I am posting this for the safety and knowledge of every owner of a 7.62mm FA receiver or built rifle. I am not making up rumors, just stating some facts about unsafe defects.  I left 7.62mm FA on 12-14-2011. Since leaving I have been fortunate to come in contact with a few great people who have taken the time to properly educate me on the building and manufacturing of the M14. Prior to meeting these gentlemen all of my machining and building experience for the M14 came from Chris at 7.62mm FA.

There were 380 hammer forged receivers made for 7.62mm FA. Of those made, 21 of these receivers are in the hands of the ATF.  50 receivers where built with no problems. Another 100 of these receivers went to another manufacturer who stands by his rifles. The rest were made to work by Chris.

That leaves 209 receivers out there. A lot had shallow bolt relief cuts made on them. A lot of them from the first and second run had left lug issues.  Some were so bad, they were annealed, welded up, re-cut and re-hardened.  During re-hardening a hole was burned in the left side of the receivers, because too much material was removed.  They were annealed, re-welded, re-cut and hardened again. Those receivers were hardened 3 times, welded on twice, and annealed twice. The entire third and last run of M14 receivers manufactured with the lugs cut .020" too far back.  I feel these are the most dangerous receivers.  This was a mistake made by Chris. He meant to request a .002" change to cut down on lapping time.  To compensate for this mistake, he had about .007" machined off of the face of the receivers, then used short chambered barrels with a shortened barrel shank to accommodate a shortened receiver ring. Many were told that the barrels of their kits were bad so he could sell them these modified barrels with a bad receiver.   If a G.I. barrel was to be re-installed on one of these receivers, it could be an accident waiting to happen.  

According to the machine shop that made the receivers for 7.62mm FA most of the receivers were not made to the drawings. The changes to production were made by Chris to cut down production time and cost. No QC gauges were ever provided to check the receivers. All QC was done by Chris.

At the time of my leaving there was NO liability insurance on the manufacturing of firearms ever.

I am unaware of which receivers were not made to the drawing. If you think you have one of these receivers? Have it checked by a reputable gunsmith specializing in M14's.

I am truly sorry to have been associated with 7.62mm FA and the production of these receivers.

If you have any questions, send me a PM.

Mark

Thanks for the heads-up.

Thanks for you speaking up on this issue. There are quite a few forums where people have used 7.62mm for builds. I posted a link here from the CMP forums. Not sure if you're registered there, but you may want to speak up over there if possible.

So let me get this straight? you had NO experience with an M14 what-so-ever prior to 7.62mm?

so what did you bring to the company? what was his motivation for hiring you?

It's not that uncommon and it's not necessarily a bad thing...
I know of another individual that had NO experience with the M14 except for the SOCOM in a SAGE
that he had just purchased. This guy is currently marketing for a small M1A/M14 stock manufacturer.

Well not saying that you are not honest as I have no clue who the hell 762 is.



But..........


You do realize that you have just created an internet seed of info.   Forever and and ever any time somebody searches for info on these guns your post will be found.   It will be cut and pasted and reposted.    I hope you are correct in the info you gave.  'Cos it will live forever.

jim's probably right,  good way to get sued these days.  Then again, if the business isn't even getting liability insurance and you're not well established financially , ie a juicy target, you're likely to escape the hammer.    

If what you say is true then good on you for standing by your principles.

Yes my post is 100% True and corect. I will stand by my post in court if need be.

Mark

I'm assuming Fulton and Springfield Armory make their own, or was he a subcontractor for either of those???

I have two builds from them built on two CMP kits.  No issues so far.  I purchased them in May of 2011.  I will probably take them to my smith to have him look them over for the issues you have stated. There are many  negative rumors and allegations on other forums about this company and the owner. .

yep, I wasn't needing any new recievers when they came out but I did read on the m14 forum that the well regarded smiths wouldn't touch them after looking at samples.  Told me all I needed to know about the product at that point in time.  SAInc. has a good warranty.  

This exactly was my experience! Except I was able to handle one at my jywolfe's shop, and I was not impressed. When I asked him what he thought, his non answer spoke volumes.

Anyone who knows jywolfe will tell you if he does not have anything stellar to say he will NOT say anything at all.

I hate it for the folks of the 14 community I really hoped 7.62 would be able to pull it off. And I will say this as far as all the "allegations" about this company:

"In my 38 years of life I have learned several things, but the loudest is where there is smoke, there is FIRE

How about posting some serial number ranges instead of spreading FUD?

There are 762 customers that have good builds....without details of serial number ranges, this is nothing but FUD

Wow and I thought I was the only guy that had to deal with someone (non gun related) who thinks he can redesign something that took many many hours to design properly.  Just to "make it better".

Just because there are builds working does not mean the receiver is in spec. I would check everyone of them if I owned them all to be safe. I know that a questionable amount of receivers were made to work out of spec.

I mentioned 6 years ago when those receivers came along, about some of the defects that were not fixable.
There's no specific serial number range, unlike SAI receivers where a complete batch may have defects.
Out of the first 5 762mm receivers I checked, only 1 was good enough to build on.
I sent the other 4 back & the replacements were just as bad or worse.

I've seen about 25-30 of them over the course of a year & of all those maybe 2 were good enough to build rifles on.
I still have 1 here & it has at least 7-8 problem areas that can not be fixed.
At one time I thought he had finally made the corrections needed but, bad receivers were still shipping out.
All the bragging by Chris Thomas sure made him look like a fool in the end.

There's a reason why he offered free assembling if you sent him your parts kit.
LRB has done the same in the past & continues to do so.
They can't afford to loose $$$$.
25% off a receiver should be a red flag as well, especially since there's supposedly a backlog for shipping.
I remember a saying, "IF IT'S TO GOOD TO BE TRUE" !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!




.

LRB does not build your rifle for free.  You pay, but you get a small discount on your receiver  if you let them do your build.  They want to sell rifles, not parts.  The same way SAI does.  Apparently, 762  did free builds so they can skirt around receiver issues.   People have been waiting 8 months for their builds.  Logic says they are probably not getting them, and who know what is going on with the ATF and FFL issues that seem to be the current rumor.  

Rumors

Thats all I see, Where's the proof, the smoking gun, all I see are a bunch of disgruntled people and a bunch of others jumping on the bandwagon

just show some proof that's all, surely you've got to have something!

Send a parts kit to 7.62 and tell them to build you a rifle on one of their receivers.

The "free assembling" was in reference to 762mm doing the build on customer supplied kits...........not LRB.







Maybe you didn't get the memo but, there's been numerous threads on different forums that some guys had been waiting 6-8 months to get their completed rifles back.
In a few cases it took a year or more.
I remember reading a couple guys never got their rifle at all.
I'm sure if you did your homework & google search you'll find more than enough proof to satisfy your "smoking gun" rumor theory.





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