I'm picking up a PSR chassis in January. Here to connect and learn with whom I can to get all the facts. I have already had great conversations with numerous individuals.
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Very nice chassis, that looks like the early type that Brownells sold on their website 5+ years ago for about $1,400 each. Unfortunately, that's one of the easier part of the PSR/MSR build to acquire (the barrels are easiest to find), so it's going to be an uphill battle from here. Acquiring an actual loose PSR/MSR receiver is next to impossible, same with finding the rest of the parts. Loose PSR/MSR have sold for $5,000+ on Gunbroker in the past few years. Take-off prototype/testing, commercial leftover and contract overrun PSR/MSR barrels can typically be found on Gunbroker and other sources. You want to also grab some of the loose barrel extensions and other parts as they pop up for sale. There's a lot of guys who have purchased PSR/MSR parts when JFE and other places started selling them a few years ago, so you have a lot of competition for the more rare PSR/MSR parts when they pop up for sale.
I hate proving bad news, and you're obviously very excited about acquiring this chassis and starting your PSR/MSR build, but it's going to be a long road ahead of you. I was the very first collector/cloner to complete a PSR/MSR build from scratch, and that took me many years trying to find the correct parts (which was also before everyone else started building these rifles). It is possible to do, but it gets more and more challenging as time goes on, so you'll have to remain extremely vigilant about searching for and finding these rare parts. You can expect to pay A LOT of money for the parts you need, since you have competition from everyone else who is doing what you're doing.
Back when Brownells was selling these early anodized PSR/MSR chassis on their site, people were buying them and reaching out to me with questions about their build. Back then I had publicly shared my PSR/MSR build and progress on the forums, so people incorrectly assumed that I had a bunch of spare parts or thought that I knew where to find all of the parts they needed for the build. I was honest with everyone about how incredibly challenging a PSR/MSR build is, and every single person who contacted me ended up returning their chassis to Brownells after talking to me. That's how difficult these builds are to do.
Just keep in mind that original PSR/MSR rifles with their full kits sell for $20,000+ on the low end. So if you find a receiver for $5,000 and a complete bolt for $5,000, that $10k is still substantially less than the price of an actual PSR/MSR rifle and all of its accessories! You might end up spending $15,000 on this build, but it will be the equivalent to spending $25,000+ on an already completed rifle with full kit. That price difference is massive, and that's the driving force behind everyone doing these PSR/MSR builds! This is some of the best advice that I can possibly give you, a $5k receiver and especially a $5k bolt sounds insane for a regular rifle build, but you're not building a regular rifle and the cost of your part at these prices will still be far less than the value of the completed rifle and full kit. So, those prices on single loose items are completely justified, and you'll just have to bite the bullet, purchase those very rare rare parts at very high prices, and move on with your build (and you'll still come out on top in the end if you do everything correctly).
You have to think in terms of how these rare/expensive loose parts are relative to the PSR/MSR rifles in general, not how these rare/loose parts compare to normal rifles. The way you think about this build and your understanding of it will be a factor in your success. If you understand this concept, you'll immediately purchase a $5k receiver and $5k bolt when they pop up for sale, as opposed to thinking that the price is way too high and that you'll wait around for cheaper parts to pop up for sale. I can promise you that you'll never find PSR/MSR parts that are cheaper than what they sell for right now, and you don't want to pass anything up when they finally come up for sale. This is an aspect of the PSR/MSR build that you'll usually never hear from anyone else, but it's an extremely important part of completing one of these builds!
I wish you luck on your journey, and I really hope that you're able to complete your PSR/MSR build! It's going to take you a lot of time, money, and effort to get this rifle together, but the build is technically possible to complete (although it might take you many years and well over $10,000 to do). I hope that I'm not too discouraging, but I'm not going to sugar coat things or lie to you, this is going to be an extremely difficult and expensive build. I'm one of the very few people to successfully build the PSR/MSR rifle and full kit feom spare/loose parts, so I'm trying to give you good information that's based on my own experiences and from what I've seen in the collector/cloner market over the past 5+ years.
If you're able to pull it off and complete the PSR/MSR build, it will be one hell of an amazing accomplishment and you'll have an amazing rifle for your collection! You're a new guy on this forum, so please get to know the regulars who post here, and get an idea for what different forum members specialize in. Please ask any questions you might have, and we'll do what we can to give you good and honest advice. You might want to start your own PSR/MSR build thread in this Vintage Section, as opposed to continuing to post in this specific thread. That way you can have all of the information that's specific to YOUR build all in one place, and it helps the rest us keep track of your questions and responses.
There's a lot of amazing people on this forum, especially here in the Vintage Section, and we're all willing to help where we can. It's an amazing community and we're always helping each other out in some way, so you definitely joined the right forum and posted in the right spot! I hope you enjoy it here and I hope that we can help you with this build in some meaningful way (by providing information and/or by helping you find rare parts). Remember to keep an eye on the Equipment Exchange on this forum, sometimes very rare parts pop up for sale and you don't want to miss out on them!
