Clint Fowler Rifles

Posted on July 22, 2008
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The gunsmith gets to meet his customer the first time by way of an ad in a publication or by word of mouth. The second type, when they contact me, are usually already sold on me as a gunsmith because of favorable comments from friends of theirs for whom I have built guns. The first do not have that advantage, so it behooves me to make a good impression on them by way of a phone call or by sending them this brochure. For that reason I thought long and hard about what I would say in this brochure. I finally came to realize that if I looked at their needs the way I did when I was an active shooter I could anticipate their questions and offer some solutions. First off I want you to know that I take my work very seriously and accuracy, reliability and durability are serious concerns of mine as they should be yours. For this reason, I keep records of accuracy. My last 10 M1A’s averaged .7495″ at 100 yards. That’s a pretty nice average. My M-1 Garands are also shooting below 1 MOA, my last gun shot .740 with 2 bullet weights, 168 gr. and 185 gr.

First lets examine the M-14 or M1A. There are things I do to this gun that are producing the accuracy levels needed for today’s Master Class and High-Master Class Shooters. I install both front and rear lugs on this gun. Both lugs are of my own design, a design that was copied by Armscorp and by Smith Enterprises. They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Of the two lugs, many say the rear lug is the most important, but I disagree. Why? Because if you examine the forces placed on the receiver by the act of firing one round you will see that the front of the receiver tries to rise upward. The thrust on the rear of the receiver is downward because the receiver is held in the middle by the hooks on the trigger group. This being the case it’s easy to see that rear lugs only increase bedding area while front lugs do all the work of holding the receiver securely in the bedding job. This also explains why guns properly double lugged will wear out a barrel and sometimes more before a new bedding job is needed. Contrast this to an unlugged gun that will wear out a bedding job in 1200-1500 rounds. In my bedding jobs I use steel bushings around both bolts. The surest way to ruin a bedding job is to tighten the bolts too tight. My steel bushings prevent that and also preclude the use of torque wrenches to tighten the bolts. The technology worked great on bolt guns so I saw no reason it wouldn’t work well on service rifles. It did.

Another thing I do is free float the barrel, another advantage of a front lugged gun. Free floating produces slightly better accuracy but the real advantage to you will be in stability of zeros. The lack of forend contact means that sling tension cannot now influence group location at 300 yards rapid fire so that you can now place two groups in the center, one on top of the other. This is not easily done with a gun using forend contact. The other thing I do to the M-14 is to see that the op-rod guide, the flash suppressor and the gas cylinder are all properly fitted and once they are properly fitted they are loc-tited into position. My trigger work is basically as others do them except I am extra careful to make sure that both sear hooks contact the sear. This produces a trigger that lasts longer and is more uniform in pull. The rear sight is another place I examine closely. First I found that in 30-35 years of using the N.M. sight no one found a way to remove the backlash from the windage knob threads. I found a way to install a spring in the sight base, which bears against the right ear of the receiver and solves this problem. I call it my anti-backlash spring and it is included in all my N.M sight conversions. The sight conversion itself consists of re-threading the windage knob and sight base from 32 to 64 threads per inch, thus converting the G.I. sight to N.M. It checks out better on a dial indicator than an original N.M sight. Your choice of hooded N.M. aperture is included with this sight. Most of my customers choose one of two stocks, either the Bishop Heavy (Frank Smith) pattern or the MacMillan Fiberglass Stock. You will be well served by either one. Don’t choose the fiberglass stock thinking you will get some advantage over wood. The advantage is only theoretical. Today’s wood finishes, mine included, are like encasing the wood in a plastic coating. I truly believe you could store one of my wood stocked guns in a 50 gallon water drum overnight and have no zero change or any sign of damage. I use a urethane clear coat finish that utilizes a catalytic hardener. It takes 3 days to finish but it looks like a Weatherby when done and is very durable.

If you are willing to do things as I recommend, I will guarantee accuracy of 1 MOA or less. To get this guarantee all you need do is buy my double lug accuracy job and a Krieger barrel. Using this combination, in the last year, my best gun shot .400, my worst shot 1.020. That’s why I have no qualms about guaranteeing this combination.

Now we get to the M-1 Garand, a gun I love. I consider it to be the best-looking service rifle ever made and always thought I would make it shoot as good as the M-14. In the Beginning, I could not get those accuracy levels except occasionally, but that’s not good enough. I wanted to be able to promise those levels consistently. It took some doing. First you’ve got to understand that in 1964 the M-14 came on line and the M-1 was basically dropped like a hot potato. Everyone was sure that the M-14 with its short stiff op-rod was inherently more accurate and the 308 was inherently more accurate than the 30-06. They couldn’t wait to put their M-1’s on the shelf. No one seemed to notice that the accuracy technology for both the bolt gun and the M-1 was in its infancy. For one thing, glass-bedding materials were new; having become available only shortly before the M-14 came out. Another thing was barrel quality. At that time there was only Hart as a custom barrel maker and Douglas as a production barrel maker. I can tell you I never saw either the M-1 or the M-14 with anything other than a G.I. barrel, or, later on, a Douglas barrel. Even bolt gun shooters used Douglas barrels. I don’t mean to imply that Douglas barrels are poor barrels, but even he admits they are not custom match barrels, though some of his barrels will shoot with the best customs.

I won my first 3 legs on Distinguished with an M-1 Garand 30-06 that would not hold the black at 600 yards on the old “B” target. Then, the Maryland State Team issued me a N.M. M-14. I went Distinguished in 1964 with that gun and averaged 100-16v at 600 yards with it. It was my first good gun. Since then I have shot 14 National records, about 1/2 individual and the rest team. I’ve won 4 Nathan Hale Trophies at Camp Perry and 5 Elihu Root Medals plus 2 regional and 12 state championships. All in all a very active and rewarding shooting career. In the latter half of the 1970’s I noticed that the Marine Corps Rifle Team was using a double lugged gun and their armorers showed me their system. I liked it and was impressed with the results they were getting with it. I did notice that their system required a modification to the op-rod in order to disassemble and I decided to see if I could change the design to avoid that if possible. The solution popped into my head while driving home from work one evening and as soon as I got home I made up two front lugs of my new design. I took them and 2 receivers I owned to a welder and had them welded on. That was the act, which snowballed into my current business. In the early 80’s I showed my guns at Camp Perry on Commercial Row and have been in business ever since.

During the 80’s and early 90’s the M1A was my bread and butter. I never had a lot of M-1 work, but I never lost my interest in the gun and started trying out on the m-1 some things which had worded good on the m-14, such as lugs. First came a rear lug, which was a definite improvement, but a thought was in my mind about some way of tying down the front of the M-1. I eventually figured out a way to do it and by God it worked! I still wasn’t satisfied because I knew in my heart that I still didn’t know the proper way to align the M-1 op-rod. One day I had six M-1 barreled actions on my workbench, and I knew that my reputation depended on how these guns turned out. Some of these guns had Hart barrels on them. Their owners were serious enough about accuracy to go first class all the way. I was sitting there sliding that op-rod back and forth and searching for a clue. It was 10 a.m. At 2 p.m. still sliding and searching I noticed a feature I had not noticed before. It was the secret for which I had been searching. I aligned all six of those M-1s the same new way and all were below 1 MOA except one, which was 1.2 MOA. I got telephone calls from those customers expressing their satisfaction with those guns. I had finally solved most all of the accuracy problems inherent in the M-1 and I could now tell my customers that consistent sub-minute guns could be had in the M-1 Garand.

My Garand business increased but I still did 3 M-14’s to every M-1. I still wasn’t satisfied because I knew that even though the op-rod left my shop in proper alignment the darn thing had a history of getting mis-aligned in use so there was one final hurdle to jump. I put my mind to it and at first the problem seemed unsolvable. How are you going to make an op-rod guide for an op-rod that is basically bent in two places? So the problem went into my hair-topped computer and there it stayed. Funny thing about those hair-topped computers … they work 24 hours a day, and about a week or two later the solution popped out. I theorized that since the op-rod had two bends they would each work like hinges. The front bend would bend upward when force was exerted on the piston tip and the rear bend would bend downward. Knowing this I assumed the guide should allow the op-rod to move upward only .005 inch before it was captured by a U-shaped channel embedded in the upper hand guard. The rear bend of the op-rod would be captured in a similar channel bedded in the stock’s forend. Thus the op-rod would not be allowed to bend more than .005 either place and thus it would slide rearward constrained by the channels and could not bend out of alignment. On the first gun I tried it on I only wanted it to work. I hoped that there would be no binding effect and there wasn’t. No increase or decrease in accuracy was observed, but I didn’t expect any. All I really wanted was the gun durability and maintenance of accuracy that the system promised. It was also a successful innovation. I can now promise an M-1 Garand that will shoot one MOA or better and will maintain its accuracy for the normal life of the barrel without op-rod problems. The truth is that my methods are a whole new technology on this gun and I figured it all out myself. No other gunsmith builds the M-1 the way I do. I suspect they will copy my methods, let’s see if they can get the same results that I do. My front lugs for the M-1 are located one on each side with the bolt heads hidden under the front corners of the trigger plate. The location of these bolts weakens a G.I. stock though some G.I. stocks are heavy enough to handle it. I like the Match stock for that and other reasons.

The final factor in the accuracy equation is the gas system. When functioning properly, the system allows the bullet to just clear the end of the barrel before the op-rod starts to function. Accuracy is best then because op-rod function induces vibrations in the barrel, which are harmful to accuracy. Some guns, however, start to function before the bullet leaves the barrel. These guns seldom shoot under 2 MOA regardless of barrel quality. Obviously, it would be desirable to be able to manipulate the gas system to accomplish the timing you desire so this was the area in which I directed my attention. I theorized that if we replaced the original gas plus with one that is adjustable for volume, we could accomplish that goal. I was right. I made a plug with a hole drilled through it and threaded. I then installed two short, flat-faced set screws. The outermost set screw is used to lock the innermost into position after it has been adjusted to optimum setting. I have seen guns go from +2 MOA to sub 1 MOA just by adjusting the volume outward by 2 full turns of the screws. The plug and the op-rod guides are included in the front end package mentioned in my price list.

I rarely get a gun back to rework something because I take pains to do it right the first time. I do stand behind them 100%. With Congress getting nasty about “assault rifles”, I think the M-1 is going to become more and more popular, so a really accurate M-1 is going to be a highly prized gun. If accuracy, durability, and dependability are what you are looking for, give me a call.

Regards,

Clint Fowler
(540) 672 – 0357
Clint Fowler Rifles Website

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