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My little "Behind Every Blade of Grass" carbine, Brenda really tested me with this optics and irons thing.
I really like her and she'd become my favorite AR.
The right weight and balance and...
Because I didn't completely think through how the optics work I got worried she had a major wandering zero problem.
My Mini-14 days came back to haunt me.
Chasing that wandering zero ruined many days of shooting and kept us at the 50 yard line when we should have been stretching our legs and shooting at the 100 or 200 yard lines at the Ames, Ike's range.
I didn't want to do that again, and I know that Palmetto State Armory has a bit of a reputation for getting it wrong then making it right once you complain.
Doing the re-zero of the irons today and discovering that something about the light-path means you can't use the irons through the scope restored faith in my little Brenda.
I didn't want to be unhappy with my favorite.
Interesting thing about Mini-14s... the accuracy and wandering zero issues that we all ran into with them back in the early 1990s mostly got fixed in later versions, and a number of years back 3rd parties came out with "struts" which resolved a lot of them. One of the big issues is the way the Mini-14 barrel mounts, and because it is a pretty thin barrel, there were thermal issues. The other issue I had was mostly the kind of crappy clamp on scope mounts. The "Ranch Rifle" version which none of us had was better because it had some provision built in for adding a scope instead of it being a kludge like the B-Square mounts. The B-Squares were kind of flimsy and the set screws would loosen up. Since those days better designed and made scope mounts have come out to address those issues. However... it's all kind of academic as has been mentioned around here before... Mini-14s are no longer the poor man's .223 rifle.. The new ones cost more than a lot of AR's. ARs are no longer so expensive only the wealthy can afford them. Competition in the marketplace for ARs has made them a commodity. Ruger basically has no direct competition in the Mini-14's niche and because that niche is small these days, they don't have massive production which would drive costs down. Additionally (for those not familiar) the Mini-14 is a much more traditional, if cost reduced rifle from the M14, M1 Carbine and M1 Garand family, which are not as easy to mass produce and cost reduce further.
ReplyDeleteAnyway... The world has changed and even former AR platform haters are now fans... And our pocketbooks would celebrate... If it weren't for BRD.
Above comment was mine, not intentionally posted anonymous... Somehow blogspot has been doing this to me lately...
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