Posted on 06/25/2010 4:39:42 PM PDT by ErnstStavroBlofeld
When I bought my M1A it had a special order Choate folding stock, made it horribly unbalanced, bought a GI fiberglass stock and stiffened the forend channel with some JB Steelweld and some cutdown fitted pair of carbon fiber hunting arrows, they are epoxied into the front channel.
Tension is balanced much better with the stiffer forend, and to finish the stock I used a heat gun and some black crinkle paint with the exception of the checkered area which was painted with a dark gray stone effect paint for grippag, The buttplate parts were coated and baked in an oven with epoxy matte black ceramic exhaust paint.
For shits and giggles I have a sizable stock of reloads using the Barnes Triple shocks, an all copper bullet that petals out like a high speed propeller through flesh, its a hunting round noted for its one shot kills. Though I reload for where I live in Alaska and for me the .308 is a bantamweight compared to my .338 and .375 at least with the Barnes I do get an edge, sure they are expensive.
That's a wicked bullet that one. Up the thread I talked about them. I built a couple hundred of them with those hard CCI primers in Lake City brass. I'm pushing them with Reloader 12. They shoot pretty darned well through my M1A.
I sure wouldn't want to be on the recieving end of one.
I’m a contractor for the Navy and they’ve had their funding cut dramatically. Most programs took a 30% cut and a lot of them that were in the early stages of development were cut all together.
Travis, is that red crap the lacquer from Wolf ammo?
Or were you letting your kids do some shooting after a PB&J lunch?
I’m actually a believe in not cleaning guns (aside from bore treatment of precision rifles). It’s like training with crappy ammo. The duds help you get accustomed to failures, and you need to know how far you can push the system when you need to.
The GI stocks were built long before fiberglass stock technology matured. Today, a top stock from Rimrock or McMillan with hand-laid fiberglass cloth and internal reinforcing is super stiff in the fore-end and through the action, and then just flexible enough in the butt to slow the recoil impulse. Injected or “tupperware” stocks can’t offer any of those features. Likewise, kevlar or graphite end-to-end is a bad idea, just for recoil.
Anything other than “high end” can benefit from reinforcing the barrel channel. Over the years everything from v-8 push rods to graphite arrows have been used. Today, I would get a sheet of carbon fiber and line the barrel channel, using Marine Tex or Acraglass epoxy. Any rifle can benefit from a proper bedding job and the instructions for the M1 can easily be adapted to an M1A. (I believe a Mini-14 would also benefit.) In brief, this is a several step process that tensions the action and trigger housing assembly in the stock and relieves any pressure on the barrel, gas cylinder, or operating rod. That is one major difference between a rack grade and a National Match rifle.
Good shooting!
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