SOLGW: The Final Thoughts Part 2
So here is where I’m going to break down the rounds that I fired through the gun during the review. One important thing to note is, I fired these rounds in no particular order or one brand at a time and the reason why is, I didn’t want one kind of ammo to be a rockstar on a clean gun, but not so much in a dirty gun and I failed to pick that up….with one prime example being the Steel cased Tula Ammo.
1500 rounds = PMC 55 Grain Practice Ammo
1500 rounds = M855 Ammo
1000 rounds = XM193
500 rounds = Steel Cased Tul Ammo
700 rounds = Remington UMC 55 Grain Practice Ammo
75 Rounds = Speer Gold Dot 64 grain
50-ish rounds = Horandy TAP 60 grain
(After the barrel was hot)
So now that you know what was shot through the gun, lets cover the conditions. Right before its scheduled cleaning at the half way point, I ran the rifle through Pat Mac’s class that was at my range and it was brutal. There were points on Saturday that it was damn near raining sideways and I don’t think the rifle was ever dry that weekend. The night of the first day, I decided to leave it out in a field and let mother nature have its mercy on the rifle. I came back the next day, found the rifle, and shot a mag through it with it no problems. What did I prove?….hell I don’t know, but it was fun to do.
After Mac’s class and 2935 rounds fired, it was time to clean it. I cleaned the rifle thoroughly, scrubbing each part and removing all carbon off the rifle. Also cleaned the barrel thoroughly and got her looking good again. I did not lubricate the rifle at this point, because Michael was sending me a new lube that they developed and asked me to use it. A couple few some time later I got the lube and went to the range, butttttt I wasn’t going to add the lube to a room temp gun, cause that ain’t fun. I wanted to add it to a hot gun. So I went and fired 120 rounds of steel cased through the gun to get it warm and applied the lube. The rifle was more than happy to chew up and spit out those steel cased rounds with no problem and while it was dry.
After that lubed was applied, there was no more lube applied the rest of the review.
At this point, I had a lot of confidence in the rifle and felt like I could trust it, so it became my duty gun while at work. Being as I work in Training, the primary use of this gun was for SWAT. The only addition to the gun was the feeding source was now a D60. Take the above statement as you may, some see it as significant.
The next 1k rounds were fired much as before, in an overall realistic fashion with nothing super sexy. I will note that the lubrication held on for about 600 rounds AND a 4 week period, in which the environmental conditions were upper 90’s and humid here in southeast Texas. Going forward, I decided not to re-lubricate the weapon; because it is common for officers to deploy dry rifles on scenes, because forgetting or neglecting to apply lube occasionally. Im gonna drop a knowledge bomb on you guys real quick, oil evaporates…..After the oil dried up, the rifle still had about 1500 rounds to go and those were all fired completely dry.
The last notable portion of the test was the Force on Force test. These days all the marking round companies make drop in bolts for rifles, so that the end user can still use their rifle and not get some bone stock dedicated training rifle with zero similarities to their own. With this though, some rifles don’t like the rounds.
(FoF on the left, UTM on the right)
Here is my original statement on the matter:
“The gun wasn’t created and tuned for use with Simunition type rounds. With that said, the wide spread adoption of this platform requires that it wear many hats or at least be able to wear different hats/roles with minimal modification. The FoF ammo makers had to adapt their system, mainly through BCG design to work for that system. Its typically the other way around, so there will be inevitable flaws depending on what variables each manufacturer has in their specific building processes.
In regards to that and use by professional end users, it is important to know if the ammo will work properly in that specific brand. Any squared away team that believes in proficiency will conduct Force on Force training quite frequently. So, it can be detrimental if the platform fails to work with what you have. A more viable solution is to change the brand of training rounds rather than select a rifle brand based off its compatibility to something it wasn’t designed for, however sometimes politics or administrative red tape gets in the way of that, so again its something to consider. Can a buffer simply be changed and achieve desired end result of functioning?…If so, rock on with your bad self, if its a more complex issue at hand, its something to either work with on with the company or may have to look elsewhere.
With that being said, I would never hold it against a company if their rifles didn’t cycle A and B companies training round but did C company or vice versa, etc etc. Its not an indication of quality or out of spec or whatever else you can come up with, cause the system was never designed for those low pressures or more importantly the bypassing of the gas system in lieu of blowback operation.”
With all that said, Speer’s Force on Force brand did not like the rifle. It would fail to feed every 5 or so rounds. I suspect this is a buffer issue. I next tested UTM, which is my number one pick for marking rounds, and they worked flawlessly. So again, the fact that FoF rounds did not work through the SOLGW rifles is not a mark against them, its just a consideration. As for Simunition brand rounds, I hate those rounds with a passion and had no desire or availability to test them.
On my last video that I made, which can be found on the Primary and Secondary YouTube channel and linked below, you can see some examples of how I ran the rifle for the last 1k rounds. The rifle was ran hard, heated up rapidly and then let it cool and then ran hard again so it got hot…..over and over again over an 8 hour day for a total of close to 800 rounds. This was the last real test of the rifle to stand up to abuse I was throwing at it. It passed it all with flying colors. So with that, the test was officially over. The only adverse event to report was the above stated malfunction.
So after all was said and done, I give this rifle my full endorsement, along with Primary and Secondary as professional end user/duty grade rifle. This review wasn’t the typical review where some guy is breaking out armorer tools and measuring everything while he talks like Ben Stein or where the guy is throwing it off a building into a lake and then dries it off by roasting it over a fire. All these kinda reviews just loose me and I’m left asking……dude, did the damn rifle work or not and do you trust it? Now this statement relies on the fact that you trust my word and trust my credentials. If you don’t, well then I will probably waste your time. The parts and specs are absolutely important, but again, half you assholes don’t know whats what or what milspec gas port is supposed to be. This again goes back to you trusting me to tell you it was all good in the hood…..and yes, I’m an armorer. This review was supposed to be for professionals with limited technical knowledge who just want to know what a good rifle to buy is, they give a shit less about anything else. With that said, I present to you the Sons of Liberty Gun Works rifle, which qualifies as that quality standard.
Some will say the rifle is just getting broken in a 5k rounds and to an extent your right…..you’re right in the aspect that a quality made rifle is just getting broken in. You’d be surprised how many subpar made rifles begin to have issues within 5k rounds. But anyways, youre in luck, because the SOLGW dudes want me to hang on to this rifle and replicate to the best of my ability, something like what the late and great Pat Rogers did with the BCM “Filthy 14”, except I shall name this beast “Sloppy Son” rifle. I have a thread going on the Primary and Secondary main page where I will continue to add updates. My goal with this second portion is break it.
Several portions of my review were recorded for the sake of transparency and they can be viewed on the P&S YouTube channel. I also did an “update while I go” type deal on a thread on Pro Group Page on P&S. Every time I shot the gun, I provided updates, not just one final write up. This write up is sorta the icing on the cake, not the sole source of info for my review on the rifle.
As always, if you guys have specific questions or want more details, hit me up on P&S or post in the preexisting thread in the Pro Group. The SOLGW dudes watch that thread and can also answer your specific questions pertaining to the rifle.
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