The PING sound of the M14 Flash Suppressor - Sweetness!
- Thread starter Hungry
- Start date
Longer ping = tighter rifle = tighter groups.
the ping is like hitting a tuning fork against something. My Norchinko had a 2 second ping before I hungrified it. After the clinic my ping went to 5 seconds.
Pre clinic lucky to get 4" groups at 100. After clinic consistant 2" groups and on a good day for me under an inch. Not often but sometimes.
I'm not trying to suggest that the ping isn't a good thing, I'm trying to understand why it is.
The M14 isn't a musical instrument, so why do you want the barrel and gas assembly to achieve resonance? If the barrel and gas system is resonating, what, if any, rate of fire becomes dangerous and starts to compound the resonance? Though, judging from the pitch of the ping, it's a pretty high frequency oscillation.
.
Ping does not necessarily mean accuracy, just a sound that comes from certain flash suppressors that ping while the rifle is being shot or cycled. FYI - my SEI Vortex FS will ping on any of my M14’s while the original FS won’t - something that is just inherent in the FS design.
Last edited:
PING = Tuned!When you walk up and down the line at Camp Perry, that's all one could hear with the electronic earmuffs on! Pure joy!
Nice... Learned something today. My M1A rings like that. I always smiled inside at the sound but never thought anything else of it.
PING = Tuned!
I understand that, but I would like to understand the mechanical differences that free this musical note from the rifle. I want to understand the how and why of the ping occurring. What mechanical force is making the ping?
You are getting too intelligent for me!
Darned if I know. All I can remember from working around the Uber Tuned M1A and M14 rifles in the NRA High Power circles is that a properly tuned stick or gas gun pings like mad. I'm trying to keep it simple here. I will start by either shimming the gas cylinder or fine tuning gas cylinder locks so that the gas cylinder assembly is uber tight. Currently my gas cylinder assembly you see in the video is welded/unitized (read it in the stickies above).
Then I will start selecting gas cylinder locks (I will have up to 6 or 8 of them at any one time) to fit that gas cylinder WITHOUT any shims whatsoever. I try to have the gas cylinder lock 'time' or contact at around 3 or 4 o'clock (clockray method) and then plastic/rubber hammer to 6 o'clock. That is gonna be fricking tight. Needless to say, the entire gas cylinder and barrel will vibrate as ONE unit; think bolt gun precision rifle...
Now the flash suppressor has the machined tines that tend to ring like a tuning fork effect when lightly tapped on a wooden surface (or any hard surface). When your 3 splines on your barrel (go and remove your flash suppressor and have a look) are peened or disrupted, that flash suppressor will need to be installed with a rubber/plastic mallet. No specific tension on the castle nut is required, just snug it up. Avoid over torquing it and you won't bend the castle nut pliers like some doofus over enthusiasts have done.
And finally the third but not always necessary for a hunting rig; glass bedding that rifle into a specifically designed match stock (no CHU wood stocks, please don't get me started). When one purchases a specifically designed NM stock like the Mcmillan M1A stock or their pistol grip designed sniper rifle stocks, it's only fitting that you BED that barreled receiver into that NM stock. They are designed to be the most rigid for precision shooting, something you don't always desire when hunting or the zombie apocalypse. Now, the entire rifle will vibrate as ONE unit; and I miss that 'feel' since my M1A is my teaching rifle and has to be pulled apart very often. Match guns DON'T get disassembed much during the year/shooting season until around December / January buy the person who built your rifle. Am I sounding too serious here? I am doing so deliberately. Some of you have asked me about hunting with such a rifle... it's a very expensive proposition. You are better off buying one of the Canada Ammo shorties..
Hey, maybe I should do that!Back to the gas cylinder locks... where does one find a pile of Norinco gas cylinder locks? I don't know and don't look at me. I do this specific kind of tuning ONLY to USGI dimensioned barrels (can you say: Criterion, Hart, Obermyer, Smith, Douglas, USGI 12.5 takeoff?) since I can buy a pile of Springfield Armory gas cylinder locks from Brownells quite easily. That's why I do things this way! For the Norc lovers who want to tighten things up on a budget, I make up these shim kits for you. Honestly, one only needs a shim or TWO. The kits I sell for $ 5.00 will easily satisfy 2 or 3 Norc rifles if you get together with other M14 owners. And it's the cheapest to pay me with a $ 5.00 bill by mail.
Anyways, I detest explaining all this with a keyboard because approaches like these tuning methods are best done at a clinic or a video. And right now video options are not available for/to me to reach all of you. So the clinics out west will just have to do. Or in 2 weeks I will be in Fredrickton, NB for a clinic.
There, I hope all this typing explains how and why we tune the front end of your M14 rifle! If you are a moose or deer or bear or elk hunter, then don't bother doing all this stuff! Whoops, I forgot about the zombie apocalypse preparedness dudes!
Cheers all,
Barney
This reminds me of the ring test for a grinding wheel. If the wheel has a crack, which is an extremely dangerous condition, you won't be able to get a ring sound out of it when you tap it (suspended of course, not mounted). A break in the integrity prevents the resonant ringing. I suspect this is similar to what goes on with the m14 barrel and flash suppressor.
As long as it goes BANG, I'm good....
Hehehe
Just a last question from a Newbie.
The rifle does not have a free floating barrel as most expensive hunting rifles have. So, How can they get Barrel Harmonics working in this thing. I think I lost the logic of the PING thing. Unless the whole rifle vibrates when tuned, the PING thing might be just an ear Mirage
Try any 30:06 without ear muffs and your ears will ring the same way and longer
Don‘t know about a shorty with original fluted FS, maybe reaming it to NM specs will help. AFIAC ping is a good thing, but is not definitive.
Last edited:
The ping could be an indicator of a solid setup. Thinking of a tuning fork, it is one solid piece of metal, a 'rigid' setup, which allows the uninterrupted vibration of the fork, hence the clear ringing sound. With a firearm you have multiple parts that connect together. If they are loose (not necessarily loose, but not tight in tolerances of matching parts, quality machined parts) you will not get a ring when a force (the gunshot) causes a vibration in the firearm. If the setup is rigid, the firearm acts as one object and allows the force to cause an audible vibration in the rifle. As for how this may or may not affect accuracy, that should be a little more clear to understand.
Just my guess. (if we are assuming that this ping is a good thing, and not a potentially dangerous resonance)
Just my guess. (if we are assuming that this ping is a good thing, and not a potentially dangerous resonance)
Speaking as an Audio Engineer... (please bear with me as I'm not a teacher and it's been ages since school)
Everything has a resonant harmonic frequency.
Most of the time you don't hear it because it's too quiet or out of our hearing range.
The frequency I'm hearing, I think is around 4-6K, or 4000 - 6000 Hertz, or Cycles per second... very short wavelengths... so I would guess that it's the flash suppressor that is ringing.
(it could be the whole rifle, but the resonant frequency would be dependant on the dimensions of the object... smaller object... higher frequencies.)
The dimensions of Barney's flash suppressor are just right to support a resonant harmonic frequency in our hearing range. (It will easily vibrate at those frequencies)
...and the rigidity or stiffness and the mass of the rifle will help support it's volume or amplitude. (he tighter, the louder)
Just like plucking the strings on a guitar (the flash suppressor) and the guitar body resonates (rifle)
...or holding a tuning fork to your ear...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_resonance
It may not necessarily be a good thing in the long run as the rifle is not dampening the forces but resonating sympathetically... it would stress the metal more because it is sustaining the same forces in the exact same place every time... although it would probably take 100's of thousands of rounds to notice any degradation...
If you were to time several shots perfectly in a row you could make it sing louder and louder... this would be really damaging but the timing would have to be perfect and is likely unachievable.
(Think of little pushes to a person on a swing... little pushes timed just right achieve higher amplitude in swing)
This does tell you that the rifle is performing the exact same every shot though and thats a good thing...
I would still like mine to sing like that.
I hope this made sense, I tried my best...
Everything has a resonant harmonic frequency.
Most of the time you don't hear it because it's too quiet or out of our hearing range.
The frequency I'm hearing, I think is around 4-6K, or 4000 - 6000 Hertz, or Cycles per second... very short wavelengths... so I would guess that it's the flash suppressor that is ringing.
(it could be the whole rifle, but the resonant frequency would be dependant on the dimensions of the object... smaller object... higher frequencies.)
The dimensions of Barney's flash suppressor are just right to support a resonant harmonic frequency in our hearing range. (It will easily vibrate at those frequencies)
...and the rigidity or stiffness and the mass of the rifle will help support it's volume or amplitude. (he tighter, the louder)
Just like plucking the strings on a guitar (the flash suppressor) and the guitar body resonates (rifle)
...or holding a tuning fork to your ear...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonance
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acoustic_resonance
It may not necessarily be a good thing in the long run as the rifle is not dampening the forces but resonating sympathetically... it would stress the metal more because it is sustaining the same forces in the exact same place every time... although it would probably take 100's of thousands of rounds to notice any degradation...
If you were to time several shots perfectly in a row you could make it sing louder and louder... this would be really damaging but the timing would have to be perfect and is likely unachievable.
(Think of little pushes to a person on a swing... little pushes timed just right achieve higher amplitude in swing)
This does tell you that the rifle is performing the exact same every shot though and thats a good thing...
I would still like mine to sing like that.
I hope this made sense, I tried my best...
Range Officer
Regular
- Location
- Sunny Okanagan
Thanks Reginald for taking the time to post your explanation. Appreciate your input.
Cheers Range Officer! Glad it was understood... difficult to put it in the simplest of terms...
I want to add this quote from the Wiki article I linked above on Acoustic Resonance:
"Like mechanical resonance, acoustic resonance can result in catastrophic failure of the vibrator. The classic example of this is breaking a wine glass with sound at the precise resonant frequency of the glass; although this is difficult in practice"
Heres my 2 cents on the "ping". Any transport driver knows this to be a good thing. When you walk around the rig checking wheel nuts with yer little hammer you really want to hear that ping...means all is nice and tight...whereas 'kflunk' means you got something loose. Spent years walking around the workshop hitting stuff with hammers, thats why they wouldnt give us scopes LOL.
90% sure Im gonna be at Tracy Clinic)
90% sure Im gonna be at Tracy Clinic
)
