Well, after giving that one carbine away, I still had two of the pieces that were not something I collect. They sat together in a corner like a couple of errant step-children and pretty much ignored. At some time later while at a gun show I found an ammo dealer that had a whole butt load of those plastic Nato practice rounds. All plastic including the bullet with a small brass base to hold the primer. Wow, blue plastic cartridges used for European NATO troops to practice with and not be expensive. The projectile is ballistic plastic in .308 (7.62 mm) the bullet only weighs around fifty grains and has a limited accurate range of just over 100 yards. No recoil to speak of and not enough back pressure to operate a semi or fully automatic weapon's action. Perfect for training newbies for range time.
Uh Oh! the smoke clouded my judgement and I ended up buying the entire bunch the guy had, around 5,000 rounds. They were cheap and nobody else asked about them so he let me have the lot for a couple hundred bucks.Why?? I do not know. I took a couple out to the local range to see just how they worked. Holy crap the things are really loud. a sharp piercing "crack"! What the heck was the velocity of the plastic bullets? I broke out my trusty chronograph and it pegged out at over 4000 fps! So I dialed it to maximum and spread the windows out and got 4600 fps consistently. Damn, this could be fun stuff. Still I didn't know for what.
I pondered just what to do with them.... then the old Spanish carbines came to mind. I dug one of them out of the cobwebs and looked hard and long while fantasizing. I took the little gun apart, Unsoldered the bayonet lug mounting ring, unscrewed the flash hider and milled the crappy rear sight off of the receiver. removed the front sight band. Now I had a naked barreled receiver. Then fantasy set in. I reworked the Mauser Bolt and tuned it up a bit. I had another one of those wild looking thumb-hole stocks with vent holes and recoil pad. So I ceramic bedded the barrel and receiver. For fun I then built an adjustable double-set trigger for it. The problem then was what for sights? I put scope mounts on it but the scope was in the way for ejecting and loading the internal five round magazine well. Okay. lets shift the position of the scope mount to the left at an oblique to parallel the bore.That worked really well and I was happy until the next boredom session sets in With a 7 X Redfield range setter scope it is pretty interesting. Incredibly flat shooting and really accurate at 100 yards.
The velocity does some pretty wild things. Empty aluminum cans come unglued in a flash. It skins and guts gophers on the fly. A nice little plinker! John
Uh Oh! the smoke clouded my judgement and I ended up buying the entire bunch the guy had, around 5,000 rounds. They were cheap and nobody else asked about them so he let me have the lot for a couple hundred bucks.Why?? I do not know. I took a couple out to the local range to see just how they worked. Holy crap the things are really loud. a sharp piercing "crack"! What the heck was the velocity of the plastic bullets? I broke out my trusty chronograph and it pegged out at over 4000 fps! So I dialed it to maximum and spread the windows out and got 4600 fps consistently. Damn, this could be fun stuff. Still I didn't know for what.
I pondered just what to do with them.... then the old Spanish carbines came to mind. I dug one of them out of the cobwebs and looked hard and long while fantasizing. I took the little gun apart, Unsoldered the bayonet lug mounting ring, unscrewed the flash hider and milled the crappy rear sight off of the receiver. removed the front sight band. Now I had a naked barreled receiver. Then fantasy set in. I reworked the Mauser Bolt and tuned it up a bit. I had another one of those wild looking thumb-hole stocks with vent holes and recoil pad. So I ceramic bedded the barrel and receiver. For fun I then built an adjustable double-set trigger for it. The problem then was what for sights? I put scope mounts on it but the scope was in the way for ejecting and loading the internal five round magazine well. Okay. lets shift the position of the scope mount to the left at an oblique to parallel the bore.That worked really well and I was happy until the next boredom session sets in With a 7 X Redfield range setter scope it is pretty interesting. Incredibly flat shooting and really accurate at 100 yards.
The velocity does some pretty wild things. Empty aluminum cans come unglued in a flash. It skins and guts gophers on the fly. A nice little plinker! John
