The flash hider on my rifle was way tighter than I ever would have expected. I was prepared from reading here that it could be tight. I think cutting down the factory hand guard to get a sufficient grip on the barrel is a good plan. I used a vise grip over a pair of leather gloves to grasp the barrel. Dumb idea. Scratched it pretty good even though I had put a lot of heat from a torch on the fh. Could have been more patient and brought it to work but I wanted to try out the slide fire stock I had just bought. Fortunately a barrel shroud from tacticool hides dummy marks like that