The Norinco M334 in detail. A bizarre Mauser variant! Now with range report.

Very well done review and with excellent photo's JB. I handled one of these at a gunshow a few years back. Looked to have been made with a hand file by forced labour. I politely put it back on the vendors table. Made those old "you-finish" Santa Barbras look like a Belgian Browning.
Cheers
 
longbranch* said:
Very well done review and with excellent photo's JB. I handled one of these at a gunshow a few years back. Looked to have been made with a hand file by forced labour. I politely put it back on the vendors table. Made those old "you-finish" Santa Barbras look like a Belgian Browning.
Cheers
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Thanks!

It is a pretty crude rifle. Should be functional though and hopefully I can finish the review with shooting results sometime in the near future. Baribal spurred me on into getting some taps ordered by bumping this back up so maybe after elk season I'll have some time to get a scope mounted and try a few shots.
 
jbmauser said:
Sorry, no. I wasn't able to locate any factory scope bases or the metric screws for it so I'll have to re-tap them to 8-40. I just haven't got around to it. I thought I had 8-40 bushings and taps for my fixture but I don't.
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Be hard to tap to 8-40. Your best bet is going to a fastener shop, or ordering from brownells 8-48. Re tapping 4-40 will cross thread.
 
If the thing proves itself a non-keeper, it'd be perfect as a CFSC gun. Close enough to what folks are likely to see "in the wild" while not having to wank up an actual shootable piece.

That inletting at the tang looks like a beaver did it. Astonishing stuff. :)
 
CanAm said:
They are rare because the batch that was imported was scrapped; I believe due to stretching receivers or barrels walking out (I forget). OP, shoot me an email for a contact with the info.
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I'm glad that batch was shelved. No way on earth would I fire one of those with any load in 'er past 20,000 psi.
Interesting rifle as a cast boolit launcher if the bore & chamber are great. I've owned various Norincos and
they all had nice bores.
 
SHELL SHUCKER said:
I'm glad that batch was shelved. No way on earth would I fire one of those with any load in 'er past 20,000 psi.
Interesting rifle as a cast boolit launcher if the bore & chamber are great. I've owned various Norincos and
they all had nice bores.
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They weren't shelved because of receiver stretching or barrels coming loose. They were stripped down for parts because the headspace was set incorrectly right from the factory on most of them. I'm not sure how many have been sold more recently but quite a few and no reported problems with them. I talked to the importer of the original batch and he figured they were totally serviceable and plenty strong enough as long as the headspace was correct. The dealer of the more recent batch had never heard of any stretching or headspace issues and had no customer complaints with them.

That being said, I personally am not fond of the barrel/receiver set up and don't intend on pushing the envelope with loads in this thing.
 
Baribal said:
Did you check headspace yet?
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I suppose I should have mentioned that somewhere along the way.:redface:

Yes, the headspace is ok on this one. The chamber seems to be "generous" but it doesn't close on a no-go.

Also, I see I didn't mention some other work I did to it or problems I found later so I'll give a quick rundown here.

The bolt would not fully close. It closed enough to fire but was not 100% into battery. I had to remove a fair amount of wood beneath the bolt handle to allow it to close fully. Not a dangerous situation by any means but just another indication of the sloppy workmanship.

Another poorly fitted issue caused the extractor to hit the upper receiver locking lug when closing the bolt on a dummy round. The rounds, when stripped out of the mag, rotated the extractor up just enough to cause it to hit. A small amount of polishing to round off the sharp edge on the extractor eliminated that.

Ejection is non-existent. Spring pressure on the ejector blade is very weak and the ejector blade binds in the receiver slot so it doesn't pop out enough when the bolt is drawn back to eject the round. I can see some burrs in the slot left over from machining so I think once I clean that up it should work. I may swap on a better quality bolt stop/ejector assy from a real M98 if it shoots ok.

Reliable feeding is really only possible with pointed bullets. I tried some round nose dummy rounds and they come up off the feed ramp at too much of an angle to chamber reliably. Regular 150gr or 180gr spitzers feed well enough for most hunting or range plinking. Don't take one of these on a dangerous game hunt.:p

Oh, and someone mentioned that tapping to 8-40 wouldn't work but I have 8-40 screws here and the metric holes in the receiver are small enough that I should be able to run the proper drill bit through them then retap to 8-40 with no troubles. I just have to get the bits and taps then figure out the bases I need.
 
Any hunt would be dangerous carrying that rifle. I like the feed ramp, looks like they cut halfway across with an endmill and stopped.
Personally I will not buy anything out of China if I can help it for political reasons as much as quality.
 
Well, just an update for anyone that was interested in this piece of junk and I'm sure there are hundreds of you:p, I finally mounted a scope on it tonight.

It actually went surprisingly well. I simply ran a 8-40 tap through the original holes to rethread them. I scrounged around my scope base parts bin and found a new #46 base and some unknown rear base (I think maybe a #55? but it had no numbers on it) that fit the hole spacing correctly and were the exact right height. The rear base doesn't match the receiver contour exactly but close enough. The bases were put in the drill press and redrilled to fit the 8-40 screws, custom length screws were cut to the proper length and after a quick check with the alignment bars, they were loctited in place. They actually lined up so perfectly that I was shocked.

I used a set of medium height Weaver rings I had laying around, which I really detest but for this thing they are perfect and mounted an old Bushnell Banner 4X that I bought off the EE for cheap.

Heading out for moose tomorrow morning and duck hunting in the afternoon but I think I should be able to hit the range on Sunday and update with some pics and results.

If I survive the range session with it that is.:eek:
 
Ok, so the weekend didn't work out all the great for shooting this thing. Ran into another issue with it and only fired off one shot. I'm not sure how I missed it but the firing pin tip was extremely poorly shaped (as is the rest of the rifle) and upon firing the one shot, it pierced the primer!

I removed the firing pin and gave it a nice rounded shape then polished it and that cured that problem. While I had it apart I looked into why the ejector blade was binding in the slot and found that the ejector/bolt stop screw would twist the ejector box up when fully tightened. I have several M98 ejector screws in my parts bin and amazingly they thread right in. I selected one that was in nice shape and tightened it up and no more binding. It actually ejects well now. Feeding still isn't the greatest with only the last round feeding nicely but I may work on that some time this winter if I'm bored.

Now the big question. Does it shoot? Well I was actually really surprised at how well it did. Due to time restrictions (gets dark an hour after work) I only fired two 3 round groups but the potential is clearly there. Not only was it accurate but it put two different loads into basically the same POI. Can't ask for more than that. Now if it was only fit and finished well.......

Any way, the first load was surplus IVI 79. I've never been able to get this stuff to shoot better than 2" groups from any .308 that I've owned or own so I figured the rifle had potential even though the group was 3". The second group is from a load I developed for my wife's 788 when she used to hunt. It's made of Hornady 150gr Interbonds with a lower charge of Varget. Seemed kind of a waste throwing Interbonds out of this thing but I figured the lower charge would be prudent and I wasn't going to be shooting any of these out of my other .308's for hunting any way. As you can see it liked this load and fired it into just over 1.3" or so and that's more than accurate enough for hunting. I think this was more accurate than the 788 fired this load.

Pics:

Older vintage Bushnell Banner 4x mounted.
24jn3Z.jpg



Pierced primer from the first shot.
1ZBkzg.jpg



IVI 79 group. 3.06"
LVbcma.jpg



Hornady 150gr Interbonds over Varget. 1.35"
0gXem5.jpg



So in conclusion, this thing is a piece of junk from a fit and finish stand point. Operation was pretty much non-existent, even dangerous with the pierced primers issue, when I got it. Feeding still isn't great but small amounts of work fixed the other issues. Strength could be an issue but I doubt it. Pressed and pinned barrels are used on all sorts of firearms and many with high pressure chamberings so I see no reason why this one with double pins shouldn't be more than adequate. The metal has been hardness tested in all the right places so it would seem it was made with some care in that department at least. It's functional and accurate enough for hunting but that's about it. Would I recommend any one buy one? No. Would I buy one again? No. Do I plan on firing a lot of full power loads through it? No. I may fool around with it a bit more and it has been an interesting project but there are far better cheap hunting rifles out there. For a couple hundred more than what these were selling for a couple years ago, you could get a Zastava and have 100X the rifle.

If I do go ahead with bedding, stock refinishing, and feeding mods, I'll update then but I have no plans to spend any more time on this at this time.
 
Must have take all your courage to be behind that rifle and pull the trigger... ;)

Not bad, when we consider how funny it looks.
 
Thanks to Baribal for pointing me to this page. I recently acquired one of these 'rifles' and was immediately disappointed that it swallowed the field gauge with no end of chamber in sight. My attempts to remove the barrel were thwarted (a vise, propane torch, pipe wrench, and 4' extension pipe LOL) until said attempts were abandoned completely when another CGNer suggested I look for pins holding the barrel in place. A closer look at the receiver (with a bit of fine filing for the reveal), turned up something I would never have otherwise looked for. There are 4 pins (2 vertical pins per side) holding the barrel in place. I don't see a way to correct head spacing on this rifle, short of either drifting or drilling the pins out, adjusting head space, and then welding the thing back together. I'm only half kidding when I suggest this. I think it will be cut up and recycled and it's too bad because the action and trigger are not too shabby looking at all. Had I been fortunate, like JB, I would have gotten one with decent head spacing. As for that funky green mystery wood stock, maybe the EE.....
 
woodlotowner said:
Thanks to Baribal for pointing me to this page. I recently acquired one of these 'rifles' and was immediately disappointed that it swallowed the field gauge with no end of chamber in sight. My attempts to remove the barrel were thwarted (a vise, propane torch, pipe wrench, and 4' extension pipe LOL) until said attempts were abandoned completely when another CGNer suggested I look for pins holding the barrel in place. A closer look at the receiver (with a bit of fine filing for the reveal), turned up something I would never have otherwise looked for. There are 4 pins (2 vertical pins per side) holding the barrel in place. I don't see a way to correct head spacing on this rifle, short of either drifting or drilling the pins out, adjusting head space, and then welding the thing back together. I'm only half kidding when I suggest this. I think it will be cut up and recycled and it's too bad because the action and trigger are not too shabby looking at all. Had I been fortunate, like JB, I would have gotten one with decent head spacing. As for that funky green mystery wood stock, maybe the EE.....
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Pull through reamer, turn it into a 7.5x55 or 30-284, 30'06 if it's long enough...
Or trash it.... I don't think I'd bite on one of these even for $100.
 
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