Beretta 1301 Tactical

[OlongJohnson]

I would advise against using the factory rail to mount a dot as I've seen RDS sights pulling the rails loose from the top of the gun multiple times now. (Note that this isn't limited to the 1301...I've seen it on other guns, too)

If you want to mount an optic, buy the Aridus CROM.

I've seen a factory plastic rail shoot loose, but it was not pulling the threads out of the receiver. The Beretta screws were actually failing and the heads snapping off them. I addressed this earlier in the thread, and it came up again a month or two ago.

I'm thinking that by using the aluminum Gen II rail so that flexing of the rail doesn't concentrate stresses unevenly, and suitably upgraded screws, this should be well alleviated, as similar setups don't seem to be a problem on rifles with much heavier scopes mounted. An aluminum rail and properly manufactured screws are also integral parts of the CROM solution.

Does your experience say otherwise?

[DLWinner]

I wanted to mount a Holosun 507c on the factory rail. I figured it would be small and light enough not to stress the plastic rail.... Doesn’t sound like it.

[pyrotechnic]

I think I'm going to give the streamlight 870 light rail a fair shakeout before dismissing it because it doesn't fit perfectly. Has anyone drilled a small hole to let the that "magazine end cap detent pin" (whatever you want to call it) poke through so it can engage the grooves on that cap to prevent loosening under recoil?

[vcdgrips]

Full disclosure. I am not a shotgun guy. I have owned a Mossberg 590 and presently own a very modestly equipped Mossberg 500. I have maybe 300 rounds through Benelli LEO guns over the past 20 ish years.

Executive Summary: If an auto is your thing- buy this and start working on the software because you have the hardware covered.

I had a chance to shoot for the first time since Early March. I also had a chance to shoot a Gen 1.5 1301 with some old school full power buck and slug. Given the ammo, it was appreciably softer "feeling "than a Benelli shooting the same ammo.

12 inch @ 15 was the pattern for the 8 and 9 pellet Buck (Winchester). I was shooting low .20 splits with ease.

My shooting partner then loaded some bird shot and proceed to rip off 7 rounds in 1.52 seconds ( first shot in .45) from the low ready shooting splits in the mid to high teens.

Data point of 2.



In the buy quality, cry once camp, You could trick this thing out with Magpul Furniture, a "side saddle", a light and red dot and be in under 2k with the ultimate fighting shotgun.

[sigfla]

Full disclosure. I am not a shotgun guy. I have owned a Mossberg 590 and presently own a very modestly equipped Mossberg 500. I have maybe 300 rounds through Benelli LEO guns over the past 20 ish years.

Executive Summary: If an auto is your thing- buy this and start working on the software because you have the hardware covered.

I had a chance to shoot for the first time since Early March. I also had a chance to shoot a Gen 1.5 1301 with some old school full power buck and slug. Given the ammo, it was appreciably softer "feeling "than a Benelli shooting the same ammo.

12 inch @ 15 was the pattern for the 8 and 9 pellet Buck (Winchester). I was shooting low .20 splits with ease.

My shooting partner then loaded some bird shot and proceed to rip off 7 rounds in 1.52 seconds ( first shot in .45) from the low ready shooting splits in the mid to high teens.

Data point of 2.



In the buy quality, cry once camp, You could trick this thing out with Magpul Furniture, a "side saddle", a light and red dot and be in under 2k with the ultimate fighting shotgun.

When you factor in the money it’s a no brainer. I used my M4 and my 1301 in class this weekend. The M4 is tricked out and the 1301 only lacks the install of my aridus RMR Mount. The 1301 was superior. The M4 recoiled slightly less but at the cost of a lot of weight. The 1301 feels like an air soft toy and still recoils soft.

[TCinVA]

I've seen a factory plastic rail shoot loose, but it was not pulling the threads out of the receiver. The Beretta screws were actually failing and the heads snapping off them. I addressed this earlier in the thread, and it came up again a month or two ago.

I'm thinking that by using the aluminum Gen II rail so that flexing of the rail doesn't concentrate stresses unevenly, and suitably upgraded screws, this should be well alleviated, as similar setups don't seem to be a problem on rifles with much heavier scopes mounted. An aluminum rail and properly manufactured screws are also integral parts of the CROM solution.

Does your experience say otherwise?

At the last Shotgun 360 we had a 1301 with the factory aluminum rail used to mount a Trijicon MRO. It was professionally installed. It worked loose by the end of the first day. He went back to the hotel room and replaced the blue loc-tite with Vibratite (which is superior for this sort of application) only to find that by day 2 even having properly used Vibratite it was loose again. Now the MRO is not a heavy optic, but it doesn't take a heavy optic to strain the factory rail.

There is a combination of factors at play. The first is how many screw threads are actually engaged in the receiver. The factory mount sits higher on the gun, meaning that a fastener can't sit as deep on it as it does on the CROM. Adam's design mounts low to get the optic into the focal plane of the eye when the gun is mounted, but that design decision also has the effect of reducing the leverage that the mount has on the fasteners holding it to the gun. The amount of the fastener that is engaged relative to its size is higher on Adam's mount than on the factory mount.

The higher the optic sits, the more leverage it seems to have on the mount when inertia is doing its thing. The longer the fastener, the more leverage the mount has on the screw. Once the screws start to work loose, the mount moves more and that starts pulling the screws against the threads. In my last edition of Home Defense Shotgun a client with a Beretta 1201 had a rail mounted so he could put a small Romeo on the gun.

On the second string of the qualification (the last exercise of the class) his optic mount left the gun in spectacular fashion:



One screw head sheared off completely. The photo doesn't show it well, but the screw body left in that hole is sitting in there at about a 30 degree angle. Note the blue thread locking compound on it. The photo shows that the rest of the tapped holes had the threads ripped right out.

Again, this was a 1201...not a 1301. But the rail on the 1201 was very similar to the factory rail on the 1301 in terms of height and all it had on it was a Romeo with the same footprint as the Aimpoint Micro.

So having seen the factory rail work loose multiple times, even when the aluminum rail is used, good fasteners are used, and a good thread locking compound was used, I'm not a fan of mounting optics to the factory rail on the 1301, polymer or aluminum.

If you want to mount an optic to a 1301, use a CROM.

[TCinVA]

I think I'm going to give the streamlight 870 light rail a fair shakeout before dismissing it because it doesn't fit perfectly. Has anyone drilled a small hole to let the that "magazine end cap detent pin" (whatever you want to call it) poke through so it can engage the grooves on that cap to prevent loosening under recoil?

No. It's not necessary.

The magazine cap coming loose is a concern on most shotguns. The spring loaded detent in the Beretta's forend is a good way to try and prevent that, but even so when you shoot the factory setup for a while (as you might do in a class setting) it will still work loose.

I can tell you that I leave the Streamlight 870 mount on my 1301 all the time. This means it is used in every class I teach when I demo with the gun and when the gun inevitably ends up in the hands of a client because their gun breaks. Generally I have to tighten up the Nordic mag tube on my primary gun once after class is over. Paying attention to the magazine cap/mag tube is something you just have to do with a shotgun that you are going to put a significant number of rounds through.

Having used the Streamlight 870 mount on 870's and my two 1301's, it doesn't make the problem any worse than not having it on the gun. You need to tighten the mag cap nice and snug and in a class environment you need to check it periodically, but that's true no matter what shotgun you are using.

A strategy I would recommend is actually taking the mount off the gun when you do live fire training with it. In class the first thing I see fail is lights and light mounts. Lights come loose or just straight leave the gun entirely.

The shotgun is absolutely brutal to every piece of equipment attached to it. Lights are no exception. If you consistently shoot your defensive shotgun (and you should) with the light mounted to it and you have batteries in the light, you will kill the light at some point. The contacts will get battered to the point where the light fails. Older Surefire forends for the 870 had a battery arrangement that stacked batteries on top of one another. Police departments bought them and used them and killed them because the inertia of those two batteries slamming into each other and into the contacts eventually destroyed batteries and the unit itself. (If you've ever wondered why the 870 forend is so heavy, consider the forces it has to deal with) The more recent designs sit the batteries side by side to reduce that.

It's effective at reducing it, but it won't eliminate it. The contacts in the forend will eventually get killed. It's just going to take more than what your typical police shotgun will see to make that happen.

The X300 that is on my 1301 is on that path now. The pin that holds the back of the battery panel on the light has worked loose. The constant battering it suffers as a result of the recoil forces it has been subjected to after being mounted to my gun for heaven only knows how many cases of buckshot, slugs, and heavy birdshot (I typically shoot #4 or #6 moving at 1,300 FPS or more) has opened up the hole that pin rides in enough for the pin to become quite loose. It will eventually get bad enough where it ejects completely under recoil and the back of the light will fly off, spilling the batteries.

I've accepted this. I have other weapon lights that can replace it when that happens.

Now most folks don't fire the number of shells through their gun that I put through mine, so it will take them a hell of a long time to actually get to that point. If I was using anything other than a Surefire X300 I would have killed the light long ago. Still, my advice to most folks is to do most of your live fire without the light mounted. Or, at the very least, remove the batteries from it so that you don't put that wear and tear on the light you are going to be depending on in the real thing.

So you have good reasons to not have the Streamlight mount on the gun when you are doing most of your live fire training, which is where the cap loosening problem is the greatest concern.

Even if you remove it completely, though, the cap will still move when you shoot the gun a lot. It happens on most shotguns when you shoot a steady diet of heavy loads through them. Failing to keep an eye on that will cause breakages and problems prematurely on most shotguns so it's good to develop a habit of checking it anyway.

[pyrotechnic]

No. It's not necessary.

The magazine cap coming loose is a concern on most shotguns. The spring loaded detent in the Beretta's forend is a good way to try and prevent that, but even so when you shoot the factory setup for a while (as you might do in a class setting) it will still work loose.

I can tell you that I leave the Streamlight 870 mount on my 1301 all the time. This means it is used in every class I teach when I demo with the gun and when the gun inevitably ends up in the hands of a client because their gun breaks. Generally I have to tighten up the Nordic mag tube on my primary gun once after class is over. Paying attention to the magazine cap/mag tube is something you just have to do with a shotgun that you are going to put a significant number of rounds through.

Having used the Streamlight 870 mount on 870's and my two 1301's, it doesn't make the problem any worse than not having it on the gun. You need to tighten the mag cap nice and snug and in a class environment you need to check it periodically, but that's true no matter what shotgun you are using.

A strategy I would recommend is actually taking the mount off the gun when you do live fire training with it. In class the first thing I see fail is lights and light mounts. Lights come loose or just straight leave the gun entirely.

The shotgun is absolutely brutal to every piece of equipment attached to it. Lights are no exception. If you consistently shoot your defensive shotgun (and you should) with the light mounted to it and you have batteries in the light, you will kill the light at some point. The contacts will get battered to the point where the light fails. Older Surefire forends for the 870 had a battery arrangement that stacked batteries on top of one another. Police departments bought them and used them and killed them because the inertia of those two batteries slamming into each other and into the contacts eventually destroyed batteries and the unit itself. (If you've ever wondered why the 870 forend is so heavy, consider the forces it has to deal with) The more recent designs sit the batteries side by side to reduce that.

It's effective at reducing it, but it won't eliminate it. The contacts in the forend will eventually get killed. It's just going to take more than what your typical police shotgun will see to make that happen.

The X300 that is on my 1301 is on that path now. The pin that holds the back of the battery panel on the light has worked loose. The constant battering it suffers as a result of the recoil forces it has been subjected to after being mounted to my gun for heaven only knows how many cases of buckshot, slugs, and heavy birdshot (I typically shoot #4 or #6 moving at 1,300 FPS or more) has opened up the hole that pin rides in enough for the pin to become quite loose. It will eventually get bad enough where it ejects completely under recoil and the back of the light will fly off, spilling the batteries.

I've accepted this. I have other weapon lights that can replace it when that happens.

Now most folks don't fire the number of shells through their gun that I put through mine, so it will take them a hell of a long time to actually get to that point. If I was using anything other than a Surefire X300 I would have killed the light long ago. Still, my advice to most folks is to do most of your live fire without the light mounted. Or, at the very least, remove the batteries from it so that you don't put that wear and tear on the light you are going to be depending on in the real thing.

So you have good reasons to not have the Streamlight mount on the gun when you are doing most of your live fire training, which is where the cap loosening problem is the greatest concern.

Even if you remove it completely, though, the cap will still move when you shoot the gun a lot. It happens on most shotguns when you shoot a steady diet of heavy loads through them. Failing to keep an eye on that will cause breakages and problems prematurely on most shotguns so it's good to develop a habit of checking it anyway.

Thank you for the detailed response. I snapped an x300 onto the streamlight mount as well. I'll be removing it for my live fire practice.

Again, thanks!

[sigfla]

Thank you for the detailed response. I snapped an x300 onto the streamlight mount as well. I'll be removing it for my live fire practice.

Again, thanks!

One suggestion. Fire a few rounds with it. If there is an issue you need to know how that setup works. I just used my M4 yesterday and realized that my finger could easily get crushed against my IWC light mount. I also worked it loose under fire. YES I agree to remove the light but only after you get familiar with your setup and how it’s going to work

[TCinVA]

Removing the batteries from the unit will let you get the ergonomics worked out while minimizing the forces the light must endure.