#NoDakSpud

Palmetto State Armory recently acquired the Harrington & Richardson brand, and is working with NoDak Spud to make a new series of retro rifles with clone correct features and even historical roll marks. The head of this project is Mike from NoDak Spud, who probably knows more about cloning retro ARs than anybody else in the industry. Hop and Mike had a great conversation at SHOT Show 2023 about the first few guns in the retro series including an M16A1, a 723 style carbine, and a 9mm SMG clone.

On 12/16/2021, Palmetto State Armory Announced in its Industry Forum on AR15.com that its parent company JJE will acquire Nodak Spud LLC and make it a subsidiary of Harrington & Richardson. H&R is a well-known name in the firearms industry not only for its revolvers and sporting arms but also for being the largest contractor for M14 rifles and one of only four contractors for the M16A1 during the Vietnam war.

NoDak Spud has recently developed a set of aftermarket iron sights for the popular Ruger American Ranch rifles. For the most part, new production bolt action rifle manufacturers seem to have forsaken iron sights in favor of the expectancy that users will add an optic of their choosing. The Ruger American Ranch rifles are quite affordable and reliable, yet don’t feature iron sights, until now.

Today we take a look at a build that brings us back to the Colt Commando era. and back to the future again!

This AR-180B originally had a polymer lower receiver. However it has been updated with a NoDak SPUD AR-180 billet lower receiver. The polymer lowers can break from hard use so a metal replacement is a much needed upgrade. The receiver is threaded for AR buffer tubes however the LOP is still rather long even when the stock is fully collapsed. The AR180B can take any AR-15 style magazines so it is sporting a SureFire 100rd magazine. Ontop of the upper receiver is a QD scope mount with a Nikon P223 scope. The only thing it needs now is removal of the flash hider and threaded for suppressor.

With all the recent press on retro-styled AR rifle offerings by Colt, Troy and others, I thought it would be fitting to highlight one of the original (and most technically accurate) manufacturers of “clone” receivers and parts. Beginning in 2005, NoDak Spud, a small firearms manufacturing company based in Edina, Minnesota, introduced high quality AK receivers for parts-kit builders like myself.