Shotguns I saw this week (I promise I won’t do carbines)

[LHS]

One of the Benelli M4 owners found the ergonomics of the gun highly sub-optimal and then started looking at the cost of trying to fix all the little issues like getting the rather silly adjustable stock, replacing the magazine tube and concluded "So I spent more than a 1301 and now I'm looking at spending almost another 1301's worth of money to try and make this gun work as well for me as those 1301's are working for those guys. So I could have had two 1301's for the price of trying to make this one M4 work. That's what I've learned here."

Had a student fight his way through this over two days recently. He was a smaller gentleman, and was having a hell of a lot of trouble with the M4's collapsing stock run out nearly all the way. He (with great frustration evident) pointed out that collapsing the stock raises the cheek weld fairly significantly, so that if he shortened it enough to be proper LOP his face couldn't get down low enough to use the optic, much less the irons. Suboptimal indeed.

On the upside, it's a lot harder to accidentally trip the bolt release

[LHS]

A couple interesting notes from this past weekend's class:

13x 1301s (including a couple first gens)
3x 870s
1x a300

One of the 1301s started having light strikes. The firing pin channel was gunked up. Cleaning fixed it. This is something we see probably once or twice a class, and emphasizes that all autos need regular cleaning to maintain reliability. The Berettas seen to run better than most, but they still need cleaning now and then.

Another one sheared off the factory charging handle near the end of TD2. The student finished out the class with one of our a300s. That's the first time we've seen a factory handle do that.

Adam Roth brought some of his prototype heat shields that he showed off at SHOT, and they performed quite well. No burned fingers there!

Folks with unmodified Magpul forends had difficulty applying sufficient push to their guns. I noticed a lot of newly applied skateboard tape on TD2. The guys with Talon grip or stippling were happy to have it.

We also continued the unbroken streak of people discovering they hate the Streamlight forend. It's too slick and the ergonomics are pretty much antithetical to push-pull, but this particular student powered through it and earned a Skills Gauge coin! Truly impressive.

All in all a great class.

[TCinVA]

One of the 1301s started having light strikes. The firing pin channel was gunked up.

Probably the biggest Achilles heel on the 1301 from a reliability perspective.

[Lon]

A couple interesting notes from this past weekend's class:

13x 1301s (including a couple first gens)
3x 870s
1x a300

One of the 1301s started having light strikes. The firing pin channel was gunked up. Cleaning fixed it. This is something we see probably once or twice a class, and emphasizes that all autos need regular cleaning to maintain reliability. The Berettas seen to run better than most, but they still need cleaning now and then.

Another one sheared off the factory charging handle near the end of TD2. The student finished out the class with one of our a300s. That's the first time we've seen a factory handle do that.

Adam Roth brought some of his prototype heat shields that he showed off at SHOT, and they performed quite well. No burned fingers there!

Folks with unmodified Magpul forends had difficulty applying sufficient push to their guns. I noticed a lot of newly applied skateboard tape on TD2. The guys with Talon grip or stippling were happy to have it.

We also continued the unbroken streak of people discovering they hate the Streamlight forend. It's too slick and the ergonomics are pretty much antithetical to push-pull, but this particular student powered through it and earned a Skills Gauge coin! Truly impressive.

All in all a great class.

Great class. I’ll be posting an AAR soon.

[TCinVA]

Performance Shotgun last weekend in Alabama.

We didn't make it a box of shells in before the issues began rolling in.

Firstly, if you have any of this "Bio" branded shotgun ammunition, the quality control seems to be terrible. A client in class had a case of it and we found that the case head was being yanked off the shell on a regular basis. This would essentially disassemble a spent case partially or fully inside Turkinelli M4 clone during extraction. Multiple shells ended up too long to eject. On a couple of occasions the cup inside the shell ended up being separated, falling into the action, and then causing a stoppage after the next shot fired.

The Turkinelli also experienced multiple failures to go properly into battery that are likely attributable to the pretty gnarly looking nature of the locking recesses in the barrel extension.

Multiple fasteners came loose.

A left handed client using a Mod2 1301 with the Aridus bolt release paddle found out that particular combination might not work so well when I had the class set the gun up in a storage condition (empty chamber, shell on lifter) and then required them to charge the gun at speed and fire a shot. He kept hitting the bolt release backwards as he brought his hand back to get to the charging handle, dropping another shell on the lifter and locking up the gun. On the plus side, it allowed me to demonstrate the proper technique for clearing that problem since most of the class had 1301's and had never seen it before.

Most guns weren't properly lubricated, but ran pretty well anyways. At one point after discussing lubrication at lunch on Day 1, one of the clients asked if I'd show him how to lubricate his shotgun. I proceeded to squirt a bunch of lubrication in the locking recesses, on the bolt, on the bolt carrier rods, and run the action back and forth several times. I suspect he was expecting the "drop here, two drops there" so I played into that while I just squeezed the hell out of the little bottle he had. "Two drops here, just like this SPLTTTTHHHHH" obviously showing far more than 2 drops. I think the message was received.

One client got home and couldn't get his barrel off his gun for cleaning. I re-described the rubber mallet trick and he succeeded at removing the barrel and found the o-ring had indeed come out of position, gotten in the way of the piston, and been shredded. The gun ran just fine, it simply didn't come apart for cleaning without persuasion. It's only in the last year or two that I've seen the o-rings becoming an issue. I'm not sure what's different that is making it more of an issue now. Ammunition is certainly shooting dirtier than I've ever seen it (visible on the outside of guns certainly, but also based on what I'm seeing when I rip them open) but I don't know if that has anything to do with the o-ring phenomenon.

[gato naranja]

Most guns weren't properly lubricated, but ran pretty well anyways.

Some things haven't changed since... "forever." It seemed like average shotgun owner when/where I was growing up had a can of Outers or 3-in-1 oil somewhere in the house or garage, and he MIGHT use it once in a while before a gun started malfunctioning. The area 'smiths used to howl about the "@#$%^!" who would bring in their dirty and dry shotgun the week before a season started because it wasn't working right. I have been accused of over-oiling, but it's usually by people who are oddly miserly about applying lube.

O-rings seem to have always been potential troublemakers, some models (and even different gauges of said model) being worse than others. I have more experience with 1100s [(cough) "fossil" (cough)] than anything else in the self-loading line, and at least in 12 gauge, they stood up fairly well. A guy who I worked with some years back replaced his factory 1100 o-rings with some that he got from an an o-ring assortment pack at one of the farm/fleet stores... they were less than effective/durable.

[Tensaw]

It's been a minute... Anything new?

[LHS]

It's been a minute... Anything new?

Not really. At our TacCon classes, the malfunctions I saw were generally due to really crap ammo (once again, Winchester Universal is garbage and causes no end of extraction issues), and many stock spacers were removed and thrown away

[SWAT Lt.]

Another one sheared off the factory charging handle near the end of TD2. The student finished out the class with one of our a300s. That's the first time we've seen a factory handle do that.

I know you stated this was the first you'd seen, but do you recommend replacing the OEM charging handle on the 1301? If so, which do you recommend? Thanks.

[mmc45414]

I know you stated this was the first you'd seen, but do you recommend replacing the OEM charging handle on the 1301?

My recollection was that the replacements were the problematic trend, that added weight of the handle has caused some of the small-ish stems to break.