I took the Father's Day plunge at the Lancaster, Ohio gun show yesterday and bought a new Armalite M15A2 20" black for a VERY good price!!

My son helped me break it in at the range. He is opposite-eye dominant and had a really tough time seeing through the peeps. Is there any kind of fix or aid for this, other than swapping out eyeballs?

Also, how much lube is too much? It came out of the box dripping with heavy oil. I cleaned and lubed with Breakfree CLP. Is that enough lube for it?


I LOVE this rifle!!!!!

Congratulations!

As to the oil.... Sounds like you did it right.

As to the eye strain... look at an Aimpoint sight... spendy, but I love mine. Both eyes open and put the dot on target.

Congrats on the new rifle.  It is always nice to meet another person who is as satisfied with their M15A2 as I am with mine.

For a short term solution, you might want to try this:  get him an inexpensive pair of shooting glasses and put a piece of translucent tape on the inside of the glasses to prevent his dominant eye from seeing the sights.  (This is something like putting a patch over his dominant eye but doesn’t strain the eye so much.)  You can use expensive shooting glasses if you want to, but someday you’ll have to clean that sticky tape off the lens.  Don’t put the tape on the outside of the glasses or the eye may see a distracting reflection of itself.

Be careful the shooting glasses don’t mess up the seal of his earmuffs too badly, esp. if he also wears regular glasses.  It’s probably a good idea to double up on ear protection, anyway – that is, wear both earmuffs and earplugs.  With a rifle it’s not uncommon to accidentally break the seal on your earmuffs when you put your face on the rifle stock.

I just bought an Armalite M15T4 myself.  Absolutely great little gun!!  Incredibly loud, however.  Admittedly, I’ve got a shorter barrel than you and I’m also shooting indoors, which you probably aren’t doing.  The first time I fired it I genuinely thought I’d forgotten to put my ear protection on – and I hadn’t!

Good luck!!

ArmaLite and Springfield Armory; what a country!

What a horrible picture to post!! I thought she died from stupidity or a social disease.

FedGunner...how much is one of them Aimpoints???

Zanthrope - "Also, how much lube is too much? "

This is what an old USMC armourer told me; can't vouch for the validity.
"When held at a 45 degree angle, look for about 14 drops per minute to run down your arm & off the elbow".

There are different rules of thumb concerning lube.
One is to put as little as possible, a little grease on the key and carrier. That is for battle conditions and dry lube should be used in sandy areas.
The other is for competition rigs, I use a mixture of Tetra Gun Grease and TW25 on the carrier and key and recoil tobe and spring, also the bolt gets a bit. Trigger at release point gets a dab.
Eye dominance is my problem too. It`s not so bad on a rifle3 becuase you can close one eye until the prefered eye will get used to being used more. Pistols are a bigger problem because of the sight plane and distance from eye to sights. I just practiced and forced my weak eye to work. No trick just time and consious thought.

btt

Zanthope,

I have trained lots of folks with the cross-eye-dominance problem.

It is MUCH easier to re-train the hands. Nearly IMPOSSIBLE to re-train the eyes.

Set him up left handed. Shooting with the eyes struggling for dominance is a difficult task for an adult, much less a kid. You will find that good trigger control is easier to learn with the "wrong" hand, as that hand is being trained for the first time vs. bad habits with the strong hand.

Being able to see the sights clearly also reduces strain, and the frustration level will come down.

Lew