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I bet you’re wondering how I got here, wearing a goofy hockey mask and a comically oversized Heat vest.

Well, to really tell the story, I have to go back, way back, to like — the end of April. Forgotten Weapons released a video called “Forgotten Weapons Will Rock and Roll at the Drop of a Hat.”

It’s a sweet video. In it, Ian of Forgotten Weapons, Matt Haught of Symtac Consulting, and friends reenacted the Heat Bank robbery as best as they safely could. They wore suits, masks, used old-school ARs and wore Heat replica vests. The video is sweet and it served as both a cool video and an announcement of sorts for the Heat vest pre-order at the Forgotten Weapons website.

I was …Uhm, sold. I’ve wanted one of these vests since I saw the film Heat. If you’ve never seen the movie, fix that. Go see it. Near the end, a bank robbery occurs, and the robbers wear vests adorned with magazines under their coats. It’s a simple setup unique to the film and honestly always appealed to me. I instantly got in on the pre-order and eagerly awaited the arrival of my sweet Heat vest.

I planned to dress up in my suit and do a bit of my own rundown of the Heat shootout, armed with the vest and a duffel bag full of sand. I ordered a copy of the Hockey mask seen at the beginning of the film and couldn’t wait.

The Youtuber Conundrum

I have a rule. Don’t order crap from Youtubers. Not just in the gun world, but it seems like anytime a Youtuber has a product to sell, it’s crap. The thing is, Ian has sold some sweet-ass books on historical firearms. They are incredibly well-done books, and I look forward to his book on Chinese Warlord pistols.

So with that in mind, I broke my rule, and even when faced with a warning of no refunds, I dialed in my credit card number and sent 90 bucks over the interwebs.

I’m sad to say, the Youtuber selling crap meme maintains its strength with the Heat vest.

So this is the Sizemore Heat Vest?

The Heat Vest came in two sizes, M/L and XL/XXL. I’m 6 foot, 5 inches tall, and weigh 280 pounds. I ordered the XL/XXL variant. Heck, that’s my shirt size, so it makes sense I went with the ‘Sizemore’ option. After watching the Youtube video and seeing Ian posing with the vest, I expected the vest to fit. Honestly, I figured it might be a bit small.

Sadly, I was mistaken. The Heat vest I received was comically oversized for me. I’m pretty sure I’ve never actually had an issue with something too big for me, so that was a first. I tried to adjust the vest. I put it on the tightest D-ring and adjusted the rear as tight as I possibly could — and it’s still massively oversized. I felt like a five-year-old playing dress-up in his dad’s clothes.

I imagine it’s a 4 or 5 XL at best. It droops off of me, and the shoulders will slide off of me with gentle movement. When I walk, it seems to drip off, especially when loaded down with loaded magazines. In the video by Forgotten Weapons, the vests looked perfectly sized, and they certainly didn’t fall off the wearers while shooting and moving.

I loaded the vest down and tried it under my suit coat. It’s way too big to fit under the coat, so I abandoned the idea I originally had and avoided a dry cleaning bill. I still had a 36 dollar hockey mask, so you guys are getting to see that at a minimum.

What About Using It?

As I mentioned, the Heat vest just kind of falls off of me with any real movement. Well, the magazines also tend to just fall out of it too.

These elastic bands are way too big for a standard AR-15 magazine. I walked 30 yards, and this was the result.

I lost two mags and almost lost a third. If I bend over, the magazines fall out of the shoulder are pouches. I honestly didn’t expect excellent, duty grade retention, but I don’t think mags should pop out when they are jostled or just when you walk. I’m betting if the vest fit tighter, the magazines would be less likely to jump ship so fast.

I never intended to use the Heat Vest for anything serious, but I would like to have some fun in it at the range. Maybe take it to the next “Retro” match at my local range and goof off a bit. Sadly I can’t even do that.

I will say the Daniel Defense 32 round magazines fit much better than the regular 30 rounders. They are a hair longer and don’t flop out.

Retrieving the magazines makes me thankful for modern chest rigs. Of all the things I can complain about, I don’t think mentioning the ergonomics of a 1995 chest rig made for a movie is really necessary. It’s just the nature of the design and not a knock on the product’s quality.

Fixing the Situation

I emailed Forgotten Weapons customer support after I received the vest. I received a quick response saying they were aware of the problem and were investigating the size issue. I waited and followed up about two weeks after asking if there was a solution. I have yet to hear back regarding the solution.

Hopefully, the Forgotten Weapons crew can fix this situation. I’m not the only one who found the Heat vest way too large. Owners of both the M/L and XL/XXL found the vest to be way too big and the retention to be terrible. If the situation’s fixed, then I will most certainly give the vest another shot at the range and rewrite or update this review.

My ultimate goal for the Heat vest was to play at the range a few times, then hang it up on a mannequin and make it a conversation piece. Sadly, they don’t make mannequins this size, so what can I do?

Hopefully, in a month, I’ll be rewriting this and be psyched about my well-fitting Heat vest. Until then, be aware of these being sold on the secondary market.

People seem to be marking them up a bit much and not mentioning the size issue at all. If Forgotten Weapons fixes first-owner problems, you might not be covered when purchasing on the secondary market. I’m gonna go watch Heat again and get Galil fever once more.

(Going back for Waingro was a mistake btw.)

 

 

 

Who doesn’t love more capacity in their fighting rifle? Thirty rounds are the standard, but we’ve never been satisfied with the standard, right? The more rounds a gun holds, the less likely you’ll have to reload. For guns tasked with laying down sustaining fire, we turn to belts. Magazine-fed weapons are often enhanced by the presence of an extended magazine or a drum. The Beta C-Mag might be the biggest solution to the problem of needing more capacity.

The Beta C-Mag first saw life in 1987 when it received a patent for its rather unique design. The C in C-Mag stands for century. Get it? Century equals 100 years, and the drums hold 100 rounds. Clever, and admittedly, it rolls off the tongue. Since then, the Beta C-Mag has been a rather controversial drum magazine. In fact, hating on the C-Mag has been the only thing gun grabbers and freedom enthusiasts have had in common.

Gun grabbers hate freedom, and anything offering 100 rounds of ammunition on tap irks them, and to be fair, anything holding more than 1 round of ammunition irks them. At the other end of the spectrum, freedom enthusiasts, gun lovers, and soldiers dislike them because they don’t seem to be all that functional. Before we get into that, let’s talk a little bit more about the history and purpose of the C-Mag.

What’s The Purpose of the C-Mag

That’s easy, and not to sound like Tim Allen in the 90s, it’s for more power! Specifically, more firepower. The Beta C-MAG offered soldiers, police, or whoever a hundred rounds on tap. For soldiers, this allowed them to open up without the need to reload. In a firefight gaining fire, superiority can mean the difference between winning and gettin’ dead. Soldiers could use their rifles as quasi-suppressive weapons when a firefight kicks off.

The C-Mag is a drum design that actually uses two drums to accomplish the mighty task of holding 100 rounds of 5.56. The drum design also allows the user to get into a half-decent prone position without a giant jutting drum making it awkward.

The awkward design has earned it some rather vulgar names, such as the ‘titty’ mag and the ‘chode.’ I don’t partake in such uncouth terms, but they deserve to be mentioned as part of the gun’s history.

A History of the Beta C-Mag

Beta produced the magazine with military contracts in mind and approached big Army with their marvelous idea in the early 90s. The DOD and Spec Ops community tested the drums, and they reportedly failed pretty hard.

In 2001 the GWOT kicked off, and a reportedly new and improved Beta C-Mag came to be. Again it was offered to the Army, who was gearing up to go kick ass in Afghanistan. Well, at the time, stuff like this was getting snatched up left and right and taken overseas.

Soldiers were issued the C-Mag in both Afghanistan and Iraq from small unit orders. In the early days of the GWOT, linked ammo was reportedly scarce in the country. Units fell back to using full auto M4s and M16s and for fire suppression, and the C-Mag granted them the capacity to make do.

Proper Testing

The Naval Surface Warfare Center – Crane Division procured and tested magazines, and well, they found that they still weren’t up to snuff. Based on this testing, USSOCOM sent out a stop order to prohibit the use of Beta C-Mags. As it happens, the message didn’t get down to everyone.

The Rapid Equipping Force was a program set up to get soldiers the gear they need in 180 days or less. It would test and evaluate products and see if they were suitable for combat conditions. They acquired some Beta C-Mag drums and conducted testing in Iraq. They found the drums unsuitable for combat and sent them back.

The drums hit the streets, and soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division tested the drum in Kandahar under the supervision of a third-party consulting firm. They put the rifles through SAWs and M4s and quickly discovered they weren’t up to snuff.

“I hate it, it keeps jamming,” said Spc. Daniel Dicker. (Defend America Newsletter)

After these numerous failures, the C-Mag drums in the wild were collected, and a policy letter was issued banning the use of the Beta C-Mag. After that, the Beta C-Mag didn’t see any action in the hills of Afghanistan or the streets of Iraq. The drum, like many drums before it, proved too finicky for military use.

Post Military Career

The Beta C-Mag might not have served with distinction, but it had a secondary career in the movies! It’s an intimidating-looking sight attached to the bottom of a gun, and it popped up in the Stargate television show. We saw it in three different guns in the Vin Diesel xXx flicks, in the film Walking Tall, in Gamer, and so many more.

Ultimately like a movie star, the drum looks good, but it necessarily needs to be good. Beta C-Mag drums are easy to find for sale, but be prepared to pay. They often retail for around 300 bucks. I’m not going to spend 300 bucks on a range toy I don’t trust.

But I will spend less than half that on the KCI Clone.

The KCI Option

These are much more affordable and likely as reliable as an authentic C-Mag, according to the Army’s testing.

I loaded up my KCI clone, and man, a hundred rounds of 5.56 makes the gun quite hefty. I couldn’t get it to catch the mag catch fully loaded with the bolt closed. If you download two rounds or insert the drum with the bolt open, you’ll be good to go.

The weight and weird bulbous design make it much easier to use in a supported position, but it’s not impossible to fire from the standing unsupported.

I dumped a hundred rounds through the KCI C-Mag clone without issue, on a square range, on a nice day, and it worked fine. I didn’t torture test it for reliability, but for giggles, I trust it to feed fine enough.

If you can accept it as a range toy, the Beta C-Mag is perfectly fine. The KCI clone functions fine, and I bet the authentic models do too on a square, perfectly permissive range with brand-new out-of-the-box ammo.

The complicated nature of the C-Mag makes it more prone to failure, likely much ammo picky, and ultimately not a great option for serious use. It’s neat, but the only real drum that’s dependable enough for duty use seems to be the Magpul D-60 and D-50 series. While they might offer less ammo, they offer more bang for your buck.

It’s funny, shooting in itself is a very analog sport. It has existed way before the digital world ever was conceived. It consists of metal, wood, glass, springs, and explosions. Some of the digital things that have crept into the long-range shooter’s arsenal range from chronographs, wind meters, laser range finders, and various displays. Kestrel has come up with a few products like the Kestrel HUD that allow you to do some extreme (here come those words everyone loves to hear) “social distancing” while on the range.

Kestrel made their name in the wind meter market, offering them for various industries. The ones we are most interested in are the ones made for shooting… I mean it is what we are all here for isn’t it?

Kestrel 5700 Sportsman

Between time away with the military, range shutdowns due to the pandemic, and a hip surgery I have spent a bit of time playing with my Kestrel 5700 Sportsman that I went through the upgrade process on to make a 5700 Elite — but more on that in another article. I am still getting used to playing with a wind meter when it comes to shooting, having previously used Kentucky Windage or a person spotting for me most of my time shooting.

With the build of The Apologizer (my entirely Canadian rifle project), it was time I got a bit more serious about my long-range shooting. I put in all the info I could (using ammo made for another gun I no longer have but have way too much of) and got fairly decent results for shooting at longer ranges than I normally did. The Kestrel 5700 gave me shooting solutions for various ranges and the menus were fairly intuitive.

When I got my Kestrel 5700 Sportsman it came in a package with a Bushnell Elite CONX laser range finder in a package deal. If you look around some dealers still have this, which is a great package deal saving you some serious coin when starting out.

What was really cool about the package was that through the PFM or pure f**king magic of Bluetooth you can pair your range finder with a Kestrel that is LiNK enabled—meaning it too has Bluetooth in it. This allows both of your fancy electronics to have a fun little conversation so when you take a wind reading and range an object it will spit out the elevation and windage changes required to hopefully hit the target. I would be remiss if I did not mention that a Kestrel wind meter can only take wind readings at your current location. What’s happening downrange can be a completely different thing however it’s a great starting point.

The Applied Ballistics engine in the 5700 Elite does do a fantastic job with elevation, and if the wind were consistent all the way down there would likely be pretty bang on every time. This is, of course, if you do your part and shoot with the fundamentals and input all of the numbers and info into your new pocket wind reading friend. Good ammo that is consistent also helps a lot as the distance grows.

I do still have some truing I need to do with the Kestrel but that will take some playing around with. However, the 5700 isn’t entirely why we are here. No, that’s just one part of the three electronic gizmo trio that does a pretty damn good job acting as your spotter when you’re at the range. The last piece of the puzzle is the Kestrel HUD.

Kestrel HUD

The Kestrel HUD  (Heads Up Display) is a fancy little display you can mount on your rifle or have sitting in the dirt next to you.

It’s built pretty damn rugged. I wouldn’t say it’s Nokia’s old-style-phone rugged, since they will be found by civilizations many thousands of years from now. I will say Kestrel did a good job making something that can take a beating, more importantly—handle the recoil of being mounted to a rifle.

Not only that, it has a temperature working range of -22F to 140F which covers pretty much any weather pattern I care to shoot in. The Kestrel HUD lets you keep your head up with your eyes focused mostly downrange—instead of fiddling with a pile of electronics.

It has several different modes on it. There is a timer at the bottom of the target screen, a DOPE (Data On Previous Engagement) screen, a single target screen that can give you live updates from the Kestrel 5700 if it is in a tripod mount, and of course the Custom Target Screen with up to 10 targets. The DOPE and custom targets screens are only available for the 5700 Elite and up so if you have a Sportsman it’s worth doing the upgrade if these are features you will use.

The screen is super easy to read in the sun as well as in the dark, with its large letters and backlight if you need that. While it is easy to read it is a pain in the ass to take pictures of due to the glossy screen. Had Kestrel gone with something like an E-Ink screen like a Kindle it would be super easy to photograph but slow to update the screen with new info.

It easily mounts to a rifle if you have space on the Picatinny rail for it to attach to. This mount also folds to the side making it easier to store in a bag or case if you don’t want to take it off.

The unit runs off of a single AA battery which is something to consider for battery management purposes. Nothing sucks worse than having one of the gizmos you rely on go down during a stage or while shooting because you didn’t change the batteries or forgot spares. I typically use a Batuca Battery Case since it can store AA, AAA, and CR1234A which covers most of my battery needs when shooting, although our friends over at Thyrm have a really cool new battery case.

I have mostly used the single target and multi-target screens along with the DOPE screen when shooting.

Why do I use the single target and multi-target screens? With my 5700 Sportsman Elite in a tripod that I have set the direction of fire on, I can use the laser to build my target cards for range and get live updates from the weather meter to help me adjust for windage.

I like the DOPE screen for a quick reference on targets at known distances, making my adjustments fast. The only complaint on the multi-target mode, especially for something like PRS where you end up engaging targets at multiple distances and of different shapes, is no ability yet to select pictures to help identify targets. This is where the ability to select from a list of common target shapes might aid in this. With tape and target boards you can draw whatever you want and various reference features which the Kestrel HUD doesn’t have just yet. I say yet because Kestrel is very good at listening to feedback and has the ability to do software updates to their products that add these little niceties in. Hell with the use of the LiNK app on your phone it would make building those target cards really easy. That said, being the tech geek I am, I really like having the three items talking to each other. It makes managing them a ton easier.

Nielsen-Kellerman, the parent company of Kestrel, is very invested in the shooting community. We have heard they ended up purchasing MagnetoSpeed which is pretty awesome for both companies. The MagnetoSpeed chronograph is quickly becoming one of the standards for ease of use when it comes to getting info on your bullet’s speed—not to mention the other innovative items they make like their hit indicator for steel targets. It will be interesting to see how the synergy of these companies ends up advancing the long-range shooting game.

While the Kestrel HUD is no J.A.R.V.I.S. from Ironman it has been a really handy tool in my shooting toolbox and one I hope to get even more use of when ranges allow me to shoot again. Until then, I will be spending my time doing my social distancing in the basement dry firing using the DOPE screen and my Indoor Dryfire Training System.

As a hunter on the west coast, I find myself hiking in the high mountain air with a backpack full of water, food, clothes, a tripod, spotting scope, and binoculars. To get away from the road hunters you must go where the roads end and the wilderness begins. To accomplish this, I have begun to use trekking poles to push further in the backcountry than I have in the past. Carrying trekking poles has become standard practice among many backcountry hunters as well as hikers. Trekking poles allow you to safely carry more weight, hike further, and reduce the wear on your joints. The more I learn about backcountry hunting, I find myself trying to reduce the gear I carry by finding gear (like Quick Stix Shooting Sticks …keep reading!) that can be used in several different ways.

Wiser Precision 

That’s where Wiser Precision comes in. Their multifaceted products assist hunters to accomplish the goal of bringing home clean game meat. The Wiser Precision products I am going to cover in this article function together as a system to reduce what you must carry.

First is the Quick-Stix, mount them on your trekking poles and it creates shooting sticks in just seconds.

Next is the Quick-Clip. It has a QD clamp that attaches to a Picatinny rail section on your rifle for a solid connection. The other side of the Quick-Clip is a U-shaped billet aluminum section that snaps onto the accessory ring machined into the Quick-Stix attached to your trekking poles.

 The trekking poles with Quick-Stix, and Quick-Clip, allow you to set your desired shooting height for the terrain you are dealing with and your desired shooting position in the blink of the eye.

If you must move your shooting position quickly, just move your rifle and trekking poles, (the Quick-Stix and Quick-Clip go together) so you only have to move to the next shooting location, set the system down, and fire.

Turn it into a Tripod

With Quick-Stix, you can also turn your trekking poles into a tripod by securely attach a spotting scope on top of it with the Wiser Precision 3^rd leg. For this shooting sticks configuration, you need three of their products: a pair of Trekking poles with Quick-StiX, a Quick-Clip, and a 3rd Leg.  The Quick-Clip uses the QD clamp to attach to the 3rd Leg, then the whole assembly will snap onto the accessory ring on the Quick-StiX.  Now all you need to do is add a camera ball or pan head mount of your choice and you will have yourself an ultralight tripod for your spotting scope!

Are there more uses for the Trekking pole and Quick-Stix combo?

I use this combo for a solid binocular rest. By resting your binoculars on the V of the trekking poles you can get a solid platform to rest them in, allowing you to keep glassing without your arms falling off trying to keep the bino’s still.

Depending on your trekking pole height you can also use the bipod from the Quick-Stix in the kneeling position. If you do not have the correct height on your trekking pole with the Quick-Stix, just move the base of your poles closer together to raise the height or spread them apart to lower the rest quickly. This works well when going from standing to kneeling position.

When used with the 3rd Leg and Quick-Clip you can turn your bipod into a tall tripod. This is a great option for a longer-range shot or getting a solid glassing position over tall sagebrush.

Long-range shooters, police snipers, or military can take advantage of Wiser Precision products.

Long-range shooters competing in matches can use the trekking poles, Quick-Stix, quick-clip, and 3rd leg while reducing the weight and amount of gear you must lug between shooting locations. Although it’s not what you would normally use, it is absolutely an option.

For police snipers, it might be difficult to move between locations with your gear in a quick and easy method. With the Wiser Precision products, you can attach the Quick-Clip to your rifle and trekking poles with Quick-Stix and move from location to location without separating the system parts. Also, as a police sniper, you can use the same system as an observer without changing anything but the rifle and spotting scope or binoculars. Again, this is a major weight and space savings for what you are packing.

For the military side, using trekking poles to hike those far-off lands with rugged hills could assist in reducing fatigue. Just like the police snipers, it would be a major reduction in weight and space savings and with all the savings, one could add more ammo or water to assist in mission success.

Hunting

As I am writing this, I am waiting for the opportunity to take these Wiser Precision products into the field for a hunt, I plan to take advantage of them soon with a Nevada antelope hunt coming in September. I will also be using their product for a back-country bull elk hunt in Idaho.

If you are in the market for some top-of-the-line hunting / tactical gear that will assist in reducing the weight you carry and save on space, I would definitely recommend checking out Wiser Precision products like the Quick-Stix, Quick-Clip, and the 3^rd Leg. I know you will not be disappointed with what you see, and hopefully, these quick sticks will assist you with whatever your mission is!

Big Bird Out!

If there’s one product that’s made a huge leap from “rarely seen” to “enormously popular” — it’s the pistol red dot sight. It used to be you would sometimes see them in classes, but they were really more for competition shooters and handgun hunters. Now it’s not just normal to see them on the firing line, it’s common to see them mounted to people’s EDC (EveryDay Carry) guns and used for everything imaginable. In this video review, SuperSetCA takes a look at the Holosun 509T RDS (red dot sight).

Holosun 509T Details

Over the years, Holosun has gotten far better brand recognition and made a name for themselves for reasonably priced sights that perform well (always a good thing). In 2020, Holosun launched the 509T. It is a reflex sight with a titanium housing, making it more durable, and what they claim is a battery life of up to 50,000 hours. Various features include a multi-reticle system, Solar Failsafe, and Shake Awake, the latter of which is very nice to have on a carry gun. The RDS ships with an RMR adaptor — because we all know how many RMR-footprints there are on the pistol and RDS market — and uses a CR1632 battery.

How do the 509T’s profile and features compare to the older 508T features?

Paul of SuperSetCA goes into some details:

“Let’s talk about this in profile, first. Dimensionally, it’s the same as the 508T — it’s a little bit shorter in length, it’s a little bit wider at the base [508T dimensions are 1.78 x 1.15 x 1.15, and 509 T dimensions are 1.60 x 1.16 x 1.13] and the window size is a little bit wider, although looking at it you can’t tell.

“However, construction-wise, it’s the same as the 508T in that the battery tray is the same, the solar panel on top is the same. But, on the left side, the brightness controls…they’ve changed a little bit, post-Trijicon, but we’ll talk about that more [later]. And height-wise, like the 508T, it’s a little bit taller…like the Vortex Venom or one of the SwampFox [ones]…but you still shouldn’t have any trouble fitting it to any outside the waistband holsters.

“…weight-wise, I really think it’s surprising, even with the added glass panel and some additional titanium at the top it’s very close in weight, still, to the 508T. …even though it looks like it’s big…you really don’t feel it when you’re swinging your hand around.”

Check out the video to see what else Paul has to say about the Holosun 509T:

 

Why do you want a Red Dot Sight?

There are quite a few good reasons to get some trigger time with an RDS like the Holosun 509T. Yes, it’s a new operating platform to get used to, but it’s a lot easier than you might believe. Reasons to mount a red dot sight to your carry gun include:

• •Rapid target acquisition
• •Faster follow-up shots
• •Improved accuracy
• •Easier on many shooter’s eyes than iron sights
• •Work well in the dark

If you can’t decide whether or not to try one out, I definitely encourage you to give one a shot (pun intended). In the meantime, watch this SuperSetCA review of the popular Holosun 509T.

Do you use red dots on your carry guns? Why or why not? Tell us in the comments below.

Grey Birch Solutions is new to the firearms game, by name only. The company is made up of several people from the Canadian gun industry and it’s continually expanding as it grows. Their main goal is to create high-quality and exceptionally accurate .22lr firearms and parts. The company is currently focusing on the 10/22 platform and is only a few parts away from making all the parts themselves. Today we will talk about the Foundation Chassis.

Gray Birch Foundation Chassis

When Grey Birch first started, they released a few receiver sets and carbon fiber-wrapped barrels. The receivers and barrels still used the Ruger V-Block system, which can be finicky when it comes to squeezing out as much accuracy as possible from the platform. We have used the original barrel and receiver sets from Grey Birch for almost a year with exceptional accuracy in our sample.

But the company is working on more improvements. Instead of accepting the V-Block just being part of the platform, they went back to the drawing board and decided to ditch it for a threaded barrel and barrel nut. We will have more on their Fusion Receiver and Barrel in a future article. We just wanted to mention this and show how they killed an entire product line that has been working excellently to get something even better.

Why settle right?

The purpose of this article is to give our American readers a heads up about another name in the 10/22 game heading to them soon, along with talking about their Foundation Chassis.

The Foundation Chassis is a modular chassis system for the ever-popular Ruger 10/22 style of .22lr rifle. The Foundation consists of a forend, the main body of the chassis, and an adjustable stock. You can use the chassis on its own for a 10/22 pistol build (following all appropriate laws). If you want to make a super lightweight build you can attach just the stock to the chassis and skip the forend, or just build up the full chassis.

The forend of the rifle was built with modularity in mind.

The forend is 6″ long and when it’s attached to the chassis, it extends the chassis by around 5″. It has two M-LOK slots on each of the sides and bottom for accessory mounting. Along with this Grey Birch machine an ARCA rail to the bottom of the forend to allow for it to be mounted on tripods or the various ARCA compatible bipods like the MDT CKYE-POD like we have mounted on ours.

The 6″ long forend currently offered doesn’t allow for the bipod to be slid off the front, sadly. However, the upcoming 10″ long one does allow for this. The foundation forend has exceptional clearance so free-floating even the chunkiest barrel will be a breeze. The forend itself mounts to the chassis using the small 3-slot Picatinny rail at the bottom front of the chassis.

Speaking of that Picatinny rail, if you choose not to use the forend on your build you could attach a vertical grip here.

If you absolutely needed to you could attach a bipod here. However, movements at the stock end of the rifle get closer to a 1:1 ratio the closer a bipod is toward the center part of the rifle. The further the pivot point gets away from you/the center of the rifle, larger movements of the stock are needed in order to elevate the barrel. All that said, you can absolutely attach a bipod here if you wanted to. I mean I have seen bipods on revolvers so nothing is out of the question when it comes to firearms.

The main part of the chassis has your normal magazine slot as you would expect and a Picatinny rail at the rear for all the stocks that use that method of mounting, like their lightweight stock system for the Foundation.

The Foundation takes AR-15 grips. So far we have tried the Magpul MOE K Grip as well as Rifles Refined Black Walnut Vertical Grip with Finger Grooves. Both were really comfortable. 55Six Media out of New Zealand posted a picture of it with the Magpul MOE Grip on their build and it looks pretty awesome.

The last major feature of the main body of the chassis is the hole above the pistol grip. This hole is threaded to allow for a set screw to be put pushing down on the rear tang on the trigger group. This helps add another point of consistent contact in the receiver group since normally the receiver only mounts with the one screw at the front and that tang sits in a pocket.

The Foundation Stock keeps it minimal in size while including some adjustability.

The adjustable polymer cheek rest adjusts up and down using a clamping screw and two aluminum rods. You also have three positions you can adjust the cheek rest forward or aft utilizing the four holes in the top of it. The buttpad is adjustable for LOP only operating on the same clamping mechanism as the cheek rest.

It has a polymer buttpad with angled grooves giving it a sleek aesthetic. In order to match our black walnut grip from Rifles Refined we later swapped out the polymer on the rifle for even more wood goodness. We will have a whole article down the line talking about what Rifles Refined does at a later point in time but check out their Instagram for lots of pictures. Black walnut combined with the clear hard anodizing on the aluminum parts of the Foundation Chassis adds a touch of pinky out class.

Grey Birch Solutions were the ones who put me onto Rifles Refined and will be offering some models in the future with wooden goodness as an option which is pretty cool to see. The stock also features a QD sling swivel socket on each side, giving you a way to carry your new blaster in the woods. This would go well with their RDR Fusion receiver which has a cutout in the top for mounting red dots—making for a fun varmint gun.

Shooting with the Gray Birch Foundation Chassis System 

I have done a fair amount of accuracy testing with the older gen Grey Birch Solutions barrel and receiver housed in a Magpul Hunter X-22 stock. I always found that stock, much like their bipod, had some pitfalls that I just couldn’t get over. The buttpad was super low once I got a scope I wanted to use mounted. That said, my groups were pretty damn good having plenty of .5 MOA groups at 50m with RWS Rifle Match. The issue was when I was going for 10 shot groups I found they opened up a bit just because of the awkwardness of the Magpul stock.

The Foundation Chassis has a much better height for the buttpad and doesn’t require an aftermarket purchase of a higher cheek rest. The adjustments are easy using a bit from the AR-15 Fix It Sticks kit I have in my shooting bag and have held on with no need to retighten since. This has led to far fewer fliers due to me not having to focus on how I am making the stock work, along with the fundamentals.

The pistol grip mates up with the trigger area very comfortably with no annoying sharp edges, which is great as I prefer pistol grips on firearms over a more traditional stock.

The forend held the MDT CKYE-Pod well, although, as we mentioned above, you need to fully undo the clamp instead of sliding it off the front. I am looking forward to picking up their longer forend which will give a bit more options in bipod positioning since we plan to use this rifle in rimfire competitions both prone and PRS style. Small bullets are great practice for wind reading—something I badly need to improve. That said, when I eventually build up my RDR receiver set the short forend will be perfect.

Currently, you can order the Foundation Chassis and other Grey Birch Solutions products directly from the company, but rumor has it that real soon you won’t have to deal with any cross-border nonsense as Brownells plans to carry their products.