I love this company. They are doing things right. Posted last week from the owner...
Paraphrased question from this morning:
How do you choose your gas port size?
SOLGW answer:
We start with a pretty educated guess for what the gas volume should be based on pressures, gas system length, dwell time etc...
Do this a while and be familiar with what's out there for proven data driven results and you can get pretty damn close.
We then start smaller than our guess and incrementally increase gas volume (port size) until you have a little more than you actually need.
This is critical. I know there's a trend right now to see how little gas you can run your rifle on. Part of me thinks that's great because it highlights how ****ing over gassed a lot of barrels are. The other part of me thinks it might go in the wrong direction.
Yes...you can get the gun to run on minimal gas in optimal situations.
Our approach is to have a gas port/buffer weight relationship.
Adequate buffer weight is just as important as gas volume when building a fighting gun.
So, we use a gas port that will drive your heavier weights...because we want those heavier weights driving the bolt back into battery through whatever fouling or debris may be in the raceway.
Furthermore, you need ample gas to drive the gun thru less than optimal conditions... fouling, debris, dry, cold, worn rings, underpowered ammo, unsupported shooting positions etc.
Our goal is to keep the weapon within a certain operational envelop whether it's suppressed or unsuppressed...and to keep it operating no matter what.
There's a goldilocks zone where we're not so overgassed that adding a suppressor will push it out of that operational envelop and we're not so undergassed that it doesn't have the horsepower to work thru the stuff I listed above.
Always remember Priority #1: the gun must ****ing work.
If you're doing anything to the rifle that's not contributing to Priority #1 you're doing it wrong.
Comfort, speed, weight etc... if you're putting that over function you might want to rethink your approach.
I'm not saying you can't improve those things...just not at the cost of reliability.
This requires testing. A lot of testing.
Unfortunately there are a lot of brands and things on the market that test until it works.
The trick is to test it until it fails.
Getting something to work only gets you part of the way there.
I see it everyday. There are products out there that work...up until they don't and you can tell they never tested the product under those circumstances.
Mike
SOLGW
Paraphrased question from this morning:
How do you choose your gas port size?
SOLGW answer:
We start with a pretty educated guess for what the gas volume should be based on pressures, gas system length, dwell time etc...
Do this a while and be familiar with what's out there for proven data driven results and you can get pretty damn close.
We then start smaller than our guess and incrementally increase gas volume (port size) until you have a little more than you actually need.
This is critical. I know there's a trend right now to see how little gas you can run your rifle on. Part of me thinks that's great because it highlights how ****ing over gassed a lot of barrels are. The other part of me thinks it might go in the wrong direction.
Yes...you can get the gun to run on minimal gas in optimal situations.
Our approach is to have a gas port/buffer weight relationship.
Adequate buffer weight is just as important as gas volume when building a fighting gun.
So, we use a gas port that will drive your heavier weights...because we want those heavier weights driving the bolt back into battery through whatever fouling or debris may be in the raceway.
Furthermore, you need ample gas to drive the gun thru less than optimal conditions... fouling, debris, dry, cold, worn rings, underpowered ammo, unsupported shooting positions etc.
Our goal is to keep the weapon within a certain operational envelop whether it's suppressed or unsuppressed...and to keep it operating no matter what.
There's a goldilocks zone where we're not so overgassed that adding a suppressor will push it out of that operational envelop and we're not so undergassed that it doesn't have the horsepower to work thru the stuff I listed above.
Always remember Priority #1: the gun must ****ing work.
If you're doing anything to the rifle that's not contributing to Priority #1 you're doing it wrong.
Comfort, speed, weight etc... if you're putting that over function you might want to rethink your approach.
I'm not saying you can't improve those things...just not at the cost of reliability.
This requires testing. A lot of testing.
Unfortunately there are a lot of brands and things on the market that test until it works.
The trick is to test it until it fails.
Getting something to work only gets you part of the way there.
I see it everyday. There are products out there that work...up until they don't and you can tell they never tested the product under those circumstances.
Mike
SOLGW
