Suppressing an M1A Scout?

[teddy12b]

So, I've got an M1A scout and I'd love to put a can on it. So far, I've already swapped out the Smith thread adapter, and also the smith socom gas plug. Once I was done, I put a direct thread 308 can on and was blasted with gas when I fired it. I thought maybe I shouldn't have swapped the gas plug and went back to the original factory one. I got the same results and was blasted with gas. I only fired 2 or 3 round with the can on with each gas plug, and I'm wondering if I was to get a schuster adjustable gas plug if that would fix everything. Any thoughts on this project? Currently my M1A scout just has a AR-10 A2 Style flash hider on it because it's a cheap muzzle protector, but I'd really like to get that can on it.

 

[Dog1]

Well I tried to go the same route with my M1A Socom. I went down the rabbit hole on that one. Here's the thing- the M1A, especially the shorter barrel variants, are extremely difficult to suppress.

On my Socom I went with the Delta P designs front sight block so that I can mount a suppressor mount. Then I went with the Schuster adjustable gas plug.

Even adjusting the gas plug to try to mitigate the gas and to slow down the bolt speed, I was still rewarded with a face full of gas. In fact it was so bad that it blew the red dot diffuser off of my Burris fastfire 3 that I had on a Sage Industries stripper clip optic mount. Thankfully I found the diffuser and was able to put it back on with some super glue. But the amount of gas that comes out even when adjusting the Schuster to blow off gas, there was still an incredible amount of gas there.

One way to mitigate the gas coming back out of the ejection port is to use the the blast shield that comes with the M1A blank firing adapter kit. It goes in place of the stripper clip mount and blocks the upward expansion of gas out of the bolt and ejection port.



One of the big issues with suppressing the M1A is trying to slow down the bolt speed. The bolt moves incredibly fast when it is suppressed. One of the issues of that incredible speed is you can get the roller on the bolt to jump the rail or even end up destroying the roller.

If I was going to try to suppress my Socom again I would probably look to buy one of the flow through cans that can help mitigate the gas more in addition to a adjustable gas plug.

However I don't think that it's worth trying. I gave up and put a Smith Industries Vortex flash hider on my Socom.

It did look cool though suppressed...