We received the new Badger Ordinance M-5 bottom metal recently for a project rifle. Formerly stocked in an AICS chassis system, this particular rifle is being restocked into the McMillan A5 stock reviewed on this site.
For those of you that don't know what the M-5 metal is, it allows you to use the AI magazines on any other stock. Your choices aren't limited anymore to just using an AICS stock. We saw the M-5 part at the SHOT show two years ago. It wasn't quite in production yet, but is available now.
The part arrived with the standard black finish and included two pillars, an AICS magazine, and T30 torx screws. Nice accessories! The first thing we noticed however, is how extraordinarily sharp all the edges were. We mean SHARP, as in crazy sharp for any part on a firearm. This badly needed to be dehorned. What's funny about this is we noticed this at the SHOT show, but the response was the part was tumbled so it shouldn't be sharp. Well, it is very sharp, you could cut paper with it.
Unfortunately the part comes finished, but you have to immediately ruin that finish. So, the dilemma is: do we bleed or do we do what is right? We immediately broke the edges. At least we won't get blood everywhere now, but it was sad to wreck the finish and have to cover it with Aluma-black. This should have been done at the manufacturer.
The next thing we did was bed it in. The McMillan stock was already inlet for this bottom metal, so this was the simple part. Another problem: The pillars are the right length, but the magazine box bottoms out on the receiver! The mag box is about .020" too long using the Badger-supplied pillars. This was kind of a shocker, nobody wants their action bent in the middle by the mag box. So, we needed to relieve it in two places - see the image below. The large red circles show the top points in the mag box that need to be relieved.
After bedding it, we went to assemble the entire rifle, which of course has the rifleman standard Jewel trigger. The bottom metal had an issue with the Jewel trigger - contacting it severely. To the mill again. See the image below. If you use this product with a Jewel trigger, you better have access to a mill. This image shows the M5 next to a Remington receiver with a Jewel installed. You can see the contact marks in the M5 where we inadvertently tightened it down. Luckily no damage resulted, but the Jewel is such a standard in the industry we're surprised it wasn't inletted forward enough to clear it. Good thing both parts are tough.
In use, the metal is a bit tight around the mags but you can get used to it. The mags fit with so little slop, you have to be super precise with your reloads. A bit better funnel / taper would be a huge improvement. For a retail of $335, this product should be finished and fitted better.
