how the US Army builds an M14 EBR

Interesting bit about"water-drop deflection"on page 19, second paragraph. Any of our experts care to comment on the phenomenon?
Thanks much to the OP!
 
You may recognize two of these individuals from the article... Team M14EBR-RI photo album

SHOT-RIA.JPG
 
djankle said:
do the US Forces use any M14's with 18" barrels?

if so who makes them?
Click to expand...

Yes, US Forces use three different M14s with 18.0" barrels.

NSWC CRANE makes the MK14 Mods 0 & 1 and both have standard weight 18.0" barrels.
Springfield Armory, Inc. supplies 18.0" barrel blanks to CRANE, they are finished in-house.

Smith Enterprise, Inc. makes the MK14 Mod 0 type SEI and it uses a medium heavy 18.0" barrel.
SEI had Wilson make their barrels at one time, but I am not sure who makes them now.





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machman said:
Interesting bit about"water-drop deflection"on page 19, second paragraph. Any of our experts care to comment on the phenomenon?
Thanks much to the OP!
Click to expand...

I'll answer but don't like being called an expert. Which is afterall, a former drip under pressure.

AIR, the book on the M14 by Stevens, describes the to-and-fro of conflicting design objectives when the rifle was being developed. Compared the Garand, the new rifle had to have less recoil. The final flash eliminator has slots to elongate the flame, there is no bottom slot just a solid web so the gases are vented up to reduce muzzle flip, the front ring forms a chamber to (somehow) push against the muzzle energy, and an outside contour for the bayonette ring. All this and it had to be detachable for suppressors.

As a battle rifle it worked well. As a match rifle it gave the guys fits. Among the dozens of inaccuracy discoveries, was that raindrops collected inside the specification flash eliminator and couldn't drain anywhere. As the bullets passed they'd deflect off the water and fly very unpredictably. The tell-tale was copper jacket material scraping off on the inside of the front ring. The solution was to screw the design philosophy, and ream out the front hole completely and correspondingly enlarge the inside diameter. Problem solved.
 
The M14 in the EBR chassis is kind of a dinosaur-with-a-laser.

Any real maintenance or cleaning of the EBR requires an armourer-level disassembly that then requires you to re-zero the gun afterwards. Pain in the ass.
 
I think I read a post made by Mike Peterson (EBRbuilder) that TACOM-RI stopped reaming the flash hiders before the article went to print...
 
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