Blast from the past!

machman said:
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that is a cool video. In the last part there is a particular angle of view on the rifle when the video is in slow motion where you can see the significant flexing of the barrel from the muzzle into the handguard area ahead of where the oprod guide would be on the barrel. Pretty crazy how noodley the standard profile barrels are during the recoil impulse and yet a great many of those standard barrels shoot and group really well. This is the main reason for tweaking all the parts for optimal harmonics.
This thread is not helping my M14 withdrawal syndrome :ROFLMAO:
I just want to get back to building these.....
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I put one in a Sage stock. Did some tweaking at a clinic. Watched some of Hungry’s videos. With good ammo it shot 1 1/2” groups all day long. With handloads i used to get 1” 5 round groups pretty regular. I wouldn’t claim it was an MOA gun, but it wasn’t far off.
 
Took a while and some good parts changes, but in the end was very happy with the results.
Miss the weekends up at the 600 yard gong with this.
 

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Had the same thing happen with a TRW bolt used in an early Springfield M1A
Sent them the gun and they replaced it with another TRW bolt
Never had an issue again
Norinco 2007 dated guns seem to have been a very good year
A lot of people bought them. Finish was incredible, wood normal terrible
Put them in a usgi stock , good to go
Had some extra long, gi length pins made for the spring guide , so they worked
in the us stock
 
I think the rifles with 2005 thru 2007 import year stamps were the best of what Norinco had to offer us. Some 2009 rifles were quite nice as well and I noticed quite a few had tighter headspace than the average rifle. This is also when they went from the grey parkerizing to the black finish. Components on the 2009 stamped rifles were kinda more hit and miss for machining specs but still the 2009 imports were good for building on much like the 2005 and 2007 import years. 2011 saw the first of the sub grade receivers and everything went down hill from there. Not to say there were not decent rifles from the 2011 and 2012 import years but they were not the same by that point.
From a builder's perspective, I would happily build these rifles on 2005 thru 2009 import year receivers and if I had one, I'd be hard pressed to part with it at any price.
 
45ACPKING said:
in my opinion they were great rifles but the import years after 2009 saw a decline in the product for sure and the imports in the few years before the ban were worse even still. The decline after 2009 is suspected to be that they were getting to the bottom of the barrel for serviceable parts but who knows. When they started producing 7.62 x 39 versions and the lesser quality bolts and parts I pretty much advised anyone who asked me , to steer clear.
That said, the rifles we were getting prior to 2009 had excellent receivers, bolts and barrels. Common issues were moslty related to assembly with barrels that often were not indexed correctly, flashider sight base off center and or off axis, flashhider and gas system splines off axis and very occasionally barrels with off axis splineways. Triggers were also quite good with some treatment. The great thing about the receivers (pre 2009) was that they were for the most part, dimensionally and metalleurgically sound and would accept USGI M14 parts as well as aftermarket barrels such as Criterion and Krieger. This drove a pretty healthy market for components from all the manufacturers that made parts and stocks for the M1A/M14 rifles in the US like Smith Enterprise, Sadlak, Sage, ect ect
Skullboy, Girlsgunsandfastbikes, Hungry/Tactical Teacher liked these rifles so much they started the cult like following the M14s/M305 had on CGN 20 years ago. I pretty much joined CGN and stuck around because of these rifles and eventually built a small business catering to riflesmithing the M14 types and custom stock fabrication. The many M14 clinics put on by Hungry inspired me to get involved and I began running M14 clinics here in BC. Those were such fun times at those intimate gatherings in my home hanging out with likeminded folks and showing everyone how to massage thier M14s/M305 into a reliable accurate and safe firearm. I really miss that part of the whole M14 rifle craze in Canada as it was a fairly large community within the larger community that is CGN.

I really miss taking these rifles out and can only hope that the bans are rescinded when a saner government is in charge.
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I brought mine to the clinic that Machman hosted on the Island however many years ago that was. Did all of the NM of tweaks you taught us to it over the years going from the plastic stock to a GI stock to bedding it in one of yours (Barney came over to my place and taught me how to bed it). It would reliably shoot 1.5 moa with handloads (although I could never do the 1.5 moa challenge clean, one group always killed it, haha). Had a 3-12 on it and took it out to 830 yds (on a 2/3 IPSC) regularly, took Barney out tehre once when he was in town, was good times. I've always wanted to do a build with a Krieger Med weight barrel and put it in a Sage and maybe I will if/when the stupid ban gets reversed but the cost to performance ratio is hard to accept when you can just screw a Stag-10 together and have it shoot tighter with no need to re-bed every year, haha.
 
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