Friday, October 02, 2009

Farmer in the desert.

Frank has a run-down of his experience with the S&W M&P-15 at Gunsite.

That's two thumbs-up so far.
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Ed Foster said...

Simon and the boys have been getting things together. The new barrels are made up in New Hampshire by Thompson Center, and from what I've heard, they're as good as E.R. Shaws, which is high praise indeed.

I don't know if they went with my freebore suggestion or not, but I hope they did.

The military chamber has a .060 long unrifled cylindrical area forward of the chamber proper, to give the bullet a chance to break loose from the neck crimp before starting into the rifling. Also a 1.5 degree taper to the rifling cone rather than the civilian 3 degrees.


It's needed to keep the pressures down with some of the long bullets you see in military ammo, especially the tracers. My objection to the freebore was that it was .227 diameter, when .225 worked with the same pressures and gave better accuracy.

For reference, the civvy .223 Rem chamber has a .025 freebore, so it really isn't smart to fire military ammo in a civilian chamber.


Not my observation, I got it from the truely awesome Kevin Kaminsky, one of the unsung idols in firearms design, when we worked together at Colts's back in the 90's on the M4 contract.


Smith is the only manufacturer making it's own bolt carriers, which, after some bugs being worked out (Simon M. is VERY good at that) appear to be about as good as Microbest, used by anyone else in the trade who wants the best.

I think it's silly, as it's not cost effective to do them inhouse with a monthly production of only 3,000 to 4,000 rifles going out the door, but they are working well. It just runs up the cost.

I hoisted a few schooners with the boys from my S&W days just last week,out in West Springfield.

Things are getting better up there, as the micromanage climate has eased considerably.

The new .22 rimfire AR-type carbine isn't all that impressive, to me or to people inhouse, as it's a 90% scale plastic toy and won't interchange with the real thing. But at least it's in production.

Our's is finishing up a re-engineering program because it was decided to increase it's "caliber versatility" (Tam, hold on to that barrel. The new bolt will fit it like a charm, and it does interesting things).

All in all, the M&P 15's growing pains seem to have passed, at least for serial numbers 170,000 and up. Also, the first 50,000 were made under contract at Stag Arms, and run really well.

It's only the losers in the middle, especially some of the law enforcement weapons with the Colt reject bolts Lewis stuck us with, or the civilian carbines with the oversized aluminum gas block that will be haunting them for a few years.

Unless Schneider has reworked their magwell broach to something closer to industry standard, the mag wells are still generous to say the least, and I would suggest synthetic magazines to keep them snug in that large hole. But I'm always singing the praises of PMag anyway, so that's an old tune.

I really didn't like the headspace on a lot of those cop guns, and got publically reamed for saying so. We pretty much cleaned up the problem with the sticking disconnectors and the lousy Mexican barrels, so all in all it wasn't a wasted time in my life. Any landing you walk away from is a good one.

Now if they could only get that silly $1,400 price down to a grand, it would be a competitive rifle.

11:53 PM, October 02, 2009

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