norinco m305 hunting rifle

[M14Doctor]

No need for USGI parts as long as the chamber headspace is within safe parameters.
The majority of the chinese guns I've worked on that have 2009 and newer import markings, seem to not have the excess headspace (over 1.640") that was fairly common on the 2007 and previous years.

Unless you are building a match rifle, don't buy into all the hype about usgi parts.
The majority of the chinese rifles gobble up .308 win ammo between 147 gr and 174gr with no issues.

 

[rosshimself]

All this talk about heavy bullets has gotten me a little concerned? I read the stickies, granted there's a lot of info there, and I might have skipped over it. Lots of stuff about headpsacing but I dont recall anything about bullet weigght.

So... how heavy is too heavy for firing a lot? is 168 gr good to go? What is the optimal bullet weight? Any diff between 22inch barrel and shortys?

 

[t-star]

All this talk about heavy bullets has gotten me a little concerned? I read the stickies, granted there's a lot of info there, and I might have skipped over it. Lots of stuff about headpsacing but I dont recall anything about bullet weigght.

So... how heavy is too heavy for firing a lot? is 168 gr good to go? What is the optimal bullet weight? Any diff between 22inch barrel and shortys?

just in case you "glossed over" - yes, the 168s are just fine- that's what most everybody was using at the matches- you're good to 600 meters or so- it's when you need to go over 600 that you need the 175's- and i think that's about the limit of the unmodified platform anyway- and no, there's no difference in the bullet weights between the shorties and the regular- it's the trigger assemblyand the OP-ROD that take the beating, and those are common to both rifles, so it doesn't matter- however, i should imagine the shorty is really only accurate to about 400, - remember, we're only talking about 4 inches of barrel here- the rest is the same-and it's the 170 and above that show the accellerated wear

 

[Grizzlypeg]

Just bought a box of Sierra 168 match kings to load for my Norinco. I plan to use 4895 powder and follow suggested loads for the m14. I'd like to see an improvement in accuracy over my current 1.5 Moa for 5 shots, which I still think is pretty decent for an inexpensive semi auto. The performance of standard 308 150 grain loads is so close to the 7.62x51 nato load (approx 2800 fps), I don't believe there is an appreciable pressure diffference (60,000 vs 62,000). The lighter 308win brass might not be capable of as many cycles of being stretched and resized. I'm thinking the biggest problem with simply assuming 308 win is interchangeable with 7.62 nato is that while 7.62 nato specifies a particular load, 308win doesn't, and is available with all sorts of projectile weights and degrees of performance and likely pressures and pressure curves.