With the FAL receivers, don't cheap out on the purchase! If you shop around, you can find decent prices from some dealers on receivers.
The Century receivers require a fair amount of fitting to make a reliable rifle. There tends to be problems with tight magwells due to sagging of the casting during manufacture. The bolt rails usually require some tweaking to eliminate bolt hang during cycling. There are also issues with the feed ramp area that can cause fail-to-feed or accuracy problems (due to bullet getting banged up on way into chamber). The Century receivers can be made to work, but require more hands on than a first-time-FALer may be ready for. If you already have some decent gunsmithing skills and don't mind handfitting the parts, the Century is acceptable.
The Imbel receivers are generally well produced. These require little, if any, handfitting and tweaking. And you get that cool Imbel logo. The downside is that the Imbel receivers are imported and don't count towards 922(r).
The DSA receivers are about the best you can get. You WILL pay for this too! The DSA price is about twice what other receivers cost. The advantage is that the DSA receivers are EDM'ed from a block of ordnance steel. This results in a VERY nice end product. I HIGHLY recommend the DSA, but the cost is prohibitive for a lot of builders.
Dan Coonan receivers have a pretty good reputation and have an easily swallowed purchase price.
For trigger groups, the FSE would be my recommendation. The Century trigger group pretty much REQUIRES handfitting and is not really something I would want to screw up. I know it's gunsmithing, but virtually drop-in functional parts versus scrapped parts/screaming/doubling or full auto because sear is wrong is a no-brainer. The FSE might require minor tweaking, but nothing like the Century set.
Furniture is an issue for some manufacturers. Some folks on FALFiles have complained about Penguin sets melting or softening after extended firing sessions. This allegedly happened with the cheap sets, so the more expensive sets might be okay. I'm going to go with Ironwood furniture now. It ain't cheap, but it is damn purty!
http://www.ironwooddesigns.com/
Since you are working on your M.E. degree, we will assume that you can beg/borrow/steal/bribe your way to mill access. With a mill (or even large drill press and files) you can make your own barrel and receiver wrenches. Gunthings.com has drawings for the tooling:
http://www.gunthings.com/wrench.htm
http://www.gunthings.com/vise.htm
Gunthings
had FAL kits for sale for a while, but they are apparently sold out. You might check on FALFiles sale boards for kits, but I imagine they won't be cheap.
http://www.falfiles.com/forums/index.php
There are a few FAL kits left on eBay but the descriptions are screwy. They are described as L1A1, but actually look to be metric parts kits... There are currently 3 auctions for parts kits, but they end on June 14 at 20:30:00 PST!
Assembling a FAL is pretty easy... Install and tighten barrel (don't forget handguard ring), check headspace, select proper locking shoulder for headspace and press into receiver, assemble other parts to rifle. It's a little more complicated than that, but those are the basic steps.
Bandit has a decent site with a step-by-step build of a FAL carbine:
http://www.wecsog.org/fal/
(See Bandit, I remembered this time!)
And here's another site with decent info:
http://www.cruffler.com/trivia-April01-background.html
Another option would be to have a shop do the barrel and headspace for you. I had Todd at Ohio Rapid Fire do mine and it's great. Once you see how EASY it is with the proper tools, you'll want to build a set of your own.
A FAL is an easy build and can give VERY satisfying results. That .308 flies forever and knocks the hell out of whatever it hits. Besides the "UMMPHH" factor, the FAL has b-i-t-c-h-i-n' cool looks.
OKAY, who put the profanity filter on this site???? I had to respell b-i-t-c-h-i-n' to get it to display as something other than *****'in
