gunmechanic
Member
If i were buying or building an ar i would want the forward assist .It was a design enhancement that when needed is invaluable.In my opinion that is.
M-16 Forward Assist ... did you need it?
- Thread starter 21H40
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I'll take the extra 2 ounces along with the extra width of the forward assist and the extra width of the Bruton Bump (brass deflector). The Bruton bump is really nice to have for us left handed shooters. Being a left handed shooter, I received way too many burns from hot brass when shooting the M16A1. And left handed shooters getting hit/burned by hot brass was enough of a problem that the Bruton bump was added to the M16A2.
C-grunt
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C-grunt
Member
What issues were they having? Unseated mags is probably the most common "malfunction" of the AR16/M16 family of rifles. In my 21 years of using the rifle professionally I've seen unseated mags fall out or fail to feed easily 20 to 1 over all other problems combined. Seems like removing the mags would be more likely to cause an issue that a press check to me.
Varminterror
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100%.
After building, rebuilding, and troubleshooting hundreds of AR’s, using them in competition and for hunting, attending and instructing courses on manipulating the AR, there’s nothing in the world which would convince me to drop a mag to check top round position as any indication of chamber condition, then pray I get the mag properly seated under the closed bolt, right before I were going into a life-threatening conflict… not a chance.
mcb
Member
As I understood it from his description, the magazine trick is easy in the dark without the need to look at your weapon. It's easy to check a magazine is seated by pulling on it firmly. They felt that the bolt stripping the round into battery was the best and most secure way to ensure the bolt was in battery and messing with that doing a press check caused more issues than it ever fixed. They were of the belief that press checking can leave it just far enough out of batter (even with use of the forward assist unless you are intentionally very firm with the FA) to have it not fire but and in poor lighting situation it will not be obvious and difficult to feel an out of battery condition especially with gloves on.
Personally more often than not I don't do either (press check or magazine check, the magazine trick does not work on 450BM/30RAR), but I am also not in combat. The bolt stripping a round and going into battery has a pretty distinctive feel/sound and as long as that feel/sounds good to me I roll with it. This is partial out of the annoyance of being a USPSA RO for years and having to watch all those "pros" press check their guns at the start of each stage (along with all the other fluffing they did). In my observations it seemed far more press checked weapons fail to fire on the first shot than guys that just loaded up and rolled with it. From that experience I don't press check unless something does not feel right and then I usually just unload and do it again rather than risk the press check.
Personally more often than not I don't do either (press check or magazine check, the magazine trick does not work on 450BM/30RAR), but I am also not in combat. The bolt stripping a round and going into battery has a pretty distinctive feel/sound and as long as that feel/sounds good to me I roll with it. This is partial out of the annoyance of being a USPSA RO for years and having to watch all those "pros" press check their guns at the start of each stage (along with all the other fluffing they did). In my observations it seemed far more press checked weapons fail to fire on the first shot than guys that just loaded up and rolled with it. From that experience I don't press check unless something does not feel right and then I usually just unload and do it again rather than risk the press check.
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citizenconn
Member
I tried that Caldwell one with the metal frame and mesh bag and found it to suck mainly because the design of how the mesh part attaches to the metal frame is backwards of how it should be. Plus the attachment for the picatinny rail while seemingly a good design often interfered with my scope mounts on the rail. I ended up angrily throwing that one away.
The solid box on the top of the brass goat gives me enough room for my reciprocating side charging handles to clear and rarely causes a stoppage with the empty case bouncing back into the action or some other problem. I don't work for that company or anything, but am very particular about the accessories I use and recommend to anyone. Me being lefthanded has also complicated the issue a lot of times so I've gone to building my side charging ARs with a left side attaching handle, right side ejecting receivers which work best for me.
I also have gone to using adjustable gas blocks and when bench shooting often turn off the gas and just run them like bolt guns. Good luck finding one that works for you.
herrwalther
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Splitting hairs, but the most common M16/M4 problems I saw were caused by old stuck followers, pinched magazine body (that caused a stuck follower), or damaged lips. Usually caused by some NCO and a pair of pliers trying to "fix" a problem. Problems with the rifle itself dropped drastically after the growing pains of Vietnam. Magazines caused the big issues after that and this is where there are generations of magazines being tried. I first remember aluminum grey GI magazines with black or light green followers. Towards the end of my time, I was either using aluminum magazines with Magpul Enhanced followers (dark brown) or any generation of Pmag. I spent a lot of time on the range as either a range safety and remedial rifle trainer, for those soldiers that forgot the basics after boot camp. As the magazines got better, I spent less and less time cussing when I got waved over for a problem a shooter was having.
C-grunt
Member
We didnt have a lot of mag issues. We had plenty of fresh mags so if one went bad we just pitched it and got new ones. Since P-mags came out I hardly ever see mag issues anymore.
herrwalther
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Exactly what we did. Usually threw it under a truck wheel to crush it more so someone didn't try salvaging it from the trash, for whatever reason. I kept a paint marker with me in the ammo point so if someone complained about a mag, it got some strikes before it ended up in the trash. If one person has a malfunction with a mag, it could be shooter error. If 5 people have a problem with the same mag, its probably the mag.
C-grunt
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We always just used our own mags that we kept with out gear.
herrwalther
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Most of us used and qualified with our issued mags. But we kept 500 to 700 on hand for when we ran the range for other units in the battalion/brigade
wesmonster
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I've only used an FA on one rifle and that was a 7.62x39 build that had crappy mags.
On my 7,6x32, 5.45x39 & 9mm builds I remove the FA to act as a vent to keep crud from blowing out the charge handle. They all have charge handles with gas lips but it still helps.
On my 'serious' rifles, I keep the FA, I've never used the spare tire on the car I currently own but I'm not going anywhere without it.
Of course, in a pinch you can also just as easily push the bolt forward with the notch showing thru the ejection port so no FA isn't gonna doom you either.
On my 7,6x32, 5.45x39 & 9mm builds I remove the FA to act as a vent to keep crud from blowing out the charge handle. They all have charge handles with gas lips but it still helps.
On my 'serious' rifles, I keep the FA, I've never used the spare tire on the car I currently own but I'm not going anywhere without it.
Of course, in a pinch you can also just as easily push the bolt forward with the notch showing thru the ejection port so no FA isn't gonna doom you either.
Going back to 1970, in two tours in Vietnam, I never used the forward assist, nor did the Special Forces personnel that I lived with and supported in the field. We were careful with our ammunition and loaded mags with one less than the capacity. Weapons were kept clean and the thought was that if the FA was not a fix for a failure-to-chamber, and might render the piece completely out of service by jamming a defective round into the chamber....
BTW there were no 30 rounders in the B or A camps that I worked with at that time. All were the original 20's. The Army SF's carried the full size M-16 and I had the CAR 15, issued to me by the USAF. For those unfamiliar, 1970 was a cpl years past the ammunition problems that plagued earlier use of the M-16 in country but we were still leery of issue ball, and took a lot of care with head stamp year inspection. Best Regards, Rod
BTW there were no 30 rounders in the B or A camps that I worked with at that time. All were the original 20's. The Army SF's carried the full size M-16 and I had the CAR 15, issued to me by the USAF. For those unfamiliar, 1970 was a cpl years past the ammunition problems that plagued earlier use of the M-16 in country but we were still leery of issue ball, and took a lot of care with head stamp year inspection. Best Regards, Rod
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InTheSwamp
Member
Never had to use it, but I want all my rifles to have it.
Its amazing sometimes all the flak you catch from the M1/M14/M1A shooters that insist on telling you tell you that they cant fire out of battery.
Mine only took about 10 stitches.
Im just lucky it was the slow fire prone string, and the rifle wasnt in my shoulder when it happened. Never did find the rear of the receiver from the serial number back.
Mine didnt happen with the bump of my hand on the charging handle, I had slipped a round into the chamber and let the bolt go. That was also the last time I ever loaded an M1 that way.
Wow! Glad you were not hurt.
I can say, having researched it, the NRA through the American Rifleman, actively suppressed the information that Garands/M14's would slamfire due to primer sensitivity. In fact, the concept or primer sensitivity did not exist. The only allowed causes of slamfires were shooter neglect: high primers or worn out receiver bridges. A high primer can cause a slamfire if the anvil is resting on something firm. Otherwise high primers are the most common cause of misfires. The worn out receiver bridge was a total misdirection. The so called safety bridge was a firing pin retraction cam and was never designed to be a firing pin block. The only thing preventing slamfires in the Garand type mechanism, and the AR, is primer insensitivity. The free floating firing pins in these mechanisms bounce off the primer and occasionally, there is a sensitive primer being whacked, and it ignites.
The earliest I found the NRA covering up this weapon defect was in a 1961 article. At the time the NRA thought itself an extension of the Department of Defense and many of the technical writers came right out of the Army Ordnance Bureau. There were all Greener than Green, so to say. NRA staffers were hyper supporters of the Army Ordnance Bureau and its products. (I am sure many of them were making more money consulting on small arms for the Department of Defense than they ever made in their entire career as a Civil Servant) The Army was also paying for the National Matches. The NRA made a lot of money from match fees, NRA competitive shooting was huge at the time. Shooters competed in local, regional matches, and then the big event of the year was the Army funded National Matches. You can understand the NRA was going to totally cover for their Army sponsors, never say anything bad about Army small arms, and do anything to silence information that might cause shooters to be worried about the safety of their Army issue weapons.
Up until the 1990's. about the only semi automatic rifles in quantity that were being shot, were M1a's and Garands. Plus the internet did not exist for shooters to compare experiences. So for decades, NRA could, and did, put out misinformation that the only cause of slamfires were high primers and your worn out receiver bridge. Without the internet they had a monopoly on misinformation through the American Rifleman magazine. But in the 1990's the internet came along, huge numbers of foreign semi automatic rifles were imported. And most of all, AR15's came on the market. Millions of AR15's have been sold in an amazing number of configurations. AR15's don't have receiver bridges, and plenty of slamfires were occurring with factory ammunition.
Before Communist block rifles were banned for importation, lots of reports of slamfires with SKS's and AK47's were reported. Lesser reports can be found for the French MAS 49, FN 49, FN-FAL. All of the service ammunition issued with these rifles had less sensitive primers than US commercial ammunition. Chinese SKS's have heavy firing pins without the Russian firing pin springs, one reason those springs are in the bolt is to reduce the impact of the firing pin on the primer. One semi auto rifle type that is particularly devoid of slamfire reports are the roller bolts. The firing pin on a roller bolt is positively kept behind the bolt face until the lugs are in battery, and the firing pin spring could easily double as a valve spring. It is strong.
Having searched for internet reports, I have found slamfire reports on every semi automatic rifle with a free floating pin. There are very few semi automatic rifles with captive firing pins, so there are out of battery slamfire incidents with the Winchester 100, the Rem M742 onward, Browning Automatic rifle, etc.
Not that any of that makes a difference to the slamfire deniers. I think their major malfunction is based on the human desire for control and predictability. Deniers, like most people, crave predictability and control. People don't like the concept that the world, universe, is a random, chaotic, unpredictable place. A dangerous place they don't control and cannot control. I am going to tell you, you can do everything right, that is size the case smaller than the chamber, use the least sensitive primers you can find, and yet, the rifle will slamfire. And it is all because primers vary in sensitivity, and you have no idea of the sensitivity of any individual primer. So whether you have a slamfire or not, is, more or less, based on luck. You can bias that luck, so the chances of a slamfire are less, but you can never eliminate the potential of a slamfire. And that is anathema to control freaks. So they go into denial.
Good thing out of battery slamfires in AR's are very uncommon, but they do happen. All due to bolt bounce and primer dwell. The AR15 firing pin cannot touch the primer until the lugs are in battery. But, lets say the round is chambered, the firing pin rebounds off the primer, the primer is slow in igniting, and in that interval, the carrier rebounds a bit, rotating the lugs out of battery. That's how a AR15 slamfires out of battery. If the primer goes off with the lugs are engaged, it just scares the heck out of the shooter.
Prior to 1999 the WSR primer was nickel plated (or zinc perhaps) and one of the less sensitive commercial primers. However Winchester redesigned their primer to be more sensitive. Slamfires with the brass color WSR are common. The brass color WSR primer also pierces at pressures that never bothered the old nickel plated WSR. I switched to CCI #41's and never had an issue. A bud of mine was a Federal Match primer user till he had two in battery slamfires with the things in AR's.
Shoot enough, and you will see things, and experience things, that prove you are not indestructible, and not invincible, and those experiences made me more cautious. However, fearless people exist, and everyone should understand that. Fearless individuals are the ones who do risky things, and each time they survive by the hair on their chinny chin chin, just proves to themselves their delusions of indestructibility and invincibility. Fearless people are often very charismatic, and totally self confident.
It is a funny thing about ignorance, it does not build caution, in fact, it builds confidence. This article is worth reading:
We Are All Confident Idiots
Pacific Standard Dec 2014, Confident Idiots – David Dunning
http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/confident-idiots-92793/
An ignorant mind is precisely not a spotless, empty vessel, but one that’s filled the clutter of irrelevant or misleading life experiences, theories, facts, intuitions, strategies, algorithms, heuristics, metaphors, and hunches that regrettably have the look and feel of useful and accurate knowledge.
As the humorist Josh Billing once put it, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble, its what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
In many cases, incompetence does not leave people disoriented, perplexed, or cautious. Instead, the incompetent are often blessed with an inappropriate confidence, buoyed by something that feels to them like knowledge.”
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