special. The Luth-AR upper sports an MSRP of $639. Luth-AR will sell you everything else you need to complete this project as well. Stripped lower receivers litter the landscape at your local gun emporium. If you struggle with any part of the build, there is always the miracle of YouTube.

Luth-AR offers a similar drop-in upper to build up a Canadian C7 rifle as well should you wish to pay homage to our frozen brothers up north. The build is a great way to kill an evening after work. It is even better if you have a handy kid who might like to help out while tasting a little history along the way. The end result is like handheld history.