BattleRife
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- of No Fixed Address
I got my Norinco M14S from Marstar back in January, but I was travelling looking for work, so it had to sit, unopened and uncared for, at my old address while I found a job, got a place to live and executed a move. Finally, I got to cut the tape on the box about three weeks ago, and last Saturday I took it out to my new club (Sherwood Park Fish & Game) to de-flower this girl.
On receipt, I took it apart to clean it up. There was actually less grease and oil than I had expected. It didn’t take too long with some rags and rubbing alcohol to get it ready to go.
There was one issue: The first time I twisted the elevation knob to check the rear sight, the whole assembly immediately became very loose. With some investigation and comparison to a WWII Winchester Garand, the problem became very clear. The rear sight nut was binding inside the windage knob, so when I twisted the elevation pinion the pinion rotated, the nut didn’t, and the whole assembly came unscrewed.
I took the rear sight apart, cleaned everything and reassembled it carefully, which helped, but did not cure the problem. So, I took it apart again, and this time put it back together with a drop of blue threadlock. Et voila, perfect sight tension with no more spontaneous disassembly.
Now, I have been very transient the last several years, and have not been a member of a club, so I have been shooting very little. So maybe I am out of practice off the bench. I noticed I can’t focus on the front sight with both eyes wide open anymore, either. Despite these deficiencies, I grabbed some of the 7.62x51 I have hoarded over the years and set off to SPFG to see how it would shoot.
First off was a box of Federal 150gr soft points, the cheap ones. Five rounds into the berm confirmed the rifle would work. Five more onto an old target on the 25m line to set the sights; it required only one click to the left to be dead on! I was ready for the 100m line.
I will take a break here to point out that I am measuring these groups in millimeters. Canada is a metric country and has been for over 30 years. I was schooled in metric, and I believe it is a better system, and millimeters is, I think, just about the perfect precision for measuring groups. In the inch system, 1 MOA is 1.047” at 100 yards. Most people round that to one inch per 100 yards, which is actually 0.955 MOA. In metric, 1 MOA is 29.09mm, so I will be rounding to 30mm per 100m, which is actually 1.031 MOA. In other words, 30mm @ 100m is actually closer to true MOA than 1” @ 100 yds, but it is on the high side rather than the low.
First up was a ten-shot group of that same Federal .308 Win. Pretty close to 3 MOA, which I am reasonably happy with in an out-of-the-box M14.
Then came some groups with some of those 7.62 milsurp rounds. Yeesh. Things went south in a hurry.
Notice there are only nine holes in the Czech ammo target. The tenth shows up as a miscellaneous hole in the M1A2 target. Too bad, My FN used to love this ammo. There are 12 holes in the FNM target, but two are actually tears due to rough handling on the bench.
Just about this time, I figured I needed to look over the rifle to see what was up. I found that the gas cylinder plug was loose, and so was the elevation wheel (the pinion wasn’t loose, just the wheel that lets you zero your sight to reality). So I tightened everything up and reshot the last group.
YIKES!! It’s worse when it’s tight. Just to see what was going on, I went back and shot another group with that Federal .308 stuff.
Doesn’t look like anything has changed. So I am looking at a 3-4 MOA rifle with ammo it likes, 6-8 with ammo it doesn’t. Maybe things will shrink when I get better reacquainted with shooting from the bench, but given the consistency of the Federal and crappiness of most everything else, I think I am looking at fairly representative results.
I finished off by engaging the 300m steel gong with the odds of ammo I had left over. Even with the mediocre accuracy, I was able to hit the gong about 2 times out of every five. It shows just how different practical accuracy and paper accuracy are.
I got it home and took it apart to see how it handled its first outing, about 130 rounds in all.
The first thing I noticed is that the gas cylinder plug and elevation wheel were loose again. I guess these things need to be torqued hard to stay in place.
Next, I noticed that my op rod is in interference with the stock.
Finally, I noticed that my flash hider is failing. A circumferential groove on the inside that looks like an “oops” with a boring tool is breaking out into the runout portion of the slots. This will likely need to be replaced sooner than later, good thing I wanted one with a bayonet lug anyway.
On the last photo, you are looking through the slots to see the defect on the inside of the suppressor.
I had planned to leave this one nearly stock. If accuracy doesn’t improve with handloads, though, a bedding job may be in order. Some relieving and refinishing of the stock around the op rod seem to be necessary, and a new flash suppressor, too. Good thing I’m into guns as a way to fill time.
On receipt, I took it apart to clean it up. There was actually less grease and oil than I had expected. It didn’t take too long with some rags and rubbing alcohol to get it ready to go.
There was one issue: The first time I twisted the elevation knob to check the rear sight, the whole assembly immediately became very loose. With some investigation and comparison to a WWII Winchester Garand, the problem became very clear. The rear sight nut was binding inside the windage knob, so when I twisted the elevation pinion the pinion rotated, the nut didn’t, and the whole assembly came unscrewed.
I took the rear sight apart, cleaned everything and reassembled it carefully, which helped, but did not cure the problem. So, I took it apart again, and this time put it back together with a drop of blue threadlock. Et voila, perfect sight tension with no more spontaneous disassembly.
Now, I have been very transient the last several years, and have not been a member of a club, so I have been shooting very little. So maybe I am out of practice off the bench. I noticed I can’t focus on the front sight with both eyes wide open anymore, either. Despite these deficiencies, I grabbed some of the 7.62x51 I have hoarded over the years and set off to SPFG to see how it would shoot.
First off was a box of Federal 150gr soft points, the cheap ones. Five rounds into the berm confirmed the rifle would work. Five more onto an old target on the 25m line to set the sights; it required only one click to the left to be dead on! I was ready for the 100m line.
I will take a break here to point out that I am measuring these groups in millimeters. Canada is a metric country and has been for over 30 years. I was schooled in metric, and I believe it is a better system, and millimeters is, I think, just about the perfect precision for measuring groups. In the inch system, 1 MOA is 1.047” at 100 yards. Most people round that to one inch per 100 yards, which is actually 0.955 MOA. In metric, 1 MOA is 29.09mm, so I will be rounding to 30mm per 100m, which is actually 1.031 MOA. In other words, 30mm @ 100m is actually closer to true MOA than 1” @ 100 yds, but it is on the high side rather than the low.
First up was a ten-shot group of that same Federal .308 Win. Pretty close to 3 MOA, which I am reasonably happy with in an out-of-the-box M14.
Then came some groups with some of those 7.62 milsurp rounds. Yeesh. Things went south in a hurry.
Notice there are only nine holes in the Czech ammo target. The tenth shows up as a miscellaneous hole in the M1A2 target. Too bad, My FN used to love this ammo. There are 12 holes in the FNM target, but two are actually tears due to rough handling on the bench.
Just about this time, I figured I needed to look over the rifle to see what was up. I found that the gas cylinder plug was loose, and so was the elevation wheel (the pinion wasn’t loose, just the wheel that lets you zero your sight to reality). So I tightened everything up and reshot the last group.
YIKES!! It’s worse when it’s tight. Just to see what was going on, I went back and shot another group with that Federal .308 stuff.
Doesn’t look like anything has changed. So I am looking at a 3-4 MOA rifle with ammo it likes, 6-8 with ammo it doesn’t. Maybe things will shrink when I get better reacquainted with shooting from the bench, but given the consistency of the Federal and crappiness of most everything else, I think I am looking at fairly representative results.
I finished off by engaging the 300m steel gong with the odds of ammo I had left over. Even with the mediocre accuracy, I was able to hit the gong about 2 times out of every five. It shows just how different practical accuracy and paper accuracy are.
I got it home and took it apart to see how it handled its first outing, about 130 rounds in all.
The first thing I noticed is that the gas cylinder plug and elevation wheel were loose again. I guess these things need to be torqued hard to stay in place.
Next, I noticed that my op rod is in interference with the stock.
Finally, I noticed that my flash hider is failing. A circumferential groove on the inside that looks like an “oops” with a boring tool is breaking out into the runout portion of the slots. This will likely need to be replaced sooner than later, good thing I wanted one with a bayonet lug anyway.
On the last photo, you are looking through the slots to see the defect on the inside of the suppressor.
I had planned to leave this one nearly stock. If accuracy doesn’t improve with handloads, though, a bedding job may be in order. Some relieving and refinishing of the stock around the op rod seem to be necessary, and a new flash suppressor, too. Good thing I’m into guns as a way to fill time.
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