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Thread: Safir Arms T14

  1. #21
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    Default Re: Safir Arms T14

    Thanks for all the info. ranchdude - definitely got me interested in taking apart one of my 13 round mags and modifying, then if it works, do the rest Thanks again!
    "Tastefully Pimptastic"

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    Default Re: Safir Arms T14

    Well the more I thought about it, the more I realized that trying to covert a Magpul Pmag seemed like a tremendous waste of time and a good magazine...

    I've decided to try making a .410 follower to fit the ASC 40 round mag. It should provide for a 15 round .410 mag if it operates and feeds properly.

    I'm going to try to find someone with a 3D printer to make a prototype. So far this is what I've come up with.


  3. #23
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    Default Re: Safir Arms T14

    Quote Originally Posted by cruzans View Post
    Thanks for all the info. ranchdude - definitely got me interested in taking apart one of my 13 round mags and modifying, then if it works, do the rest Thanks again!
    No problem! I'm glad someone is reading all of this lol!

  4. #24
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    Default Re: Safir Arms T14

    Well I did a bit more experimenting tonight. So I'll pass along what I learned.

    First, these Safir 13 round mags have a bit more engineering to them than I first gave them credit for. I think the majority of the feed problems are fit and finish, with a little engineering refining that could have been done to improve them.

    I did a clean up of a Safir mag using a razor knife blade. The angled tip helps you get into the corners and around edges. I cleaned up the bottom of the follower, along all those edges dragging the blade at about a 45 degree angle to remove any flash and "mushroomed" edges. There was also a raised area on the side of the follower that appeared to be a flute for the injection molding process, so I cut that flush as well. I removed the little spring loaded tab at the rear of the follower, and cleaned up around that opening, and the tab itself. The tab had small raised circles on one side, so I smoothed those off. When I put it back together, the tab now works as it should. You can press it in, and it will spring back out.

    I think I've figured out the function of that little tab. I believe it is primarily used to hold the bolt catch up after the last last round has been fired from the mag. The reason I believe it is spring loaded, is to allow it to compress while in the magazine body. The back side of the follower is actual not straight up and down, in cants in slight towards the top. I think this is to allow the front of the follow to cant up more, to raise the nose of the rounds for feeding.

    The problem with that design is, the magazine spring isn't strong enough to keep the nose high while there are more than 5-6 rounds in the magazine. The other problem with the design is that the body of the magazine doesn't have enough curvature in the bottom section of the body to allow the shells at the bottom to help put pressure on the nose end of the follower.

    I think we can solve the first problem with a 30 round magazine spring. I tried several and they aren't all the same. Every different manufacturer has a slightly different spring design. I found one spring in a Defense Solutions Group 30 round aluminum mag that fit pretty well. Its shaping on the ends allowed for a good fit to the Safir follower and bottom plate when the spring was completed reversed from its normal orientation in the SDG mag. The open end, with no 90 degree bend fit nicely under the follower, while the end with the 90 degree bend actually fit the end plate extension perfectly. I'll add photos later to show this.

    The only problem with this spring is it is actually just a little too strong. With that spring installed I was able to load all 13 rounds, but the last round went in with a lot of difficulty, and when I tried putting the mag in the receiver and racking the charging handle, there was just too much drag to get the round pulled completely out of the mag. However, it did start to feed, the angle was good enough in that respect, so that is a good sign. I'm going to try cutting one loop out at a time on the open end that I have under the follower to see if I can find a good compromise in this setup. This spring was about 1 inch longer than the stock Safir spring, and quite a bit more spring rate. So I think even if I end up cutting it to the same length as the Safir spring, it will still have more pre-load on the follower.

    Converting the 40 round ASC mag to be a 15 round .410 mag looks like it might be much more difficult than I thought. Although I believe the follower I designed will work, and it will hold 15 rounds, there are several other design problems to get around.

    First, the Safir mag was designed from the start to be used for single stack feeding of the .410 shell where the .223/.556 AR mag was designed to feed a double stack of that caliber. The Safir mag has enlarged protrusions inside the mag well for guiding the follower and ammo as it feeds. In a .223 mag, these protrusions are smaller to allow for a staggered double stack. The distance between these protrusions inside the Safir mag is just wide enough to clear the diameter of the .410 shell with a little clearance for movement. But that distance is wider in a .223 mag and this causes feeding problems because the .410 shells tend to want to stagger in that larger space which causes a lot of binding and friction.



    Larger protrusions on the inside of the Safir mag keep the .410 shells centered in a single stack.

    Second, there are no forward feed lips on a .223 mag. And, I don't see an easy way to add them without interfering with the follower as it comes to the top of the magazine. These lips are needed to keep the .410 shell centered and aligned with the bore as it is fed into the chamber. About the only way I see to add these lips on an aluminum or stainless mag would be to have them tig welding on. This would be time consuming, tedious and not easily done by every do-it-yourselfer out there.

    Third, the curvature of the ASC 40 round magazine is too extreme towards the bottom. While I feel the Safir mag doesn't have quite enough curvature, the ASC 40 round has so much that it ends up forcing the nose of the top round of a fully load mag far too high, causing the round to jam on the top side of the barrel extension.


    Safir mag shown on top of the ASC 40 round mag

    Fourth, the rear lips on this magazine (and any other .223 mag) would need to be modified, shortened in length to match the Safir rear lips length and profile. That isn't a problem that I think can't be handled. However, the way ASC forms these lips doesn't suit the .410 shells rim very well. It tends to lock the top shell into the lip a the very rear of the mag. This might be tweaked by rolling the edge slightly. But it will take some tuning to get it to work. And in looking into this, I can see why Safir went with a poly mag, because the edges of the lips can be smooth with radius, where the edges of a metal body tend to be hard and sharp. This hard sharp edge causes a lot of drag against the brass rim of the .410 shell.


    The rear lips of the ASC mag would need to be trimmed in length and profile, also no front feed lips on the ASC vs. the Safir mag.


    There is a slight raised area at the rear corner of the ASC 40 round mag lips that catches the rim of the .410 shell, and the sharp edges do as well.

    So the ASC 40 round mag doesn't look like a good candidate, nor the Magpul Pmag because of it's internal structure. So, I'm going to look inside some of my other poly mags like the Troy Battle mag and see what's going on inside there. And I'm going to search around a bit to see what other 40 round mags are out there like C Products, etc...
    Last edited by ranchdude; May 14th, 2014 at 11:24 PM.

  5. #25
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    Default Re: Safir Arms T14

    Well I've been doing some research. I've found out that the Lancer and Tapco poly mags do not have the raised rib on the front inside wall of the mag body like Troy and Pmags do. Which is probably why the gentleman on Gunbroker chose the Lancer to modify, that and because it has an external removable steel lip which could possibly be modified to provide a set of front feed lips. And also the rear lips would be easily modified as well.



    There's a cool AR mag torture test on AR15.com which is a long but interesting read (all 23 pages of it). This is where I was able to get a nice shot of a variety of mags looking down into the mag body from the top.

    http://www.ar15.com/forums/t_3_17/58...k_.html&page=1



    Interesting to note that the Tapco mag's (5th from the left) rear lips are shaped a lot like the Safir mags rear lips. Almost the same profile only longer. So, I guess I'll order one of each of these magazines to see about modifying them to feed .410. The only problem is Lancer and Tapco don't make a 40 round mag, so it looks like we will be limited to converting to a 10 round .410 mag.

    Edit, Promag makes a 42 round poly mag but it appears it also has the raised rib, so I'm going to order a Tapco first, those Lancer mags are really nice and are promising, but they're also very expensive...
    Last edited by ranchdude; May 14th, 2014 at 05:35 PM.

  6. #26
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    Default Re: Safir Arms T14

    While the magazine project is on hold for ordering and until I get some free time...

    The other area I'd like to point out as a weak part of the Safir design is in the bolt assembly. The design of the ejector is very bad, and again its complicated more by poor manufacturing quality.

    The collar of the ejector rides inside the bolt carrier, behind the bolt. It is designed to rotate with the bolt as it locks into the chamber and unlocks as the bolt cycles back to eject.

    The problem with the design is first there is basically metal to metal contact between the ejector collar and the inside of the bolt carrier. Granted, there is an oil film expected there, and the coating on the both faces do help break the friction to some extent.

    However that long ejector pin puts a tremendous amount of leverage on the collar, and this causes the collar to bind off axis within it's clearance hole.



    To complicate things even more, during the manufacturing of the collar the pin is staked which leaves a raised area around the punch mark and also makes the collar slightly out of round. There are also other surface imperfections on the outside diameter of my collar which do not lend well to it rotating freely within it's clearance hole.





    What this all adds up to is a lot of friction and when the ejector collar can't rotate freely, it impedes the bolt from rotating freely. This can result in either the ejector pin breaking, or it not allowing the bolt to properly align to engage into the barrel extension. Or worse case, not engaging into the barrel extension at all.

    My plan to improve on this is to have the collar turned down just enough to remove the high spots especially around the staking point, and then oxide blast it and coat it and the entire carrier and bolt with Cerakote Micro Slick coating. This should reduce the friction a great deal, about as best you could get except perhaps for a DLC coating. And the coating should help the bolt carrier function better overall.

    I'm not sure how you could improve on the design to eliminate this problem. Perhaps some type of bushing between the firing pin and the collar for it to rotate on axis? However if what I'm planning to do doesn't help, I'll probably just have some better quality ejectors made with tighter tolerances in an attempt to reduce the binding problem, and then have them DLC coated...
    Last edited by ranchdude; May 15th, 2014 at 05:08 PM. Reason: keep typing extractor instead of ejector lol...

  7. #27
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    Default Re: Safir Arms T14

    After turning and polishing the ejector collar, you can see there were a lot of dings and scores in it originally. This is about as smooth as it's going to get. I'm going to try it out to see if it functions better now. And then get it ready for coating...




  8. #28
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    Default Re: Safir Arms T14

    Hello again, I bet you all thought you got rid of me lol... No such luck.

    Well I have have some more info to pass along. Hope someone finds it useful.

    The extractor problem I was having seems to be consistent across several BCG's I have, some worse than others. The info about fit and finish being a problem with these guns seems to prove itself true over and over.

    What I've found is that when they grind the slot in the bolt carrier for the little tab attached to the upper to strike the extractor collar when the BCG cycles, the slot is not de-burred on the inside faces, nor does it have the resulting sharp edges broken.



    I found burrs of metal inside one of my BCGs which appears to be what scored the collar I posted pics of previously. So when that collar is pressed against the rear on the counter bore that it rests within inside the bolt carrier by the extractor spring, the result is somewhat like a one way bearing.



    The collar will turn one direction "fairly" freely, however it will resist moving in the other direction quite a bit, or it won't move at all. This causes the extractor pin to try to follow the bolt rotation without the collar doing the same, and that causes more binding as the collar is forced off axis with the firing pin. I'm thinking a small washer placed between the collar and where the collar seats in the BCG may keep the collar from dragging on those edges at the rear of the counter bore. The firing pin would pass through both the washer and collar and hold the washer in place. I'm thinking I could use something like an old Winchester 1200 firing pin collar which might work perfectly there. I'll let you know how it plays out and if it helps free up the collar rotation.



    One of my BCG's is much worse than the other, what is shown above is the worse of the two. But both still have the same problem with the inside sharp edges not being broken or deburred around where that slot was cut. And both exhibit the problem with the collar rotating one direction but not wanting to rotate in the other direction.

    I ordered a Lancer mag and a Tapco mag. Both have no raised rib on the front inside edge of the magazine like most of the poly mags do, and both can hold a 2 1/2 .410 shell without binding nose to tail. And while the Lancer mag has very large side follower guides which would help keep the .410 shells in a single stack, I really think the Tapco mag is looking like a better candidate for conversion. The Lancer mags metal lips would need some serious work or even replacement to feed a rimmed shell well. The Tapco mag also holds the .410 shell with room to spare nose to tail. It might even feed some shells that don't fit in a Safir mag. And the Tapco mags appear to be a good design, and good quality with a follower that is anti-tilt without having long extensions on both the front and rear of the follower. This might allow some room for adding some guides on the inside of the magazine body to keep the shells from staggering and also serve as front feed lips. The Tapco rear feed lips will need a bit of modification in profile to allow enough space between the lips to allow the shell to angle up and feed properly.




    I'm going to design a ramped follower for the Tapco, have a few made then modify two magazines for testing. I might just flatten off the top of the stock follower and add a ramped extension to it rather than making a completely new follower. The nicest part is that the Tapco mags are fairly inexpensive ($11 from Midway) much less than the Lancer mags and Made in the USA (3 less parts to count for 922r compliance). If everything works I think I might be able to put together a kit to modify a Tapco 30 round mag to a 10 or 11 round .410 mag for around $10 plus the cost of the magazine. So I'll keep you all posted on this as I go but it looks very promising at this point!

    Ranchdude out...
    Last edited by ranchdude; May 23rd, 2014 at 04:52 PM.

  9. #29
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    Default Re: Safir Arms T14

    Back with some more info while I'm still working on the magazine modifications...

    I have two barrels for the T14, one is 13.5" (342.9mm) and one is a 17.75" (450.85mm) barrel. Strange but both are no where near any of the standard length barrels I've found listed on Safir's websites in the past. They stated the barrel lengths were 24" (610mm), 20" (510mm), or 12.6" (320mm). So I'm not sure if my barrels are non-standard, or if the information was wrong.



    Interestingly, both my barrels would be considered short barreled shotguns by the BATF and therefore regulated under NFA. I actually have my 13.5" setup registered as a SBS so I can legally use either barrel on that lower.

    The 17.75" barrel could be made non-NFA by pinning and welding a muzzle device onto the barrel to make it over 18".



    There are minor differences in my two barrels. Both are one piece with the barrel extension being a part of the barrel itself. However, the ground area that tapers down to the chamber for clearing the extractor is ground much further out onto the barrel on the 17.75" than on the 13.5".



    Both have the gas port and piston assembly keeper groove in the same location. The longer barrel has two sections that taper down to a smaller diameter where the shorter barrel has only one. Both are threaded with metric 16mm threads for the muzzle.

    Both barrels mount into a standard AR15 upper just as good as any AR15 barrel with a threaded barrel extension, and they can be retained with a standard AR15 barrel nut. The only difference is there is no gas tube to clock and lock the barrel nut to while torquing it. I have no specs for standard barrel nut torque for the T-14 barrel, so I've been operating under the assumption that it's the same as an AR15.

  10. #30
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    Default Re: Safir Arms T14

    Difference between the the Safir T-14 S2 flat top upper, and a standard M4 style flat top upper.

    One of my projects is trying to get the T-14 BGC to operate in a standard A3 upper. This allows me to get rid of several more foreign made parts so that I can run the factory 13 round mags without any worries about Section 922r compliance. By using a US made upper and front rail along with a all US built lower, I really only have 4 foreign parts left, the piston assembly, barrel, BCG and muzzle device. And I plan on ditching the muzzle device as well in the future.

    But there are some obvious, and not so obvious differences between the Safir upper and a standard A3 upper.



    First, the Safir upper is much taller, the flat top rail has been raised up above the level of the top of a standard A3 upper. The only reason I can see for this was to add a little more material on the top of the rail to allow them to mill the notch that captures their quad rail and keeps it from rotating.



    This notch is actually a really nice feature that I wish the military would adopt in some form into the Mil-Std-1913 specification. It allows a method of locking the rail to the upper and keeping it there without set screws or special barrel nuts, etc. The only problem in Safir's execution was their rail does not have the double spacing it should have before the first slot cut. Therefore the rail (although not T-marked for reference) is not using a standard spacing referenced to the first slot on the upper... And a diamond cut slot in the upper, with a blunted end diamond shaped extension on the rail to fit into the upper, would allow for a more precise centering of the rail to the upper.

    Back to the other differences. The ejection port cover, and the forward assist are both plastic on the T-14. But more important, the ejection port has been modified on the Safir to make it wider top to bottom, by milling away the bottom edge of the opening just above the ejection port cover. Also, a smaller radius mill was used to square off the front corners of the opening to better match the size and shape of a .410 shell.



    The feed ramp area has been milled for a large diameter single stack feed and a rather steep angle to get the nose of the .410 shell up into the opening of the chamber.

    There is a hole where the gas tube normally passes through, but it is threaded. My upper has nothing in that threaded hole, I'm assuming it could just be used for a set screw as a plug.

    And again, you see the slot cut into the front portion of the upper rail.



    The top rail is longer than a standard A3 upper rail. It extends further back towards the charging handle before ramping down to a more normal height. And the slots are not T-marked as they wouldn't be standard anyway. (T minus 2?)



    On the bottom of the upper we have the most complex difference. There is a special milling of recess in the base of the upper to allow what I call the "ejection lever" to be installed. The normal milled out area (which I truthfully have no clue why it is there) is squared off with a smaller radius cut, then slotted. There is also a cross drilling of the lower to allow a roll pin to retain the lever, and another roll pin over it as a collar to lock it to the left hand side of the receiver. The roll pin also acts as a pivot point to allow the lever to be raised so that the BCG can be removed from the upper. This design is simply terrible, when the ejector pin collar strikes this lever, the pivot point is in front of the lever which forces the whole thing to pivot and move down against the top of the lower receiver.



    Inside the upper, more subtle differences. The slot for the charging handle is not cut at a standard depth and therefore a standard AR charging handle with not fit into the T-14 upper without modification.

    The semi-circle area milled out inside the upper on the opposite side of the ejection port is there for clearance of the cam bolt as bolt rotates to lock the into the chamber. On the T-14 this area has a larger radius which actually cuts into the inside wall of the lower. On a standard AR this radius comes just to the edge of the inside wall. This is done for a reason, because the Safir bolt seems to have the cam bolt sitting slightly further forward toward the bolt end of the BCG. Therefore when trying to lock the Safir bolt into a standard AR upper, the cam bolt hits the side of the upper before the bolt is fully locked into place. However, rather than hogging out more material from the upper, I believe a better solution will be to use a round head cam bolt which should have no clearance problems in a standard AR upper.



    There you have the major and subtle differences between the two uppers. The good news is I believe I can overcome the differences and get this to work with only minor milling of a standard upper.

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