Safir Arms T14

[ranchdude]

Well jb2c there ya go! I just got word of it, and it's out already lol... No need for anyone to hold their breath!

Well the ATI magazine I got was pretty expensive and only a 5 rounder. I can't recall exactly how much I paid but it was more than I would have liked to have spent but I thought it was worth it in this case just to clear up the questions we all have. I'll follow up with the source and price as soon as I find it.

The new ATI magazine has several improvements. First, its made of a better plastic than the Safir mags were, more like a quality AR polymer magazine. There are holes which will show you when you have 2 to 5 rounds loaded. Below that it's up into the lower receiver and you couldn't see it even if there were a hole there. The bottom of the magazine is wider and it appears to have a more standard bottom plate. I haven't disassembled it yet to check the spring plate, spring or lower portion of the follower.

The shape and angle of the follower are exactly the same as Safir but ATI has incorporated a spring up tail hook bolt catch where the Safir had a spring out (to the rear) which wasn't too reliable. I suspect the ATI will more reliably hold the bolt back on an empty magazine.

The ATI fits snug into my lower, I have to give it a firm bump in with the palm of my hand whether its loaded or empty. It seems to just be getting past the magazine catch that is holding it up and I feel it should improve with use. Once seated, it locks in firmly.

Cycling rounds from the magazine with the charging handle seems to feed as good as any Safir magazine has for me. However, my upper and lower have been swapped to US versions so I'm not sure how you'll fair with a Safir upper/lower combo. It should work as well from what I know about these guns. I haven't fired with the new mag yet.

I had some pictures to upload this morning, but it says they are all to big to upload! So I will be back as soon as I can resize them.

AR Bro, that looks like a promising find and I look forward to hearing more about it! I have a Solidworks model of the ejector assembly I made, it needs some fine tuning depending on the upper and lower used. They all state they are "mil-spec" but I've found there are subtle differences in the area of the rear lug and how it seats into the lower which will affect the fit and function of that part. I can share the model or drawings with anyone who's interested, but you'll have to find someone to make it for you or make it yourself.

RD out

[ranchdude]

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[ranchdude]

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[ranchdude]

There is a second source AR Bro, might want to compare prices! Seems you have to create an account first.

https://www.google.com/search?q=IFC+...nt=firefox-b-1

[Edit] My bad, I see this is wholesale now, dealers only...

[ranchdude]

Well I just found my receipt and I paid $26.87 for that 5 rounder from a place on Gunbroker...

Good news is, Brownells shows both the 5 round and 15 round ATI .410 magazines in stock right now! $16.99 and $22.99 respectively. Not a bad price at all!

https://www.brownells.com/magazines/...rod115321.aspx

[jb2c]

IF they work with the Safir!

[ranchdude]

Agreed, the 5 round does have a much stiffer spring in it that's for sure. Unfortunately I don't have mine all together right now to give it a try. Hoping to hear how you do when you get a chance...

[ranchdude]

I was reading back through some of the posts in the last year that I never had a chance to respond to.

I know I was threatening to start a thread on converting the T14 for 922(r) compliance, but I'm sorry to say I've not had the free time to put towards it.

However, for the few people that are following this thread that are interested, most everything that I've done or plan to do, is in this thread.

But since ATI has now released their long awaited Omni Hybrid .410 I'm not sure how many people are really going to be interested in this thread or the T14. It would be much easier, and less expensive, to just sell your Safir T14 for whatever you can get for it, buy an Omni Hybrid .410 and you'll be 922(r) compliant right out of the box... Another option would be to to see if ATI will sell you just a .410 upper, and lastly perhaps if the ATI Omni Hybrid BCG runs in a standard AR upper, you could just purchase one of those from ATI... One of those options is probably where the smart money is and you'll have high quality magazines available that are designed fit to boot...

For me, I've already purchased my Safir, I've stamped it as a SBS, and I've already put a lot of work into converting it. And since it may very well be the only SBS T14 in existence in the US I'm probably going to keep going and see it through.

The two most difficult parts to replace with US made parts are the upper and front rail.

The upper is complicated due to the fact that the Safir bolt carrier group is not anything like an AR-15 BCG. Two of the major differences are its cam pin is in a different location and rotates at a different angle, and it has no gas key.

Safir put an extension on their BCG to take the place of the gas key which also keeps the bolt carrier from rotating in the upper. This slips into the recess in the charging handle.

On the Safir upper, they removed some additional material inside the upper to make clearance for the non-standard cam pin location and rotation. Rather than having to do this on a standard AR upper, I found if you replace the square head cam pin with a round rolling head cam pin, that will allow you to use a standard AR upper without any modification in that area.

The second problem with replacing the upper is the little ejector lever that is in the Safir upper which is what strikes the ejector collar in order to eject the spent round. The only way you could replace the upper would be to modify the new upper to accept this same part which can be done by any good machinist. Personally I don't care for this part because it actually causes the upper and lower to separate due to the leverage applied to it as the bolt cycles back. So instead I made a replacement part that sits between the upper and lower which serves the same function, and this is held in place by the rear lug of the upper receiver which traps it between the two receivers.

The third problem is that the ejection port opening on the Safir upper has been enlarged in order to clear the larger .410 round (which only becomes even longer when it's fired). The lower edge of the ejection port opening was lowered as far as possible, and they used a ~1/8” diameter mill to form the corners of the opening which squares it off more.

The forth problem is that on the Safir upper, the area inside the lower portion of the upper receiver between the barrel extension and the magazine well has been cut into an extended feed ramp with about a 0.5” radius in order to help guide the tip of the .410 round from the magazine into the chamber. This feed ramp extension is absolutely required in order to feed the ammunition properly.

The ejection port milling could be done by any decent machinist with access to a milling machine, and the feed ramp in the lower can actually be done carefully by hand with a Dremel tool, cylinder head porting kit or even a half round file and some sandpaper if necessary.
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However I was looking for a way to eliminate as much extra machining work as possible. So I researched other large caliber conversions for the AR platform such as .45ACP, .450 Bushmaster, .458 SOCOM and .50 Beowulf. I was hoping to find that one of these other conversions needed the same modifications that the Safir had. Now all these other conversions (except the .45 ACP) use standard AR magazines to feed the ammunition in a single stack much like our Safir does. Unfortunately, it appears these rounds all feed at much less of an angle of attack than the .410 does from our magazine so none of them require addition feed ramp cuts in the lower receiver. They all work just fine with a lower that simply has standard M4 style feed ramp cuts. But I did find a .458 SOCOM upper that already had an enlarged ejection port which is nearly identical to that on the Safir.
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This forged Mil-Spec upper is made from 7075-T6 aluminum and comes fully assembled. Its made by Aero Precision in the USA. I found these at Monmouth Reloading for $75. http://www.monmouthreloading.com/sho...pper-receiver/

These uppers will still require the feed ramp work in order to be used as a Safir upper. And although they are “Mil-Spec” I did find one area on them that wasn't and unfortunately it is right in the area where my ejector blade assembly mounts. There is about a 5 mil step left just ahead of the rear pin lug. If I had to guess, I'd say this was the result of either a CNC programming error or an error in the CAD model that was never caught before it was manufactured. For most applications this wouldn't be an issue and most people would probably never even notice it was there. But for me it meant I had to have this step milled down in order to use my ejector blade assembly.
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I think I already covered the complications involved in replacing the front rail. The problems stem from the fact that the T14 uses a sleeve style piston. So, you have to find a front rail that will fit over this piston assembly and uses a barrel nut that will accept the piston spring. A standard barrel nut will accept the spring but many aftermarket barrel nuts will not, not without some modifications.

I was planning on using a Wilson Combat rail which fit over the piston just fine. However, there was a raised seat area for their proprietary barrel nut that did not fit over the piston. Additionally, their nut would not accept the spring without the threaded ID of the barrel nut being machined to open it up to clear the OD of the spring... I've since passed on using this rail and it instead found a home on a 300 BO pistol build that I'm doing. I'm going to try a 12.625” Midwest Industries MI-SP12M rail next. MI's SP series has a 1.75” ID for use with suppressor mounting inside of the front rail. I expect their barrel nut will still require some modifications, so I'll keep you posted on how this works out.

[ranchdude]

Well I finally found a detailed review of the ATI Omni Hybrid .410 which shows the inside of the upper receiver and BCG. The ATI upper and BCG is an almost exact copy of the Safir T14 BCG. However, the ATI BCG seems to be made of better materials or at the very least plated, they are using a round cam pin, and their ejector plate is mounted in the upper but with a slightly different design which I believe is stronger. Seeing this I have no doubt that their magazines will work in a T14, they basically took the entire design from Safir and made a few improvements. I wouldn't be surprised if their BCG would drop right into a Safir T14 and run... However, if you look closely at the 5:08 mark in the video, you'll see there is some type of vertical plate mounted in the upper. The only thing I can think off is this is there to keep someone from trying to put a standard AR15 BCG into the .410 upper...

https://youtu.be/Aq2rkjKBIZg?t=284

RD Out...

[ranchdude]

And it appears the IFC .410 is in fact a Safir T14 imported by IFC... So those 9 round mags are probably 9 round for 922(r) compliance which makes sense...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfjXg7wtQKY

https://internationalfirearmcorporation.com/ifc-410/

A source for parts if nothing else.

RD Out...