It was a happy day with the new project rifle at our club range. I have to admit some trepidation about the first shot, I didn't put my face right on the stock and kind of just pulled the trigger, but all was well. It was, after all, a DPMS upper ready to drop in place and use. The upper is where all the exploding happens, so a production DPMS upper should be safe. Before pulling the trigger the first time on a live round, I cycled the bolt to make sure it extracted an unfired round cleanly and it did. I put 80 rounds through it, with no issues at all. Generic AR-Stoner magazines, PMC .223 ammo.
I used iron sights and shot up a bunch of rounds at 30 yards, and then tried a magazine at 100 yards. I'm not going to say that if you're at 100 yards and all I have is iron sights the safest place to stand is in front of me, but your chances of getting away are not that bad. I need to work on that.
All in all, I have to call it a 100% successful project, and I'm completely happy with the way it turned out.
That's some pretty nice shootin' there! A little more practice and you'll be nailing the round end of pop cans at 100 yards.
ReplyDeleteIts pretty cool when something you build yourself actually works, isn't it? I still cringe when I first put power to some of the stuff that I've designed, but when it doesn't blow up (and even works right) - there's a unique satisfaction that comes from that. I suppose that's one of the reasons we do stuff like this, eh?
I've heard that barrel cleaning regimen before, Krieger recommends a similar procedure but they say that once you start to see the fouling between shots reduced then you're basically done. Honestly, I've never had the patience to follow the prescribed shoot-clean regimen all the way through (and I don't think my dad ever heard of this procedure) and all my rifles - including the inherited ones - shoot just fine and aren't difficult to clean. If you have one of the chrome-lined barrels then its even less critical - almost unnecessary since they really don't wear in at all.
Glad to see it worked out so good. Well done, sir!
Thanks for the link to Kreiger.
ReplyDeleteAbout a year ago, someone posted a copy of a letter they sent to Springfield about how to break in one of their M1A .308 rifles. The answer was "take it out and go shooting". Nothing special required. I suspect that the whole break-in thing is largely a "we've always done it that way" kind of thing, and not completely based on experiment.
And, oh yeah, about putting power to one of your designs for the first time - I know it well.