![]() ![]() Though I'd swabbed the barrel with J-B, I never cleaned the action. I fired more than 200 rounds through the Mini and experienced only one malfunction-a stovepipe. ![]() A 10-round mag would be much more appropriate, if not a 20 rounder. The only criticism whatsoever I had while having fun with the Mini-14 in the desert was the five-round magazine, which empties way too quickly. Popping various targets at long distances offhand was a cinch. My disappointment in the lack of cooperation from the local coyotes was alleviated somewhat after plinking with the Mini-14 at distant targets on the side of one of our rugged mountains. BTHP (four shot sub-minute of angle, one flyerĪfter the benchrest sessions, I took the Mini out to the desert mountains near my home and attempted to call in a coyote or two, without any luck. The Leupold had previously been fitted to a Ruger scout rifle and had proven to be an excellent little scope. To assist in checking the accuracy of the rifle, I mounted a small Leupold two-power scope. I gathered up a good variety of factory ammunition for the job and put aside several afternoons to see just what I could squeeze out of the new Mini. I figured the obvious trial would be at the range. My test rifle didn't appear to be different than any other Mini-14 I'd ever handled, at least on the outside. This basic procedure has been followed for all the major component parts in the Mini-14, with the end result being tighter tolerances and more uniformity part to part and finished-gun to gun. The speed in the manufacturing process is also greatly increased. Each fixture holds a part with such aptitude that multiple machining operations can be performed without removing the part from the fixture, thus greatly reducing tolerance accumulations and providing more consistency in the parts. With the new tooling and new CNC processes, multiple fixtures are mounted to a machine pallet. Some are referring to the new rifle as the "580," referring to the three-digit-series number that appears ahead of the serial number. It appears they may have reached that happy medium between accuracy, reliability, handiness and cost effectiveness in their new and improved Mini-14. Chatter about the accuracy issues of the Mini-14 has never gone unnoticed by the company, and the engineers have worked long and hard to alleviate the issues. The distinguished popularity of the Mini-14 has continued to excel, and the bosses at Sturm, Ruger and Company have wished to honor its status by producing the highest-quality firearm possible at a reasonable price. The ones that weren't caught, however, might now be causing their owners accuracy headaches. Such problems were typically noticed by the factory prior to final shipment and fixed. The sight was previously machine-pressed into the barrel, a process that can actually bend the barrel slightly. The gas-block faces can also be honed to provide a more even match between the surfaces of the upper and lower pieces, causing a more homogeneous amount of pressure on the barrel.Īnother possible flyer-causing culprit in the manufacture of the Mini-14 is the method used to fix the front sight to the rifle. Many gunsmiths have corrected the problem by removing the gas block, which can be deceivingly tricky, and carefully and evenly removing a small amount of metal from its face, thus creating a more even match with the slide block. At times, the face of the gas block may not be perfectly flat or symmetrical and causes imbalance in its contact with the slide block. When the slide block works forward, its face comes into contact with the gas block. Held together by four screws, the gas block has an upper and lower piece. Much concentration has been focused on the Mini's gas block, which is located at the forward side of the fore-end. In all, the M-14 was obviously a combat rifle, and the Mini-14 was really designed as a sporting rifle. The Mini-14's gas system was modified from the M-14 and works much more simply, making the smaller rifle quite suited to the smaller cartridge, i.e.308 Winchester to. My dad, Skeeter Skelton, accompanied Ruger executives into South and Central America in the 1970s demonstrating the Mini-14 to government officials.) (Ruger has produced fully automatic versions of the Mini-14 and sold a boatload of them to various governments around the world for both military and police applications. Ruger and his engineers designed the Mini-14 to closely resemble a scaled-down version of the M-14 battle rifle, sans the full-auto switch, at least for the civilian version. There apparently were a number of potential causes for these rather loose groups. ![]()
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