M14 Forum

D308FAM

I offer this in the academic spirit and do not intend to be any less than fully respectful to you in my response.
First, I agree with you that the M1-Carbine is what it is. There are things that can be done to get it or keep it shooting to within its design limits and that is reasonable but expecting it to become more than it is will likely remain a pursuit of dubious value due to the wide availability of other weapon designs that are more precise by design than is the M1-carbine.
Second, most competitors I think are more interested in other factors than muzzle flash, which is the real focus of this thread. I have literally decades of experience in various cartridges and in using W296 which is exactly the same powder as is H110 and I have not intended to devalue it's worth but do not think it represents the best possible low flash gunpowder in the M1 Carbine given my own experience. Thus, I have elected to "poll" this forums membership to discover if anyone had experiences that they could offer that might lead to other (lower flash) gunpowder choices for the M1-carbine.
Third, to address your comment about the ballistics which you quoted: It is my own belief that if my test series ammo is not as ballistically uniform as I can make it, the value of the gunpowder tests will be reduced as something like varied cartridge case capacity, mismatched headstamps = different lots of cartridge brass, etc., will become more dominent factors in the chronograph results and any loading decisions I make will have less solid statistical basis as a result.
I am statistically trained at the University level and have used them professionally and personally for decades. I do NOT claim to be a statistical expert but point this out as I'm NOT guessing or playing at games but basing my writing on what I have good reason to believe are valid statistical principles. I will offer these examples to make what I hope will be a point of interest:
In a "standard normal distribution" = "normal distribution" which is assumed to be the case in most common instances the standard deviation allows the estimation of a range of values within which a particular sample result is likely to fall based on the real test values that the standard deviation was calculated from.
If one 30 carbine loading produced these test values:
N=20 test shots
Average Muzzle Velocity = 1900 FPS
Standard Deviation = 33.3
and another test produced these values:
N=20
Average MV = 1900 FPS
Std Dev = 10 FPS
We can estimated that if we wanted to have an over 99% chance that all subsequent test shots were to land within that greater than 99% test range those ranges for the above two tests would be about these:
For N=20, MV= 1900, Std Dev = 33.3 the expected muzzle velocity range would be from about 1800 to 2000 FPS.
For N=20, MV=1900, Std. Dev = 10 the expected muzzle velocity range would be from about a low of about 1870 to a high of about 1930 FPS.
If me make the highly likely decision that muzzle velocity correlates well with actual chamber pressure and also that we dont' want ANY shots above the allowed value of - say - about 2,000 FPS then this is true:
For the loading with the Std Dev of MV = 33.3 FPS we can't chose an average muzzle velocity above about about 1900 FPS because with this level of variation there is very likely to be at least one or several shots in every 100 shot string that will reach 2000 FPS.
For the loading with the Std. Dev of MV = 10 FPS we can chose an average load average muzzle velocity of up to 1970 FPS with over 99% confidence that the highest muzzle velocity in any 100 round string will just reach about 2000 FPS.
If a person did choose to try the 1970 FPS MV powder charge from the 10 Srd Dev load test then at least 30 shots at that 1970 FPS powder charge level should be shot across the chronograph and the group evaluated at the same time to confirm that that exact loading continues to perform as expected. If this 30+ shot "final test" looked fine I would just load away and not do any further chrono testing unless some part of the components changed and I had to reconfirm that the ballistics were still where I wanted them to be with the new component(s) and/or changed component lots.
Thus, my basic point is that - within reason - keeping all loadings to lower muzzle velocity variance (lower Standard deviations) allows one to choose an average muzzle velocity much closer to the maximum allowable values in industry loading information and also of course reduces vertical stringing of shots as the range increases if that is also a desirable goal given the particular weapon being considered.
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Low flash may not seem to be of much use outside of LE or the military but in both of those cases and ALSO night time varmint hunting using NV equipment having a low or non-existent muzzle flash on a "bare barrel" can keep NV equipment from "flaring" and is in my opinion can therefore a worthwhile goal to consider. One basic approach could well be to first reduce the muzzle flash as much as possible on a "bare barrel" and then to screw on either a mechanical flash suppressor and/or a sound suppressor to that already reduced muzzle flash and thus try to just end the muzzle flash completely.
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Again, all comments within this thread are of value and I have no intent in this or any other post to offer other than full respect to all posters on this thread and within this forum.