Besides using fire, people want to cut open the tube, dremel off tabs, hammer in screwdrivers and 'keep a steady hand' with a drill.
I propose something simple, easy, less invasive and certainly practical.
I'll skip the steps to taking the gun apart because those already exist here.
I apologize in advance for the picture's quality. I had to use my camcorder as my digital camera happens to be in New York with my family. Though this guide doesn't even necessarily NEED pictures, I know how much we all love to see what's going on.
Let's say you happen to have some 15/32 brass laying around. Put one end of it to an open flame until the flame turns a greenish hue. At this point you know your brass is literally burning. Take your barrel and carefully slide the brass into its front open end. Note: I'm just showing the picture as visual guide. Don't let your hot brass go while it's in there or you'll melt the sides of the barrel and make a horrible mess.
Twist the brass into the AR, you'll feel it sink in a little. Then rotate the brass. You should hear a squeaky sound. That's the plastic of the AR melting onto the brass. That's a happy sound.
When the brass sticks when you try to rotate it, you can pull it out and see these lovely sights.
Repeat the process as many times as you need to get the AR to stick to the brass. It took me two goes to get rid of the top portion of the AR. The lower portions (the part that sits on the spring of the AR, get's a bit stuck because it's wider than the joint of the two sections of barrel) are still there. While it's not completely necessary to remove it (at least I don't think it is) you can still do it with the same method, except you don't wait for the plastic to bond to the hot metal. If it does, it will cool down too much for the brass to slice through it, and then your brass will be stuck in your barrel (learned this the hard way). If it does, the heat from the brass would have melted and loosened the plastic around the joint, which you can pull apart, however; this is messy and destructive to the plastic, as shown below. You can still put it back together and glue it up all simple-like, so it's not a big deal, but I hate wrecking anything even slightly.
So yeah, there's your clean barrel, without that despicable AR. No brute force. No cussing.
Removing the top portion of the AR took me approximately 1 1/2 minutes, including heat up time.
Hope this helps some of you.
