I’m the type of person who likes to personalize everything and you can definitely tell if you see the handguns that I own. Some of them are pretty over the top considering where they started. But I recently wanted to do a budget-friendly build. Something that’s relatively affordable but still looks good and functions well. I’m a big Glock 19 clone guy, so that’s what I wanted to build, a budget-friendly Glock 19 clone.

This all started when I came across the SCT lowers. These have been around for a while. They offer some upgrades over the regular Glock design, like better grip texture and double undercuts, but for my purposes, the appealing thing about these lowers is that they cost about $50 for the stripped version. You can buy another version with the lower parts already installed and that’s about $90. I went with the stripped version because that’s all that I could find locally. But luckily, I was able to get the lower parts kit from Brownells for $31, so parting it out was cheaper than buying the assembled lower in my case. I’ve never tried this lower parts kit before, so I have no idea how reliable it is. We’ll have to figure that out later during live fire.

Moving to the upper assembly, I actually already made a whole video dedicated to this upper so check that you if you want more details, but this is the Brownells Premium Slide with the top window cut, and this is important because I also purchased the slide completion kit from Brownells, which came with a ported barrel. Again, watch the dedicated video but considering what I paid for the upper parts kit, it’s just insane that I got a barrel with it, let alone a pretty decent look ported barrel.

Now, if you haven’t noticed, this entire build is basically from Brownells. The only thing that I didn’t get from them is the stripped lower. And I promise you, Brownells does not sponsor this build. I paid for all this stuff. I just bought all the parts from Brownells because they had the cheapest parts around when I was putting this build together. And again, I’m trying to do a budget-friendly build, but I’m not scouring for the cheapest parts possible from unknown sources and possibly have a constant malfunctioning paperweight. I wanted something cheap enough and from a more reputable brand, and hopefully I’m going to put together something decent. Of course, Brownells has been around for a long time and is well known for making Glock slides and barrels, so there’s some confidence there. I think the main worry is going to come from the super cheap aftermarket internal parts everywhere else.

After assembling everything, first impression is not great. The upper assembly is noticeably tight, but of course, that can also be attributed to the lower and its rails. I’ve played with this setup a lot. Dry firing and just racking it, but I often still run into situations where the slide doesn’t fully go into battery or the trigger doesn’t actually reset when I rack the slide. When it was all freshly assembled, oftentimes the slide had to be racked two or three times before the trigger would actually reset. But it’s definitely getting better. It’s at a point where the trigger resets every time, but the slide is still getting caught up. I’ve never seen this type of trigger malfunction before, so again, first impressions are not great. I’m going to keep racking this slide like crazy in hopes that things wear down and tolerances become greater before I hit the range.

I was able to take this build out and test it with live rounds. At this point, it’s been shot about 400 or so rounds, with Federal American Eagle 115gr and 147gr. I didn’t mention this earlier, but I’m running the Osight C green dot on this slide.

When I first started shooting this build, the malfunctions came pretty quickly. I think it malfunctioned after the very first round, when I was zeroing my optic. And that was prevalent over the first 2 mags and 20 or so rounds. I was mainly getting failure to feed and failure to eject. But after the first two mags, things did get a lot better, to the point where I was only getting one malfunction after maybe 3 or 4 mags. But again, the malfunctions really slowed down and it’s pretty obvious that this is a case of the gun just needing to be broken in.

Earlier, I mentioned that there was a problem with the slide not going into battery and that’s no longer a thing. Even if I try to ride the slide really slowly, it just seats perfectly every time.

Again, I mentioned that I shot Federal American Eagle 115gr and 147gr which are my primary range ammo. Between the two, I would say that this Brownells ported setup behaves like my other comp or ported setups in that I do feel a noticeable difference between the two grains, with 115gr having noticeably less felt recoil.

And also like other ported setups that I have, this thing gets dirty pretty quickly. Interestingly, I would say that this setup runs hotter than the other ported setups that I have. Not so crazy hot that I can’t rack the slide, but it was definitely getting there.

One thing that I do want to point out is that the black nitride coating that Brownells went with on the barrel kind of sucks. It’s wearing pretty noticeably and is no doubt the fastest that I’ve seen a barrel coating wear off. But again, the barrel is pretty cheap so I don’t know if I can really complain.

Overall, I’m actually pretty happy with this build, considering how much I put into it. I tallied everything up and I spent $376.11 before tax on this build, not counting the Osight C green dot because I already owned that and just threw it on. Also, considering that this will basically be a range toy, one that I pass off to people who come along and don’t have any guns, I think it’s an overall win. Being that the build is ported, it’s a bit easier to shoot for those inexperienced people and I have no doubts that the more it’s live-fired, the more reliable it will become. I’m pretty happy with this budget-friendly Glock 19 clone build/

If you're considering buying any of the products mentioned, please support my work by using the affiliate links below.

Brownells Premium Slides for Glock Gen1-3

https://alnk.to/90CMICH

Brownells Ported Glock 19 GEN3 Barrel

https://alnk.to/4fUkeBx

Brownells Slide Completion Kit for Glock 19 GEN3 with Ported Barrel

https://alnk.to/deAYgbU

Brownells Premium Slide For Glock & Barrel Combo Kit

https://alnk.to/6TDGWR1

Osight C

https://amzn.to/4dYjamz

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