- Location
- Homestead in the Valley
To start, I have three Norinco rifles and was expecting similar quality to them - not outstanding but quite good for the money. That being said I feel that my Norc EM332 was an outstanding buy for the money. I'm stating this because I'll be drawing comparisons to them and other manufactures.
I'm also basing it on the description of the rifle:
The furniture:
The wood quality is very poor. I was expecting 'an authentic oil finish' - it appears to be a shoe polish finish of some sort, you can actually scrape it off with your nails in some crevices and smear the brown smudge on paper. The wood itself is very fibrous and grainy - I think that if is was stripped and sanded with a fine sandpaper that it would still not be the quality of wood that would become of an oil finish. This wood needs varnish. I find the wood on the Norc M14 quite a bit better. I'd be less upset about the finish if the wood was actually decent - but it's not.
General Impressions of the quality of the rifle:
The action and all the parts that should be metal - are. The fit and finish is nowhere near that of a Winchester. There are very rough tooling marks where the scope mount grooves are cut out. There are heavy tool marks where the barrel band appears to have been hammered into place over the front stock, but yet there is a big gap around the front of that barrel band and the wood. I'm not sure why that is - maybe I'll take the barrel band off and have a look. There are also tool marks around the whole lever crank where the cast parts are rounded for comfort on the shooters hands.
The rear site is actually put on at a weird angle - the whole site is actually sloped to the left about 10-15 degrees. The is a result of the cuts in the barrel being wrong. It is very very noticeable and I really don't see how that could get through QA without being flagged. There are also two screws on the rear site and they are both stripped.
There are also several places on the barrel and action that have black paint on them - maybe to cover up for a poor bluing job?
The fit and finish is actually quite bad - worse that every Norinco I have. I wish that it was similar to the Norc EM332 - but it is not even close.
Shooting:
After cleaning it up I took it out to test fire for basic functionality. The first six rounds wouldn't fire until a second hit on the hammer (so - cycle, pull trigger, hammer drops - nothing, pull back hammer, pull trigger, bang). This cleared up for the most part after 20 or so rounds. The firing pin imprint started to improve from barely visible to weak. It is still weak but I only put about 30 rounds down the pipe.
The action is stiff and clunky - I'm hoping that that will clear up with time. I'm not able to cycle it with my three fingers in the lever while maintaining a site picture. I need to bring my thumb into play to cycle the action at this point. But I'm sure that will improve with use. The actual lever on at real Winchester is far nicer on the fingers.
I was shooting for basic function test and not as an accuracy test, but the way that rear site is mounted basic elevation adjustments (with the basic ramp) are going to change windage and windage changes will change elevation.
I'll post pics before too long and I'll also give a more detailed range report on the weekend.
But my overall initial impressions is that I just paid too much for what is at best a $200 rifle.
I'm also basing it on the description of the rifle:
The furniture:
The wood quality is very poor. I was expecting 'an authentic oil finish' - it appears to be a shoe polish finish of some sort, you can actually scrape it off with your nails in some crevices and smear the brown smudge on paper. The wood itself is very fibrous and grainy - I think that if is was stripped and sanded with a fine sandpaper that it would still not be the quality of wood that would become of an oil finish. This wood needs varnish. I find the wood on the Norc M14 quite a bit better. I'd be less upset about the finish if the wood was actually decent - but it's not.
General Impressions of the quality of the rifle:
The action and all the parts that should be metal - are. The fit and finish is nowhere near that of a Winchester. There are very rough tooling marks where the scope mount grooves are cut out. There are heavy tool marks where the barrel band appears to have been hammered into place over the front stock, but yet there is a big gap around the front of that barrel band and the wood. I'm not sure why that is - maybe I'll take the barrel band off and have a look. There are also tool marks around the whole lever crank where the cast parts are rounded for comfort on the shooters hands.
The rear site is actually put on at a weird angle - the whole site is actually sloped to the left about 10-15 degrees. The is a result of the cuts in the barrel being wrong. It is very very noticeable and I really don't see how that could get through QA without being flagged. There are also two screws on the rear site and they are both stripped.
There are also several places on the barrel and action that have black paint on them - maybe to cover up for a poor bluing job?
The fit and finish is actually quite bad - worse that every Norinco I have. I wish that it was similar to the Norc EM332 - but it is not even close.
Shooting:
After cleaning it up I took it out to test fire for basic functionality. The first six rounds wouldn't fire until a second hit on the hammer (so - cycle, pull trigger, hammer drops - nothing, pull back hammer, pull trigger, bang). This cleared up for the most part after 20 or so rounds. The firing pin imprint started to improve from barely visible to weak. It is still weak but I only put about 30 rounds down the pipe.
The action is stiff and clunky - I'm hoping that that will clear up with time. I'm not able to cycle it with my three fingers in the lever while maintaining a site picture. I need to bring my thumb into play to cycle the action at this point. But I'm sure that will improve with use. The actual lever on at real Winchester is far nicer on the fingers.
I was shooting for basic function test and not as an accuracy test, but the way that rear site is mounted basic elevation adjustments (with the basic ramp) are going to change windage and windage changes will change elevation.
I'll post pics before too long and I'll also give a more detailed range report on the weekend.
But my overall initial impressions is that I just paid too much for what is at best a $200 rifle.
