The Firing Line Forums - View Single Post - MAS-49 Questions

SwampYankee · December 17, 2010, 10:00 PM

I owned 2 Century conversions. Both were stamped .308. If it ain't stamped .308, it is not .308. Any sensible gunsmith would stamp it if the conversion was done. I would ignore the tag, that is meaningless.

Here is the thing about the Century conversions, every gun is a parts gun. They took them all apart, threw the pieces in piles, reamed the chambers, cut down the handguards and reassembled them at random. What this means is that the quality of the conversion is dependent upon 1. The quality of the bore and 2. the quality of the reaming. You can have an awesome looking receiver with a pitted crap bore- because it is a parts gun.

The one of the two I kept has a perfect bore but the chamber was reamed like garbage. I had to smooth is out with a dowel, sandpaper and a drill to get it to extract properly. Now every piece of brass it pops out has 3-4 ridges from the chamber gouges but it extracts fine and cycles perfectly (all that adjustable gas gauge modification is crap- if the chamber is properly right done the gun works.) You will probably have to replace the recoil spring if it is a conversion, Century chopped off some coils for no good reason. A Browning A5 spring works well. I hate Century, the people running that place are just plain dumb.

Anyway, I kept the better of the two MAS 49/56's and it will shoot 2 MOA all day long with my poor eyesight. Sometimes I can push it to 1 MOA if I play with the handloads. It is a shame Century screwed them all up, it is a fantastic battle rifle with great sights and a lot of potential.

December 17, 2010, 10:00 PM	#17
SwampYankee Registration in progress Join Date: November 1, 2008 Location: I can be found on a number of other forums. Posts: 1,333	I owned 2 Century conversions. Both were stamped .308. If it ain't stamped .308, it is not .308. Any sensible gunsmith would stamp it if the conversion was done. I would ignore the tag, that is meaningless. Here is the thing about the Century conversions, every gun is a parts gun. They took them all apart, threw the pieces in piles, reamed the chambers, cut down the handguards and reassembled them at random. What this means is that the quality of the conversion is dependent upon 1. The quality of the bore and 2. the quality of the reaming. You can have an awesome looking receiver with a pitted crap bore- because it is a parts gun. The one of the two I kept has a perfect bore but the chamber was reamed like garbage. I had to smooth is out with a dowel, sandpaper and a drill to get it to extract properly. Now every piece of brass it pops out has 3-4 ridges from the chamber gouges but it extracts fine and cycles perfectly (all that adjustable gas gauge modification is crap- if the chamber is properly right done the gun works.) You will probably have to replace the recoil spring if it is a conversion, Century chopped off some coils for no good reason. A Browning A5 spring works well. I hate Century, the people running that place are just plain dumb. Anyway, I kept the better of the two MAS 49/56's and it will shoot 2 MOA all day long with my poor eyesight. Sometimes I can push it to 1 MOA if I play with the handloads. It is a shame Century screwed them all up, it is a fantastic battle rifle with great sights and a lot of potential.