What Sort Of Accuracy Can You Expect From A QUALITY M1A?

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gord1986

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I am thinking of getting into the M14/M1A world and was just wondering if some current or previous owners can give me an idea of what to expect from this rifle?

I would be getting either a springfield armory or an LRB.

These rifle seems to get very little love on US chat forums, but I also know they have other platforms such as the AR-10 to draw from.

Is it worth the money? What sort of accuracy can one expect? Are they reliable? Are they fussy with ammo, magazines, etc?

I am not big into buying chinese crap, i used to own a Norinco SKS, and it was only worthy of being sold as scrap steel.

Any advice would be much appreciated!

Thanks all!
 
I own a Springfield National Match M1A, and another built off of an LRB reciever with an IDF heavy barrel parts kit. The Springfield is a 1-2 MOA rifle if and when I do my job with the right ammo with a Vortex 4x16x44 scope mounted on an Arms18 mount.
The LRB is a work in progress, needs to be bedded to the fiberglass stock, and needs a match spring guide added. Currently it's about a4-5 MOA gun with irons, not bedded and not scoped. When it's done, I'm optimistic it will be similar to the Springfield in performances.

They are not percision rifles but can be made to shoot very good considering they are a 60's vintage battle rifle, designed off of the American WW2 semi auto rifle Garand
 
My Norc with very few tweaks is 2moa with irons and handloads, quite happy with that. I don't see these as optic friendly rifles and prefer to keep them with irons.
 
2 IDF heavy barrel parts kit builds both shoot sub MOA with hand loads. Ones in a Blackfeather and ones just a bedded USGI stock. For rifles using barrels made in the late 60's I am quite pleased. I would go the Norc receiver route and build off that. Yes they're Chinese but they're not bad for the application and price. The HB in the USGI stock cost me under what a brand new Springfield M1A would cost and will probably outshoot it as well.

I've always liked the M14 so that definitely weighed into me putting the money towards building them.
 
I have a fair amount of experience with Norcs and Springfields and assuming that the rifles are in spec and properly tuned and assembled, the only accuracy difference that you will see will be due to the quality and type of barrel.

I have shot a Norinco with a Criterion medium weight barrel and SEI bolt which reliably shot 5-round groups averaging 1.2 MOA (with custom loads). A Springfield Loaded with a similar medium weight barrel shot to the same level of accuracy.

Compared to a tuned Norinco or Springfield with Standard weight barrels which shot to about 1.5 to 2 MOA, the most impressive thing about the medium weight barrels was that they seemed to eliminate cold-bore, first-round flyers and shot much more consistently. Extreme spreads in group-size (5-round groups) for the medium barreled rifles were 1.5 MOA down to 0.6 MOA while the Standard barreled rifles had an extreme spread ranging from 3+ MOA to 0.6 MOA.

This data is from 3,000+ rounds over several years. All were shot off of bags using scopes and handloads. All of the rifles were accurized including bedding, shimmed and unitized gas cylinders, etc.

In terms of reliability, my experience is that they are very reliable - more so than many ARs that I see - which seem to suffer lots of mag issues and ejection/extraction issues. This probably isn't a fair comparison since any type of rifle with bad assembly or mis-specc'd or mis-matched parts will be unreliable and many of the ARs I see are heavily modified by their owners. Most of the M1As I've used are almost stock, and those that had issues were disposed of promptly so my comparison is a bit apples-to-oranges.

I have to say that they are very fun guns and have a special place. They won't run-and-gun in competition with the AR15s and AR10s but I won't be selling my Norc anytime soon.
 
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My Norc which I tweaked myself and bedded the stock with a NM rear sight (also filed the front blade down quite a bit) can put 10 rounds of bulk 7.62mm into a 3"-ish circle at 100 meters.
I paid $400 for it off the EE and maybe $120 of upgraded parts (used walnut stock and the used NM rear sight assy).
With a scope and quality ammo I would hazard to say it can do a lot better than that. But it's an iron tough battle rifle that eats #### ammo for breakfast and scoped M14's are sacrilege, so it's good enough for Travis Bickle :rockOn:
 
My CJA (norinco) with NM everything and Krieger medium barrel, in a bedded Boyds stock is a consistent 1.5 MOA rifle. At 200 yards. Keeping in mind I am exceptional with irons, and my loads are on point. Call BS if you like, I'm at the range every Sunday if anyone would like to see it. :rockOn:
 
Jmiverson said:
My CJA (norinco) with NM everything and Krieger medium barrel, in a bedded Boyds stock is a consistent 1.5 MOA rifle. At 200 yards. Keeping in mind I am exceptional with irons, and my loads are on point. Call BS if you like, I'm at the range every Sunday if anyone would like to see it. :rockOn:
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So you're getting 3" groups at 200? Or 1.5" groups at 200? Cause one is believable (kinda) and one is unbelievable.
 
Kyledempsey1 said:
1.5moa at 200yards would be 3" groups so I don't know where your getting 1.5" groups at 200yards?
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Winner. And not very "kinda believable" either... This is a match build, shooting match loads. The X ring on an NRA no. LR target is only 1moa, and guys have been hitting them since service rifle matches became a thing. This ain't no chinese factory rifle shooting copperwash we're talking about.
 
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Jmiverson said:
My CJA (norinco) with NM everything and Krieger medium barrel, in a bedded Boyds stock is a consistent 1.5 MOA rifle. At 200 yards. Keeping in mind I am exceptional with irons, and my loads are on point. Call BS if you like, I'm at the range every Sunday if anyone would like to see it. :rockOn:
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That's great shooting with irons. I bet you could tighten it up a bit with a scope but that would be stealing some of the challenge.
 
Pr589 said:
That's great shooting with irons. I bet you could tighten it up a bit with a scope but that would be stealing some of the challenge.
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Thanks, and 'tis why I ventured back into the m14 game. Short benchrest with 6mm and telecopes was losing it's appeal lol. I love shooting with irons, and have always had a soft spot for these rifles. They are very capable of accuracy with the right variables in place.
 
I think all the photos in the threads are gone thanks to photobucket but my tweaked Norc M14S bedded in one of M14Doc/45ACPKing's modstocks shoots an average of 1.5 MOA with hand loads off a Harris bipod and rear bag. It's just a factory rifle with the usual accuracy tweaks: gas system shimmed, oprod guide peened in place, NM spring guide, trigger smoothed out (and a trigger shoe added which drastically improves the feel of the trigger) and the action bedded and handguard relieved so as to not contact the stock. Otherwise it has an Arms 18 mount, with a Leupold Mk IV 3.5-10x40 M1 in Arms 22 med rings, a SAI muzzle brake, USGI rear sights, tactical bolt and mag releases.
 
Jmiverson said:
Thanks, and 'tis why I ventured back into the m14 game. Short benchrest with 6mm and telecopes was losing it's appeal lol. I love shooting with irons, and have always had a soft spot for these rifles. They are very capable of accuracy with the right variables in place.
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Agreed also.
I only shoot irons. I don't own a scoped rifle. There's something satisfying about putting 10 shots on paper in center of mass at 300 meters with iron sights.

I love the M14 design. The last issued of the true battle rifles. I've gone through a lot of guns over the years but I have to honestly say I've always had an M14. My favorite of any I've owned I would even say. It's just all around a simple, tough, reliable rifle with excellent accuracy and one of the greatest set of iron sights ever put on a rifle. Second maybe only to the A2 AR15 sight system but again debatable.
 
rugbydave said:
I think all the photos in the threads are gone thanks to photobucket but my tweaked Norc M14S bedded in one of M14Doc/45ACPKing's modstocks shoots an average of 1.5 MOA with hand loads off a Harris bipod and rear bag. It's just a factory rifle with the usual accuracy tweaks: gas system shimmed, oprod guide peened in place, NM spring guide, trigger smoothed out (and a trigger shoe added which drastically improves the feel of the trigger) and the action bedded and handguard relieved so as to not contact the stock. Otherwise it has an Arms 18 mount, with a Leupold Mk IV 3.5-10x40 M1 in Arms 22 med rings, a SAI muzzle brake, USGI rear sights, tactical bolt and mag releases.
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I also found after tweaking all the standard Norc/M1A issues on my M305 that the greatest improvement in accuracy came from properly bedding my action in my walnut stock.
Shimming, unitizing, op rod guide/barrel alignment, NM rear sights and upgrade spring guide tightened the groups up but the greatest gain was from bedding.

It's a #### ton of work and a nail biter of a job but I pulled it off on my own in my basement with marine tex. I used to have the standard 2 fliers in a 10 shot group even with all other tweaks done. After bedding accuracy improved a lot, groups shrank even more. No more flyers and consistently shoots this way every time.
One of the least done but I think now, most important. The thing is it has to be the last thing done AFTER all else is tightened up or it's pointless.
 
Travis Bickle said:
I also found after tweaking all the standard Norc/M1A issues on my M305 that the greatest improvement in accuracy came from properly bedding my action in my walnut stock.
Shimming, unitizing, op rod guide/barrel alignment, NM rear sights and upgrade spring guide tightened the groups up but the greatest gain was from bedding.

It's a #### ton of work and a nail biter of a job but I pulled it off on my own in my basement with marine tex. I used to have the standard 2 fliers in a 10 shot group even with all other tweaks done. After bedding accuracy improved a lot, groups shrank even more. No more flyers and consistently shoots this way every time.
One of the least done but I think now, most important. The thing is it has to be the last thing done AFTER all else is tightened up or it's pointless.
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Yeah, I bed my own as well (with JB Weld). Barney stopped by my house a few years back and showed me how to do it, haha. It does make a huge difference. The last time I shot mine was to check zero after taking the scope off to mock it up on a different rifle (qd ARMS 22 rings) and then putting it back on. Zero was bang on and she printed 5 rounds inside 1.25" @ 100 yards. Nice and consistent. I'd love to do up another one but with med barrel and all but I've been bit hard by the PRS bug and have been dumping all my gun money into bolt guns, matches, etc, haha
 
barrel, bedding, and bullet. without the three B's , the rest can only do so much for accuracy. then we have the bag of bones pulling the trigger.
 
I bought a build not too long ago, Krieger barrel, Blackfeather chassis, basically only thing still Norinco is the receiver. With a Burris Verocity 4-20x50 on the M14 CASM mount the best I've seen so far is a 1.5 inch 5 shot group at 100 yards while doing some load development with Varget and Hornady 168gr BTHP. I'll be doing some more tinkering with the load to see if I can tighten that up a little more and also trying some 175gr as well.
I'm not really sure how much to realistically expect from this rifle though, I am sceptical that some of the sub moa claims truely are that good, I mean consistent and repeatable sub moa not the single fluke group some guys pull off one afternoon but the average they've been shooting was closer to 2 moa.
If I can find a load that will shoot 1.5moa or better all day long I'll be happy but of course tighter is better.
 
cr5 said:
I bought a build not too long ago, Krieger barrel, Blackfeather chassis, basically only thing still Norinco is the receiver. With a Burris Verocity 4-20x50 on the M14 CASM mount the best I've seen so far is a 1.5 inch 5 shot group at 100 yards while doing some load development with Varget and Hornady 168gr BTHP. I'll be doing some more tinkering with the load to see if I can tighten that up a little more and also trying some 175gr as well.
I'm not really sure how much to realistically expect from this rifle though, I am sceptical that some of the sub moa claims truely are that good, I mean consistent and repeatable sub moa not the single fluke group some guys pull off one afternoon but the average they've been shooting was closer to 2 moa.
If I can find a load that will shoot 1.5moa or better all day long I'll be happy but of course tighter is better.
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By my understanding you want to stay away from the 175 gr pills unless you have a grooved piston. It beats the hell out of the oprod. I've had great luck with both the Hornady 168gr BTHP (fed cases, 40.3 gr Benchmark or 40.8 gr IMR 4895, CCI 200s) and 155 gr Amax (fed cases, 42.2 gr Benchmark, CCI 200s). Both loads average 1.5 moa or a hair under. I thought that Varget was too slow to be optimal in an M14? I thought you wanted something more like one of the 4895s?
 
Rugbydave - It was unfortunate that Photobucket went the way it did. I started the 1.5 MOA Challenge (5 consecutive groups of 5 shots on 1 piece of paper all groups under 1.5 MOA) thread to test some of the "sub MOA all day long" type claims in Canada and the US.

There were very few who could meet the 1.5 MOA Challenge let alone sub MOA. You did well if my memory serves. TonyBen, Rodauto and a few others were routinely knocking it out of the park. I recall TonyBen showing some groups at 100 and 200 yards that suggested that a true sub MOA M1A might be possible even if it is a bit of a unicorn (fabled and exceedingly rare).
 
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