here's today's question for those of you that are AR owners
does the wiggle that you get between the upper receiver and the lower receiver
actually affect the precision of the rifle as I've used this rifle over seven
years there's definitely some wiggle that's built up it started out tight as
well you fill in the blank but over time I can get some audible
wiggle and I can actually see some light coming through the gap between the two
receivers there are two camps on this issue there are those that say that
everything needs to be as tight as possible in order to get good precision
out of a rifle and you're gonna get a lot of the bolt-action guys coming from
this school they spend a lot of time making sure that there are perfect
mating surfaces between their actions and furniture and they're definitely not
going to want any kind of movement rattle or anything in their rifles. and
then you're gonna have the other school of thought that says that there is no
significant movement between the barreled upper receiver before the bullet
actually leaves the muzzle. and we're gonna be testing all this with the X Shim.
this came to me from Brad down in Texas and he makes these things. his
website is varmintlights.com, and what these do is they take up the gap between
the receivers at the front and the rear. just little shims that that fill in the
gap there. we're gonna be testing this not just for aesthetics - you know,
does it remove the rattle does it you know just take up that gap and make
everything feel all nice and new again - we're also going to test the precision
of the rifle with and without the shims and we'll see how this thing does and
before we go any further be sure to subscribe to the social regressive we
have some interesting videos in the works we're still kind of in that experiment
where we're turning a savage axis into a long-range precision rifle and that's
going really well we've fired it in one six hundred yard match and things went
pretty well but I got to tell you that things are getting very interesting I've
made some changes to the rifle and it is grouping a lot a lot better so the next
match that I go to I intend to score much higher I really think I will and
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down here actually goes to that savage axis build so if you want to see some of
the stuff that went on there it's it's really a pretty fascinating build and it
came out very well some of you are already familiar with the a Q wedge
which is a somewhat flexible wedge that you stuff at the back of the receiver
and it tightens up the connection just by squishing against the rear lug the XM
takes a different approach it uses a set of color-coded shims that fit over the
action lugs and that bridges the gap between the two receivers one of the
biggest differences between the two products is the fact that you can shim
the front of the receiver as well as the back with the x jim and another
difference is the type of material that's used the a Q wedge is very dense
but it is still compressible and the X Jim uses a specialized plastic that
resists compression and the company also claims that it resists damage from
solvents and oils that we use to clean our weapons installation takes a few
minutes there are four shim thicknesses included in each pack and each
color-coded plate includes a rear shim a front shim and a test shim I'm starting
at the rear and then I'm clamping down on each of these test shims I'm trying
to find the perfect thickness that will take out the wobble but will still allow
the pins to go home
Shem number four seems to work really well so now I'll move forward and I'll
test that front gap
and again it looks like gage four is our perfect fit
this thin wall goes toward the rear it says this slide the thin side down first
then push down the front and this little tab at the front it doesn't actually fit
into anything there's nothing to clip on to or anything like that it's just there
for retention to keep the shim in place
now this one doesn't have any kind of retention there's no tab or anything
going on here so if you are doing a full takedown then yeah this is probably
gonna drop free that's not that common in the field I'm sure you know mostly
you're just gonna be dropping your your rear pin so you can access your bolt or
whatever after a little trial and error there was still just a little bit of
wobble so what I ended up doing is using number four at the back and then at the
front I stacked two different ones I have number four and number three to
find out if the X gems affect the performance of the rifle I'll be
printing two five round groups without the shims and two with the shims distance is
100 yards and I'm firing prone with the rifle on a bipod the test loads are
my varminting custom loads this is Lake City brass CCI primers
market powder and at the front I have mid-south varmint nightmare extreme 55
grain hollow-point flat based bullets these first two groups are without the X
gems and the first one came in at nearly one and three-quarter inches the second
one opened up to nearly two inches with the shims in place these two groups
tighten things up a bit the first group comes in a bit over one
and a half inches and group two drops things down to one and a quarter inches
at the very least the X Jim did take the wobble and rattle out of the connection
between the two receivers it really does sound and feel like a new rifle
yeah but did it actually increase the precision of the rifle even though we
only did these four back-to-back group tests I think that the indications are
pretty good I think that it actually did tighten up the functionality of the
rifle and I'm really curious to hear from those of you that are using into
the a Q wedge or X jam or anything like that have you seen any gains in the
precision of your rifles leave a comment down below
you