M14 Forum

losok

Does anyone here have one of these rifles? I received one from the estate of my Wife's great uncle, and the accuracy is down right amazing for such an old rifle(1940s). Her cousin told me that Bill never could get it to work right, even sent it back to the factory twice, so they used it like a straight pull bolt gun. I cleaned it well, installed a couple new springs from Numrich, and what do you know, it runs like a champ. I refinished it in hot tank blue as it was rusted bad, and stripped the stock, as it was very beat up. It looks good now, but its soo nice I think its headed for the Nitride line this week. In fact all my rimfires might go in there this week.

willriskit

Glad to hear that you were able to cure the 87's ills! Once those had a few rounds through them they had a reputation for losing the loading timing sequence and badly deforming cartridges. At that point, owners resorted to pushing the bolt knob into the receiver recess and firing single shot. I can recall friends who simply gave up on them.

losok

That is part of the reason, I will nitride this one I think, I put new springs in, and cleaned up some burrs on the inner workings prior to bluing and it works good now. I wondered about them being soft, as the burr clean up was very very easy. I think a nice nitride hardness increase will help it a lot.