Talk me out of it!!!

[nsb22]

I'm leaning more towards a longer barrel M1. 16" does seem a tad short. Sgt, is your friends a short or long barrell?

[nsb22]

Silly question, but they use the M14 mags right?

[sgtbear111]

Answer to 2 above posts. The friend has the short barrel SOCOM. My Robar has same short barrel with muizzle break. The standard grade Springifield is a good rifle out of the box.

The magazines are M-14 mags. You can get 5 rd, 10 rd, and 29 rd mags. GI original 20 rd mags will have a letter code on the back edge. The Chinese made mags are OK, the parkerrized finish sems a bit lighter. Look for steel followers.

There are a lot of trash aftermarket mags out there. They are 20, 25, and 30 round. The crappy afermarket mags are frorm the usual sources, Tom Forrest of San Diego, National, USA, Pro Mag, etc. Most recognizable by their lousy looking blue finish, bent feed lips, abd a follower made our of some reycled plastic. There are Taiwan military made mags that are OK, made from US tooling.

The Chinese imported the Poly-Tech and Norinco copies of the M-1A. They were banned from import by Slick Willie. Still available in Canada at Marstar, but cannot be imported to US. The Chinese rifles have an earned reputatoin for poor acuracy, unrelaible, and worse metallurgy. The stocks look like they were carved from low grade pallet lumber.

Springfield Armory builds a good rifle, as does Fulton Armory. A lot of military trained armorers are out there, and they can build a good rifle. Like the AR series, the quality of the parts is the difference. Springfield has good warranty service.

Ammo is another mattter. Be careful of Wolf, steel-case, or unknown 3rd world ammo. It may be corrosive primed, and most non-US or non-CDN ammo is Berdan primed thus not-reloadable.

[nsb22]

My current stash of .308 consists of new Silver Bear soft nose and sirplus australian. Neither is corrosive to my knowledge. At least i didn't have any problems in the 2 rifles i shot it through.

Thanks for the info!

[nsb22]

What about the mags from CMI? They look okay on the auction site, but I don't know crap about them.

[nsb22]

Nevermind on the CMI ? And it really sucks that ProMags suck! I can get them for $15 a piece plus just $7 shipping for the hole order.

I can also get C. J. WEAPONS ACC. for $16 a piece.

[DIESEL326]

A friend of mine had one... He had to send it back to SA 3 times before it ever worked worth a crap. Then he got rid of it. I'd go with a full size M1A or a Scout. I would love to have a Scout!!! (and the Scout has the full length gas system)

[MacLean]

A friend of mine had one... He had to send it back to SA 3 times before it ever worked worth a crap. Then he got rid of it. I'd go with a full size M1A or a Scout. I would love to have a Scout!!! (and the Scout has the full length gas system)

Yup.