M14 EBR: 5 Years of Ownership

hello everyone this is Jones today we're gonna be doing a review on the m14 rifle this is gonna be from the perspective of myself someone who has owned this rifle for five different years and who's shot in two different climates those two different climates include a temperate humid environment and sea level to an environment that has high plains desert and arid so everything I say is gonna be from the perspective of someone who has shot this in two different environments it's five years of time behind the weapon system not someone who just bought it two weeks ago shot 20 rounds and they're doing your first video on it so I know some of our rifles are a little bit different and set up and mine is no exception so before I talk about lessons learned over the past couple years I'm going to tell you what I have on my rifle so on the front here we'll lay off my parts that might be different than yours I have a Smith Enterprises USCG muzzle brake works really well the most notable feature is the sage EBR ALCS chassis on top of that I have a sage DC SB or detachable cantilever sight base on top of the sight base is a sight Ron s3 first focal plane MOA reticle 6 to 24 power by 50 millimeter objective lens underneath the Kydex handguard right here the I have a sad lack national match up rods spring guide that's in there so you can't see it but it's there and then of course different magazines I've used over the years include usgi magazine Springfield Armory magazines and pro mag magazines those and the muzzle brake will be spoken to in more detail later will really the more rifle obviously but I just wanted to get that out of the way as far as triggers are concerned I just still have the Springfield National Match trigger in there by the way the rifle is an m1 a Springfield National Match rifle in a sig ALCS chassis EBR chassis so I'm going to speak to this weapon as an m14 even though it's an m1 a just just know that those two names in this case you're going to be interchangeable so let's get into it so we're gonna start off with a few questions you might have about just why I like to live with the weapon more specifically what I like to maintain it what's your favorite way you shoot at least favorite way to shoot it and then other things such as different scenarios so we're going to talk about maintenance first and I want to compare this weapon to an ar-10 something I'm sure many of us are familiar with the AR rifle in general not just the ar-10 so maintenance out of the box I suppose you could say when you first get it this rifle is obviously completely different from a an AR of any sort so you're gonna have to learn how to maintain it and how it works for instance its piston versus direct gas impingement for rain strips every couple rain strips you want to do a complete disassembly of the weapon which includes taking off the top handguard of the ebee are removing the m1 a will the actual rifle the receiver out of the chassis and then doing a degrease and then we grease of the weapon yes this weapon takes grease and not oil so that is every couple range ships but if you just do one range trip shoot a couple rounds out of it you might just want to run a barrel snake down the barrel clean the chamber in a junction port area over here what you'll have to do complete disassembly and reassembly every few range trips for how to do that I highly suggest following Tony Ben's video on YouTube he has a complete disassembly video he also has a complete loop guide for the m18 when it comes to anything technical with this type of rifle he's the guy to go to for sure in the YouTube community and in the m14 forum community as well so moving on from that what scenario is the most enjoyable and least enjoyable to shoot this weapon so the most enjoyable for sure is shooting at long range as you can see this is definitely optimized for long range shooting it's really satisfying when you get that steel ping from 300 yards plus out or if you just see a barrel of pop or jug of water explode it's really satisfying or even something as simple as a shootin C target on a cardboard backer that is very very awesome to see especially at longer ranges so that's the most enjoyable the least enjoyable area to shoot this in is going to be the closed end shoot and move type drills and things like that it is very fun to do that don't get me wrong but it is the least enjoyable on the spectrum here why is because it's such a heavy rifle I'm sure you've heard that it's front heavy the balance point of this rifle is actually forward of the magazine itself so you can see I'm actually not even holding it right now I'm just it's just sitting in the palm of my hand the balance point is very far forward which means your offhand when you're shooting it and you're trying to do shooting and moving stuff like that you're often is going to be supporting the vast majority of the weight of the rifle so that is why it's the least enjoyable experience because it's very cumbersome for your offhand which in my case is my right hand because I was born wrong handed so do I find myself shooting this weapon more or less than others this was actually my homey center fire rifle for four years and then I went and picked up a PWS mark two and six this past spring so now I have two centerfire rifles so with that being said obviously this was my main shoe for four years this past year when I had two 308 caliber rifles now two centerfire rifles this has been evenly split between this being my primary and the two and six being my primary just because when I'm doing more action type stuff I will kind of go towards my two and six since it is a lot lighter and this is obviously my long-range build with that being said I have a shot both in each other's respective long range and short range scenarios and optimized areas I suppose you could say and I enjoy shooting them both but the time between this and my other rifles and weapons for that matter is pretty pretty evenly split another question people have is how is it like shooting it as a lefty so I would argue that the controls which I'll go through right now our optimized for lefty as far as manipulating the weapon with one hand so we're gonna pretend that there is nothing in the chamber or the magazine right now we're gonna lock the bolts the rear as if I just shot my last round so we're gonna be ten mile astronaut shot and I'm going to reload so I always took the stock under my shoulder under my arm really next to my rib cage into my bicep grab the magazine fire in hand plated the dumb pops grab a new one put it in and then pull back the charging handle with my right hand they're really meaty part of my right hand as you can see I can do everything with my right hand as far as reloading is concerned that includes manipulating the safety to fire which it's already on fire right now so if you're a righty and correct me if I'm wrong for the raise out of there but when you're shooting at m14 you run dry you have to you can tuck it like I do use your left hand to get the magazine out of the weapon but the knees and the weapon and then you can either put your left hand up underneath the weapon of war over the top obviously with the scope it's not very practical to put your hand over the top it's more practical to go under the bottom nonetheless this is a little bit more cumbersome than just doing how I do it as a loved to view which is man I got Madigan do that and then do that so I'd argue that controls are actually better for lefties and righties but when we're talking about slings is the polar opposite they drop the bullet here real fast polar opposite why is it a polar opposite because the boat I was just operating digs in to my stomach a lefty whenever I have a two point staying on this a one point is out of the question because this gun is just way too heavy to have one point sing in that much weight or on your neck so right now if let's pretend I got two points things that I wish I don't because it doesn't work for me right now the charging handle is digging into my Stern of course the weapons pretty high up it would be more something like this and right now it's digging in my belly so that is very uncomfortable now if I were to throw it over my back you're not going to right now because they're kind of sling but if I were to throw it over my back that same charming handle Hawaii a lefty has to have a sling set up we'll be digging into my spine so that is why I do not see a sling I did experiment with it for about the past year I had a Magpul to point on this I used it it was very useful when I was running a chest rig but if I didn't have a chest rig on something to buffer the charging handle between my stomach and it there was well it was very uncomfortable now when I was shooting unsupported standing up it was very useful because it's a third point of contact for the weapon as well as it gets a little bit of that weight off of your forearm and on to wherever your sling is on which of course is gonna be across your back so if you're gonna just kind of hang with the weapon hurts if you're gonna use the weapon with your two points thing it's good but most of the time I'm not gonna run or two point staying on this anymore we're going to move on with a little bit more of a laser being focused on the EBR chassis itself and a couple questions things that people might ask me or anyone who owns this when they first get so initially is it hard to install no you might need a couple special tools you might not already own specifically castle nut wires that are for the m14 you can't use the same cast on a wrench that's used for a our buffer tubes it's got to be these guys right here additionally I'd highly suggest getting a torque screwdrivers torque wrench or something of that nature it goes from zero to sixty five inch pounds because you'll need it to torque down all the different screws that come along with owning an DVR additionally you'll need some blue loctite or upper mallet and a couple of the things that I can't think of right now so starting from the front when you first install the EBR chassis just really quick casting uh pliers you need those to take off the flash suppressor muzzle brake depending what you have you'll need actually a socket set can't remember the measurement to remove a gas cylinder because the EBR chassis comes with a new operant guide and you need to remove everything here to get the old opera got off the new opera guide on once you get down it's kind of smooth sailing after of course you shim the gas cylinder itself so you will probably want to purchase some extra shims along with your EGR chassis so those are the few nuances that come along with doing this additionally a Tony Bennett has videos on YouTube that go over precisely how to shim your gas cylinder so I highly suggest watching that if you actually need to install this but we'll move on another thing that comes with the EBR chassis is a barrel whip screw so right here in the front of the EBR chassis you have the right hand side a really tiny Allen wrench screw which is a set screw on the top you might go to see from here you have another element screw that touches the barrel itself so you might be asking yourself why do I want to put screws on the barrel that sounds like a dumb idea so it's to control something called barrel whip and harmonics so if you've ever played with a tuning fork and you've kind of like hit it with a metal thing and seeing the subtle vibrations the same concept is occurring in the barrel every time you shoot there are very subtle vibrations that we might not be able to see or experience but they're happening nonetheless so the barrel whips screw what it does is it dampens the harmonics of the barrel long enough for the projectile to exit the barrel without the harmonics affecting the projectiles accuracy too much relative to if you just didn't have a barrel obscure at all so that's what this does there's a different kind of opinion on everyone for how to install the barrel wood screw however I have come to the conclusion based off two different manuals as well as an armor an army armor for m14 of yours he states that they have done a couple different slow-motion tests specifically 60,000 frames per second and this is this is taken from the m14 forum from this individual he's done studies without the barrel whip screw with the barrel whip screw installed towards just touching the bear and then the whip screw installed to where it's torqued down on the barrel and he has said that all the studies all the time he spent doing this by far the best results with the whip screw are going to come from getting into words just barely touching the barrel that way it dampens the harmonics as I've already described without throwing the barrel in one direction or the other assuming he had to torque down too much or not even there in the first place I also states that you'll see the best effects at the whip screw out of a 22 inch barrel relative to an 18 inch barrel but that is the way that sage suggests you install that army technical manual lemon where's the number at so much screen so where are my technical manual 9 tank 1:05 tech teacher 3 tech 10 change one curtain is up January 2009 so all those different sources three different sources say the same thing for how to install a wood screw the reason I spent like the past two minutes on this specific topic is that is one of the biggest factors for improving your accuracy with the EBR chassis is the whip screw and how you install your sight base but I'd really wanted to drive that point home and note all those sources for you guys so moving on the foot of the action I know some guys I've had issues with the fit of the action in there EBR chassis and the trigger guard or rather the trigger guard group itself thankfully with my Springfield Armory national match I did not have any of those issues it was never tight for me they receiver was not tight the trigger group was not tight at all never had any action lock ups so I really can't comment to that but for if you're a potential buyer watching this that is something to take into account it's also something that can be fixed if you take it to a gunsmith or you already have that know how it can be fixed for sure additionally the EBR is obviously set up for longer range and to have optics on it there's a bunch of different scope mounting options I have a sage detachable can't you leave your sight base on here but that's not to say that you can't use our insights you can use our insights your cheek riser can go down low enough to where you can use your iron sights and get a proper cheek weld in fact the way I have a cheek weld and I use iron sights on this weapon they do it from time to time I actually can't have this all the way down though so if you are concerned if the cheek riser goes not low enough for iron shades that shouldn't be concerned because you can you can double these irons with this so let's move on to parts reliability of the weapon we're going to talk about two things that I have come up in the past five years of ownership and it's only two things but they're very serious I would argue the first one is the extractor the while shooting standing unsupported one day thankfully was on the last round of that magazines the bolt automatically locked to the rear didn't try to feed another round the extractor broke and actually shot straight up and then landed on top of the weapon while I was still like following through with my shot they landed on top of the weapon so I was able to ID immediately that my striker had just broken into two on the last shot of that magazine additionally something I identified the last time I did a complete disassembly this rifle about two weeks ago is that the seer has a crack on the right side of it and it is where the seer connects to the trigger itself that little pinhole so it is a hairline crack but it cracked nonetheless and something that is very serious then I can't shoot this weapon until I fix it which I haven't fixed it yet but those are two things that our original manufacturer parts from Springfield Armory that I just I can't make this video without noting those two issues which is the extractor broke while shooting and the seer has a hairline fracture on the pinhole itself moving on additionally parts volubility over time we're gonna talk about rust it's not a big deal I'm just gonna talk about wearing seen rust so starting with magazines right here I have a Springfield Armory magazine and a u.s. GI magazine in the gun is a pro mag magazine so these two I have absolutely had no issues as far as proper seating the bolt locking to the rear and proper feeding and surface rest absolutely zero issues that should foreshadow the issues that I have had with propene magazines so you can see as you can see right now the pro mag magazines fit perfectly you can't tell from this video but they will lock open the bolt on the last shot and feed properly that is not after I had to modify this so I bought I think three pro mag magazines and every single one of them this little tab on the back or the mag catch paddle locks into was about 1/8 inch too long so every magazine I trembled it down until it's seated properly we didn't see him properly I figured out that on the last shot the follower did not go far enough up into the receiver to make contact with the bolt catch which means I didn't lock open on the last shot so to fix that issue I took out the follower identifying that there was a couple pieces of metal that were too high in the stamping process it wasn't like metal burrs or anything stamping is probably not the best for pro mag so I had to hit that down with a hammer and pin until I got it just right and now I'm like Pro mag mags work seat feed lock the bolt open perfectly every time the issue I have had with these more recently surface rust occurred on them which is very unusual doesn't occur on the GI mags at the Springfield Armory mags but it doesn't all my pro mag mag so if there was anything else that would make these mags worse it would be the surface rest so that in mind although I got them to work it speaks to the huge lack of quality from Pro mag specifically for this batch of magazines that I got from them as far as accuracy is concerned I would define accuracy as 1.5 MOA or better this is in accordance with the army manual the technical manual that I have referenced a couple times there re throughout the video so that is the standard that I'm going to apply to this rifle overall throughout the life I've gotten about a 1.24 MOA consisting group I have gotten one in wit groups but nowhere near as consistent as a 1.2 for different ammo types of shot include your ex ma e CS or your NATO 147-grain one for you know in green military surplus primarily because it's really cheap and I like to shoot this as much as I can the other types of ammo include FG mm or a federal gold medal match I've got a Remington negative Remington premier match and a couple other buys from the range counter of 168 grain so all the 168 grains for the most part perform the same honestly so the best results are gonna be with your 168 for fun I'll go with the 147 they have a surplus or the SMA EC it's worth noting that I have never shot this rifle from a Ledge slit so I have never eliminated the human variable from the accuracy but that being said 5 years of shooting and still getting that same group about I would I would say that you're not gonna shave off more than a fraction of an inch to that group so I think this is performing as best as it can but of course we would all like to get our rifles to be as much as accurate as they possibly can as far as holding a zero maintaining a zero for the DC SP I've never had an issue assuming you maintain the proper the same torque value for the DC SB as you had it on when you took it off and put it back on again you're not gonna shift a point of impact of course if we disassemble the rifle or the temperatures change by 30 degrees or more or something like that you will definitely have a shift in point of impact which of course would require you to shifts Europe but for maintaining a zero it's is main it maintains as you're just as well as any other rifle that I own oh [ __ ] I also have my flash hider kind of portion in this accuracy part of the video so flash hider versus muzzle brake vs no muzzle device whatsoever I have shot all three of those in the same day with the same ammo at the same place just to see if there was any shift in accuracy not point of impact because of course there would be at the point of impact with no muzzle device versus muzzle devices so what I did that day was I took my national matched flash suppressor my USCG muzzle break and then I also shot with NOAA's all device whatsoever on the weapon there was a shift in point of impact for no muzzle device but when I had the flash suppressor and the muzzle brake which you see here those had the same point of impact some no shift of eventually what I had determined that day was that one this muzzle break is it's like shooting night and day compared to flash suppressor versus and muzzle break the recoil is largely attained by this I can't I can't overstate how good this muzzle break is as far as taming the recoil it's insane I would imagine that although ever tried at bracketing your shots at long range as possible with this muzzle brake vs a flash suppressor the other variable I'd eliminated was that the flash suppressor does not have an accuracy or excuse me does not have an impact on your accuracy all the point of impact of course is going to shift that's just to be expected so those are two different variables I eliminated that date so move on to the end of the video we have pros and cons we'll start off with cons and then done a good note with the pros and then what I see for feature this rifle my rifle for the cons overall the accuracy is one a quarter MOA on average for this rifle I really like getting those tight groups I know that's that 1.24 is good for this rifle I'd always like to get more accurate just like anyone else but their weapon so that I would call it a weight or rather white is one of the cons a lot of the weight is focused on the forearm or the weapon there's not really too much going on here as far as weight is concerned so over time it does become cumbersome shooting unsupported it's not to say that you can't do it it's just that you will get tired quicker with this whereas if you're shooting just carbines of some sort you build a shoot longer unsupported with that carbine but that just comes with having a whole bunch of long barrel heavy barrel big sight and a big chance to end your weapons so that is a con nonetheless I would also say expensive accessories and triggers although there are many people who make accessories for the m1 a and m14 rifles the pricing is all is a it's pretty expensive I would say there's just so much competition in the AR community in the AR accessories market that the price is almost affordable they are forced to be lower to be competitive but there are a lot of manufacturers in the m18 community but it's not as competitive as the AR so I really wish that there's more competition as far as pricing is concerned and that has to be calm for sure everything is you're so darn expensive for this weapon the open design is also another con so I don't know if you guys watch forgotten weapons they didn't one test one day on AR versus m14 in the mud long story short the m14 the mud shop the shot that was already in the chamber and then the action seized up because the mud got in maybe our chassis you have let's see or another they m14 itself you have a very open design right near the rear peep sight there's a huge opening right where it is on the m1 garand and that allows large particles of anything that fits will get in there and screw up your action now sand if sand gets in there it's not gonna stop the action from functioning properly it'll be gritty for sure but it will not stop the action from functioning you get mug you get something thick and viscous in there it will definitely prevent this weapon from firing at all so that is a huge con it's kind of comedic washing the forgotten weapons mud test on that I'd suggest to go ahead and watch it so it's a good watch another con the last con before we want to throw so many darn screws there's about eight different screws actually ten different screws for this weapon I won't name them off but there's about ten and it there's just so many screws you have to deal with different torque specs for each of them and then you have to keep track of them you're disassembling your weapon whereas it's really easy on an AR to keep captive pins in place and that's really the only thing you have to worry about it's your captive pins and even though even then those won't roll away from you so all the Loctite all the torque specs that go in with the screws in the EBR chassis is a huge con in my opinion so move on to the pros now that I'm done complaining about this pros accuracy is one click to farm away like I said for some people that's great for some people like me who always wants to get that that one whole group it's not great but in this case it's a pro for probably most other people it looks really cool that was the first thing that got me into this rifle is I really like the look of it that's really the first thing I tell people buying a new firearm does it look good to you cool then go ahead and buy it I also really love the history there's a little bit of political stuff as far as when the FAL went up against the m14 for the next service rifle but yeah that aside I really enjoyed the history and reading new things about the rifle and how it came to be additionally very pleasant shooter it's heavy yes and the muzzle brake helps with the recoil as does the weight that I just talked about so although the wages of probar excuse me it's a con it's also a pro and then it keeps the weapon pretty horizontal when you're shooting which allows for rapid fire not rapid fire rapid to follow up shots I've been trying to bracket shots on target or something like that additionally I've already talked about the great history there's a plethora of other accessories like I said that is a con and that they are expensive but nonetheless there are a lot of accessories for this weapon as far as different chances if you don't like the EBR chassis there's plenty of other companies that make jassi's and there are repeatable companies although this is my rifle is heavy the ergonomics are great really like the context handguard which gives you excellent - link grip on the weapon as you can tell I really enjoyed the finger detents in the EVR ALCS chassis here I'm usually not a fan of detents but these kind of work perfectly the grip angle also isn't too harsh so it's really nice to shoot with your elbows tucked or if you're on the ground shooting it's ergonomic either way the customizable cheek riser is absolutely wonderful because everyone's got different sized faces and stuff and your scopes are different so all the contact points on the weapon for handling it are just extremely extremely ergonomic even though it's heavy so that is that's essentially all the cons moving on to what I'm gonna do in the future and they'll wrap up the video is in the future I am gonna try to do an exome 21 barrel with a bursting XM 21 receiver with a 19 inch medium weight national match barrel from bulla defense the reason I want to go with that receivers because it has milled picatinny rails in which eliminates not only the weight of your DC SB detachable cantilever sight base but also eliminates the variable let's see one two three four screws that you have to torque down if any one of those comes loose it can throw off your accuracy enough to where your point of impact shifts and you've got a reserve your rifle so that is the reason I'm going to go with the receiver that has picatinny rails built into it to eliminate the weight and eliminate that accuracy variable additionally it's pretty it's affordable for what it is and I really just want to tell you guys about that because it's not too many people know about the bull defense it's a plain one receiver who are new to this community anyways so if you guys have any questions or anything you want to discuss in the comments section go right ahead thank you for watching and then if you have any other additional questions that I can answer then 14 forms are really helpful place to go and hang out so thank you all for watching

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Views: 36,720

Rating: 4.9182391 out of 5

Keywords: m1a, m14, mk14, ebr, emr, enhanced battle rifle, enhanced marksman rifle, springfield armory, gun review, weapon review, sage ebr, sage, sightron, scope, muzzle brake, shooting, firs person, gopro, range day, range trip, marksman, 308, 7.62, 762, semi automatic, sniper rifle, usgi, gi, m14 forum, m14forum, m1 garand, garand, service rifle, guns and gear, tactical, sniper, army, air force, special operations, socom, gun, weapon, rifle, m14 ebr, mk14 ebr

Id: jBjecHR94_M

Length: 29min 44sec (1784 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 17 2018