Check out a video we made talking about all of these here: https://youtu.be/u-GENqoSscE
Will magnesium start on fire?
No. Will your rifle start on fire? Not unless you put it into a fire or greatly misuse and abuse your rifle.
Magnesium will not start on fire until it approaches its melting point of about 1100 degrees Fahrenheit. While magnesium is flammable, it is much easier to ignite small amounts like chips from machining or dust and fine powders from cutting or sanding. Here is a great representation of magnesium’s flammability. https://youtu.be/_36JJ-DBuo8
Isn’t magnesium weak/brittle?
No. Well not at least Roams magnesium alloy.
Just pure magnesium and pure aluminum are weak/brittle however Roam doesn’t use pure magnesium. We use a magnesium alloy. Alloy selection is a huge factor in the strength of all metals. One of the best examples of this is Bronze. Bronze at its base is an alloy of Copper and Tin. Both considered soft or weak metals when alloyed together they create a much stronger alloy. You can also add a small amount of other material like aluminum, nickel, or iron to create even stronger or more corrosion resistant alloys. With the right alloy selections, some bronze alloys can be stronger than some steels. The same is true for magnesium alloys. While I can’t say exactly what alloy we use, I can say it has similar and superior strength to 6061 aluminum the most common aluminum alloy used for handguards.
As a matter of fact, you have probably used a tool that has magnesium as part of its assembly. Manufacturers like the yellow one and the red one, use magnesium housing for their gearbox in some of their cordless tools to keep weight down. I also bet you have dropped that tool and it still works. That is relatively low strength die cast magnesium. Now add the strength of better alloy selection and a forged or extruded part, and you get the superior strength of Roam parts.
Should I “True” or lap my upper receiver?
No.
The most common question about this is lapping, squaring, or trueing the front of your receiver to improve accuracy of your rifle or to shrink headspace. Firstly, we do not recommend doing anything to modify or remove the coating on your Roam parts. Secondly, we don’t think it does anything meaningful.
While we understand the idea of trying to improve accuracy or fit by doing this in a bolt gun we don’t think the same logic can really be transferred to ARs. There are a couple of main things to get into here, so we will try to split them up into sections. If you don’t want to read all this, I would ask, are there any manufacturers currently doing this to rifles they sell? Not that we are aware of. If it was so useful in improving accuracy or squareness, why wouldn’t manufacturers do this? For us that is a pretty damming reason not to do this, but we will go further in depth as to why we feel it is unnecessary.
In a bolt gun, your receiver/locking lugs, barrel/chamber, and bolt are three separate pieces. So, in theory depending on your action, lapping the front of your receiver or barrel could shrink your headspace by a very small amount. To truly shrink headspace, a machining operation likely by turning your receiver face or barrel face on a lathe would be needed to meaningfully reduce headspace. This type of operation should only be performed by a gunsmith. None of this applies to an AR. In an AR your barrel/chamber and locking lugs are functionally one piece and your upper receiver has no impact on your headspace. The barrel extension being threaded onto your barrel at over 100ft/lbs. The way the barrel is assembled removes the receiver as an important part of how/where your bolt and locking lugs interact. Your bolt sort of “floats” inside your upper and your barrel/extension set where it stops. This means lapping your upper receiver will not reduce headspace or create a tighter fit with your barrel. The only way to do that would be to remove the barrel extension and change how it fits up to your barrel. It is extremely difficult, and we do not recommend doing this as this will change how/where your barrel pin and gas port line up and could render your barrel useless or greatly impact the functionality of your barrel and rifle.
The idea of squaring or trueing your bore to your receiver face. Even accounting for variation in coating and paint, I would be extremely surprised if a tool you can run by hand or in a hand drill is capable of creating a more square or true surface than a CNC machine. Just because it is shiny doesn’t mean it more square to your bore or flat. If it is surface contact, you are worried about with your upper whether it is magnesium or aluminum they are so much less ridged than the steel of your barrel extension that the amount of force applied by you barrel nut will cause your upper receiver and barrel extension to make excellent contact. For the idea of point of impact shift within and assembled rifle. If you torque your barrel nut to the minimum recommended at least 30ft/lbs your barrel should not be able to move and change your point of impact with use of your rifle. If you disable and resemble your rifle, yes, a point of impact shift could be expected. As far as a bedding compound or gap filler like green Loctite is fine if you want to use it, we don’t think it will make a meaningful improvement. We recommend using a high temperature grease. Future you will thank past you if you ever need to disassemble your rifle.
A less common question we get is lapping your locking lugs and bolt lugs for a smoother/more accurate action. In a bolt gun, we can understand this as you can feel how difficult the action is to cam or rotate into the locking position. We doubt this has a serious or any impact on accuracy in a modern bolt gun and even less in an AR. In an AR we think this is largely useless. If you need your action to cam smoother or its not locking correctly, we don’t think removing at most .001” of material is going to improve the camming of your bolt. If your bolt is camming poorly, it is likely an issue other than your bolt. Do we recommend it? No can you do it sure, if you want to do this the only negative impact is removing coating from your bolt and barrel extension as well as increasing your headspace ever so slightly.
If you really want to improve accuracy in your rifle, we recommend a handful of ways to do so, buy the best barrel you can afford, buy the best trigger you can afford, buy higher quality ammo, and shoot more. These are the ways we would recommend you spend your time and money over squaring or truing your upper receiver.
What are the small plastic screws in my parts?
They are plugs for where we hold the parts for coating and paint.
We want to ensure that we create the best surface and wear protection on our parts, so we add a small feature where we can hold parts during the coating and painting process. Under the screws is the only place uncoated and unpainted magnesium are on your part. We do this intentionally and we then use and aircraft grade grease and a plastic screw to create a sealed non-reactive environment. While this is a bit overkill, we want to create the best parts we can. We recommend leaving them in your parts. If you ever lose one contact us for a replacement.
What should I do as my part wears and the coating is removed? Will my parts corrode to nothing?
When the paint and coating are worn away or damaged, don’t panic. Magnesium and steel will corrode at similar rates when handled poorly. So, treat your Roam parts in a similar manner you how you treat your steel parts. A little extra care can go a long way.
Having said all that rifles are tools and will and should be used. Here are couple tips and some reassurances. Don’t plan on using them for a while, store them somewhere dry or maybe even put a thin layer of oil on exposed parts of your rifle for an added layer of extra protection. At Roam we have done countless hours of corrosion testing. We have uncoated magnesium parts in our shop for a year with only light discoloration and no pitting. We have left parts outside for a whole year to similar results. Put parts in a snowbank and only recovered them in the spring when all the snow is melted. Salt fog and adhesion testing for thousands of hours. As well as some of our most dramatic testing here: https://www.youtube.com/@RoamRifles
If after all this, you are still worried about bare magnesium, we have some recommendations for repainting here as well. Even if you aren’t reapplying Cerakote some good ole’ rattle can paint can work pretty well.
I want to repaint my parts. Should I bead or sand blast them? What is the best practice?
You should NOT blast your parts. The best practice is to lightly abrade the surface of your parts clean, degrease, and paint over the existing Cerakote.
We recommend using fine/general purpose (maroon) or (gray) ultra fine Scotch Brite to rough up the surface and create better adhesion for the new layer paint. A blast of compressed air for light cleaning and acetone or rubbing alcohol are our preferred degreasers. Pluging or masking tight fitting holes such are takedown and pivot holes is recommended especially if multiple layers of Cerakote are going to be used.
What is an Ar10 vs an SR25 and are their parts interchangeable?
Some of them are but in general we recommend assuming they are not until you can further research them.
Now the most common way to differentiate between an AR10 and an SR25 is the shape at the rear of the upper and lower right before they meet the buffer tube. AR10s have the loop shape common to an AR15 (See a Roam AR10) while SR25s have a more geometric shape like part of a triangle or two straight lines (see a Knights Arment Company SR25) In general, AR10s are more common to find parts or partial rifles, however, not always. SR25s are usually sold as complete rifles as there are fewer parts that are compatible but again not always those are generalizations.
The major parts or large parts are not compatible with each other. The receivers, barrel extensions/barrel assembly, trigger groups, and BCG are not cross compatible. Most smaller parts such as your lower parts kit there is quite a bit of cross compatibility. There are some weird odds and ends when you start talking about buffer tubes, buffer springs and buffers. I would recommend sticking to a carbine buffer tube, your standard adjustable buffer tube. There is an SR25 buffer that is about 3/4” longer than a standard carbine buffer tube. This means you can’t use a carbine buffer spring or a carbine buffer. You can buy parts designed for these slightly longer buffer tubes, however they are less common, so we usually recommend staying away from them. Or a rifle length buffer tube, but those come with added weight, so we usually stay away.
When will we offer complete R15 builds?
I can’t say for sure yet, but it should be early in 2026. If there is a specific offering you would like let us know here: https://www.roamrifles.com/contact-us/
Is it strong enough for a 6 ARC build?
Yes, we have shot 6ARC, 450 Bushmaster, and other cartridges.
The shape of the loop on your lower which is usually thought of as the failure point is very similar in shape and thickness to an Ar10 which at Roam we have been shooting for years. We have shot thousands of rounds of /308 Win. and 6.5 Creedmoor. We also fired 300WSM out of one of our rifles. All those cartridges have more recoil energy than 6ARC. 6ARC has around 9ft/lbs of recoil energy, 300WSM has about 26ft/lbs, 450 Bushmaster about 22ft/lbs, 308 win about 18ft/lbs, and 6.5 Creedmoor around 12ft/lbs. We have also mortared our rifles which generated over 900ft/lbs of energy, and our lowers have not failed.
When will Ar10 be back in stock?
We will have some parts and rifles back in stock over the next few months in early 2026 but it will be a rolling process as we make the change to forged receivers in late 2026. Unfortunately our entire catalog of Ar10 parts may not be back in stock until 2027. If you want to know about a specific part either subscribe to our newsletter, sign up to our get notified about a specific part on that parts website, or get a hold of us here: https://www.roamrifles.com/contact-us/
What is Tagnite?
Tagnite is a proprietary coating created by Technology Applications Group (TAG). It is a coating that has been used in the aerospace and defense industries of over 30 years. It is an anodized coating that creates a wear resistant coating that also allows excellent paint adhesion on magnesium. If you want to learn even more check out TAGs website here: https://www.tagnite.com/
For any other questions vist our FAQ page, or Contact Us page.