The Pickle: A Few Reviews - Truth Spoken Here

I figured I would write a post reviewing the items I tested out at the range this weekend.

To begin with I fired my newly modified PLR-16. The optional hand-gaurd functioned very well, but I still found myself grasping the front of the magazine well out of habit. The muzzle brake on the other hand did not function as I had hoped. Don't get me wrong, it certainly reduced muzzle rise and recoil noticeably. The thing that made it unacceptable was the other things it did... It directed the muzzle gasses back into my face with sufficient force to actually cause my hair to flutter! As if that wasn't enough, it also directed a large portion of the gun's considerable noise back at me as well. A neighboring shooter even stopped by remarking "Wow! That thing's just downright violent!" So I unscrewed it and went back to firing it without a muzzle brake. I have no doubts that this particular muzzle brake would work fine on a rifle, but this gun is just too short for it.

While picking up ammunition at a local gun shop, I happened across some interesting polymer cased .223 rounds. They were inexpensive so I grabbed a few boxes and decided to try them out.

I did a little online research and found stories indicating that these rounds have an issue with the neck separating when fired in AR rifles. I didn't have that issue in the PLR, presumably because of the shorter barrel or perhaps Natec has eliminated that problem. These rounds fed well and shot accurately. If the manufacturer has indeed addressed the reported issues with neck separation, then these rounds should be considered for our military's use. The reduction in weight of a magazine loaded with these rounds was immediately noticeable. Ask anyone that's ever humped ammo and I'm sure they will unanimously agree that lighter ammo is a good thing.

Moving on along... The 1911 fired quite accurately, but fed for shit. I sort of thought that might be the case because I had noticed already that the feed ramp was just about as far from being polished as it could be. So when the slide came forward to strip a round from the magazine, the nose of the bullet was driven into the rough feed ramp and the whole mechanism came to a grinding halt. Once I got home, I pulled out the Dremel, buffing wheels and emery stick and spent a couple of hours polishing up the feed ramp. It looked as if the feed ramp had been ground into the frame with a 60 grit sanding drum, so polishing out the feed ramp took quite a bit of effort. The feed ramp now shines like a mirror and rounds feed like a charm.

The SKS functioned flawlessly. I would even say its one if the better SKS's I've fired. So that one was a score. I guess it's worth while pawing through the crate of cosmoline covered rifles looking for the one with the sharpest rifling. I seem to have a knack for picking SKS's. Then again I've owned probably two dozen of them at one time or another all told. This should make an excellent rifle for the wife to operate.

Here you see my plans for the front end of this rifle. The grenade launcher will be trimmed off and the barrel re-crowned. The grenade sight will be removed and the bayonet mounting lug will be ground off. I'll mount a nice red dot sight on the rear sight leaf and then the action will be loaded into a new stock like this one available from CombatStocks.com: