I was sweating bullets the whole time! I never installed a bolt stop, so that was a new one for me and I kept waiting for the bolt stop ears to break, but they made it through just fine. I’m pretty sure I got it leveled to within under a tenth of a degree. I was using a Starrett 98-4 machinist’s bubble level and I got it in pretty close.
All parts are GI or better.
LRB M25 receiver
Wolfe Modified Medium Weight 5R/20 stainless barrel with 1:11" twist, 22".
TRW bolt
Winchester operating rod
USGI gas system/ Sadlak vented gas piston
H&R trigger group
GI flash suppressor
I caught it all on video! Now I just need to finish ream my chamber and install the operating rod guide on to the barrel and it will be ready for the range!
Nice build! Where did you get the the jigs and fixtures? I know the M1A/M14 is not a " fall together" parts gun like the AR, so the jigs etc. must have made life (assembly)much easier!
Thanks! The barrel vise is home made with scrap metal. The base is a slab of nickel plated steel weighing approximately 60 pounds. The top and bottom plates are aluminum blocks off of system frames that are obsolete and have since been redesigned. The steel end plates were scrap parts from upgrades from my previous job. There’s a matching pair under the table top to distribute stress. The half-moon blocks were from a single piece of scrap. A machinist friend of mine drilled and tapped 3/4" threads into the base and made the barrel blocks for me. He also took 0.003" off my barrel shoulder so it would hand time at 17˚. He charged me $30 for the whole thing. I gave him $40.
The action wrench was custom made and a fellow worked with a machinist to get a batch done. He charged $250 and it’s 9 pounds of steel. The PTG headspace gauge set was $250. The timing gauge fixtures were $60. The reamer is $200.
Got the operating rod guide installed and aligned, fit the operating rod and installed the gas system. No shims required, gas lock timed just right!
Here’s the bubble level I used for final timing. The front sight was leveled dead nuts on and this is how the bubble looked when it was on the rear sight timing gauge. There’s no spec on Starrett’s website for this model, but the next level up from that indicates that each hash mark is 80 to 90 seconds. Let’s just guess that these divisions are half as sensitive, meaning that each hash mark is 200 seconds. I’m only a half a hash mark out, so that could put me at 100 seconds past TDC.
There are 3600 seconds in a degree, so that should put me at approximately 0.02˚. NM spec is under 0.087˚.
WMMW 5/R barrel compared to a Criterion SACO Lowel reproduction medium weight NM barrel…
I still haven’t reamed the chamber yet. Hopefully that will happen tonight.
A friend of mine and myself have been calling this one a 3/4 heavy. It’s slightly lighter than a traditional heavy barrel but much heavier than a medium weight. This one uses a proprietary operating rod guide that’s larger than a GI one and smaller than a heavy.
That’s really nice. LRB stuff is top notch, I have been there several times picking up AR lowers that they have (super nice too) and drooled over their M14 builds. I have restrained myself from taking that plunge though.
I got her all put together and ready for the range and a barrel break-in. I wanted to just drop it in my kevlar stock but it just would not fit. I have bed my receiver into that stock. The stock is bedded for my standard LRB from 2008.
I threw it into the cheap $12 Numrich GI fiberglass stock I got many years ago and it will have to do for now. I had to clear some room around the front of the stock where the barrel was touching. I am pretty sure the gas cylinder is touching on the bottom, but I don’t have time to check that.
WHAT A DAY! After spending time with the family, I was packing up all my stuff to go to the range and shoot my dream gun for the first time. M14 forum member Phil McGrath called me to see how it went and mentioned that he was visiting family in Salem. The range was only 30 minutes from where he was. I told him to meet me at the range, so he did! That was totally random!
I got all my M14’s out for a fun day and had some friends meet me there. When I got there, I noticed a familiar face shooting a few benches down from me; M14 forum member bfoosh006! Awesome!
Anyways, I got the scope on paper and did a quick barrel break-in routine; five shots…clean, five shots…clean. I did this four times and the rifle did not blow up! YAY! All with Federal XM80CL
I moved out to 100 yds and my first five shot group with XM80 measured 1.172". I then let a friend shoot it who hadn’t shot in 8 or 9 years. His group measured 1.510" I also let bfoosh and Phil shoot it but I don’t remember which groups were theirs. Anyways, the remainder of the groups measured 1.009", 1.887" and 2.272". Average group size of XM80 with 3 or 4 different shooters was 1.570".
bfoosh…
Friend…
As the sun went down, I switched over to some M118LR from 2006. I shot five rounds to dial in the scope on different paper, then switched over to the green board. Groups measured 0.996", 0.922", 1.551", 1.685" and 1.494" for an average of 1.3296"
Total round fired was 80 rounds for the day. All shots were fired with the gas on! We also had fun with my other M14’s…
Shots were fired as fast as I could obtain a proper sight picture in the scope and break the trigger cleanly, so rate of fire was about 5 shots every minute or 1.5 minutes. I am very happy with the initial results of this rifle! You did see me smiling; right?GI2
One bad thing is that my trigger feels HORRID! It definitely needs work! Keep in mind that this rifle is not bedded and the gas cylinder is not unitized. I still need to develop a good load so things should only get better from here.
