radically modifying the barrel to receiver interface
What year do you think this is, 1900?
The bolt and barrel lock together; how it's held into the receiver is wholly irrelevant from a safety perspective. That's how the gun can be made of aluminum in the first place, by the way.
No no, not from like a safety perspective of course.
What I mean is that the Supreme has become renown for incredible accuracy, and part of that comes from it's fix barrel design. What RDSC/Shield is doing is machining the receiver to essentially be an AR interface with an extension and a barrel nut ect. This adds a second joint which would inevitably create and additional tolerance and reduce accuracy. How much so? From OP's YouTube videos, apparently less than I'd functionally care about, but not zero. I'm not pushing 5.56 to 800m+ ever.
These builds turned out super awesome apparently, and OP has proved it. When I first saw it, it definitely seemed sus but they've done a good job of it. I'm debating one of these in 16" or an M1 "not a BM59 officer..." build as my next project. In theory they could do them in x39 considering that both the bolt head and now barrel are AR parts, which excites me.
I'm not entirely sure why RDSC/Shield's solution to this problem would in any way involve more machining especially because replacement barrel nuts would be easier and cheaper to fabricate, but there's no accounting for taste I suppose.
Well dang! I had actually spoken to a Henry rep about exactly this and he told me that the Supreme had a direct thread barrel, i.e. the barrel is male external thread and screwed into the receiver. But it was an AR style extension and nut all along! Thanks for that link. The pictures show more of the internals of that rifle than I've seen anywhere else.
16
u/escv_69420 10d ago
Hell yeah! How is it? The idea of radically modifying the barrel to receiver interface kinda scares me, but I love what RDSC is doing with these.