New M14 Shorty Range report

[Ganderite]

My son sold his regular M14 and bought a shorty.

He un-boxed it and wiped off some of the packing oil. I put a patch through it and squirted some grease in some of the places that should be greased.

I noticed that the front sight was all the way over to the right in the dovetail. I doubted that it had been sighted in at the factory, so I centered it up. The front sight set screw was loose. Better check yours. Other than that, it was shot "out of the box".

I put up a 10" black square on a sheet of white paper as an aiming mark and target. With the rear sight set to 100, the elevation was perfect, and the wind was very good with milsurp ammo - but the group was huge. 10 inches.

Then I loaded 5 rounds of match ammo loaded with the Sierra 155 MatchKing. 2.8" Much better, and easily the limit of iron sights with my old eyes.

Conclusion: Any time a rifle shoots better with match ammo than with milsurp I conclude it is a good rifle. A bad rifle can't tell the difference. Out of the box the trigger is very good. I will give it a quick bedding job and call it done.

I shot this rifle at 25 yards and at 100. The 25 yard test was to get a CQB zero. I have zeroed my own shorty and found that once the rear sight drum is set to read 100 after being zeroed at 100, a setting of 225 yards is the correct setting for 25 yards.

 

[Simon]

That is not bad at all. Sounds like your son got a keeper.

I hope mine will do as good.

 

[y2k]

I wish I could find one.

 

[300Spartans]

Is this one of the shorties from SFRC or CanadaAmmo?

 

[Ganderite]

This one came from from SFRC last week.

 

[RememberTheSomme]

Gander looking at your groups with good ammo, you are right there is a possibly to tightened those groups up a bit with optics by say 20%, but if you are a marksman on a bench rest with a defined aiming point, you are taking the rifle/load close to its inherent accuracy capability, especially at shorter distances, ~100meters. I would have thought the untuned out of box would have done 3-4MOA with ball ammo, but maybe she could really use all the DIY cheap tune ups listed for the Nork.

I find the front sight right lean is a factory compesation for a slightly over tightened barrel, at least on mine. Did the rifle shoot to the right on intial set up at all after you moved the sights from factory. My front sight was all the way right from factory and staked there. I moved to a mechanical zero for intial set up and found out why the factory rightside staking, it shot to the right a fair bit at 100meters.

 

[Ganderite]

I was pleased with the match ammo group. the limiting factor is my eyes with iron sights. I was seeing a double image for some reason, even with my shooting glasses on.

The rifle will be bedded and we will stop there. It will be shot in Vintage matches at 100 to 300 yards and some CQB (25 yards, standing).

The front sight was mounted to the right edge of the dovetail and staked there. I centered it and it was almost perfect without any adjustment to the rear sight.

The barrel was correctly indexed, the sight base was at 12 o'clock.

On my bench is a bottle of white typing correction fluid "White-Out". I use this all the time to mark sight positions. After a front and rear sight is zeroed, I make a little mark with the fluid and after it is dry, I scribe a line through it to mark where the sight was positioned. This way, if it comes loose or if I decide to move it, I have a clear reference line.