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Firearms Legal Protection

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  1. #1
    MGO Member Forum User
    Join Date
    Dec 2016
    Posts
    254

    Thumbs up Witt Machine Clamp-On Muzzle Brakes

    For a long time, the thought of a clamp-on muzzle brake made me cringe. When I got my Winchester M70 in 300 Win Mag I wanted to get a muzzle brake for it but the barrel was not threaded. I decided to just shoot it as is. Fast forward to this year and my desire to put a muzzle brake on it finally lead to me giving in. I figured I'd get the barrel threaded and just buy a brake for it. I did some reading on clamp on brakes and wasn't really expecting to get one, but I did read some really good things about Witt Machine so I decided to take a plunge.

    Their clamp-on muzzle brakes are made to order and you have to supply barrel specs to them. They take two measurements: diameter at the muzzle and diameter 1 1/2 inches from the muzzle measured in thousandths of an inch. You also give them the caliber and your preferred finish (stainless, graphite, or FDE). They then machine the brake for you and off it goes. From when I placed my order to shipping I believe it was two days so they make the brake then get them out pretty quickly.

    The gun I have this break on is a stainless steel Winchester M70 Ultimate Shadow. It has a 26" barrel and a Vortex Viper HST 6-24x50.

    BUILD QUALITY
    The build quality on the brake is excellent. It is machined very well and feels very sturdy. The stainless finish on mine is very, very nice. It honestly looks and feels nicer than a lot of muzzle brakes I've used. The brake is held on by 4 allen screws. The brake has 5 ports on each side and a bunch of smaller holes on the top to vent gas. Since the specs are tight I got the brake slid on about halfway then I had to use a rubber mallet to smack it down the rest of the way. It wasn't any trouble getting it on and once it was all the way on it felt very secure before I tightened the allen screws. For the threads I used red loctite. I'm sure you can use blue, but since it's a 300 WM I decided to use red for a little extra peace of mine.

    RECOIL
    I don't have too much to say about recoil except this: the brake made my 300 Win Mag go from a shoulder bruiser to a recoil impulse about on par with an unbraked 243 Winchester.

    ACCURACY
    Usually with muzzle brakes you hear different things like they affect accuracy a little bit or some people will say they have no effect at all. Oddly, it seemed like this brake actually improved the accuracy on my rifle. I shoot almost exclusively Hornady American Whitetail through my M70. Usually it shoots around 1 MOA with the occasional sub-MOA group. Pretty damn good already for a hunting rifle. I went to sight it in with the brake on and shot 3 separate 3 shot groups. The groups were .5 MOA, .8 MOA, and .6 MOA respectively. The brake didn't really change POI at all and the groups seemed to be better than what I normally shoot. Obviously this is a small sample size and perhaps I was just really on today, but still that's pretty damn good and at the least you can say the brake had no negative affect on accuracy. I should mention, these groups were at a little over 100 yards (probably around 120).

    Overall I would tell anyone not to hesitate to buy one of these brakes. The build quality is great, the recoil impulse makes the gun feel like a feather is bumping you, and the accuracy is at least not affected in any way by the brake.

    10/10 would recommend.

    Website: http://wittmachine.net/index.php?mai...roducts_id=180

  2. #2
    MGO Member
    Join Date
    Jan 2010
    Location
    Oakland County
    Posts
    416
    I have one on a Mosin, works great and greatly reduces the felt recoil.

  3. #3
    I can't post links yet! Forum User
    Join Date
    Sep 2020
    Location
    Circle Pines
    Posts
    4
    I'd stay away from them. After buying a clamp-on muzzle brake adapter that proved to be scrap, and had a very bad experience with their customer service, I decided to take a loss rather than continue to deal with them.

  4. #4
    I can't post links yet! Forum User
    Join Date
    Sep 2020
    Location
    Circle Pines
    Posts
    4
    I am as selective as anyone else regarding the companies I decide to do business with, and although I have read the bad reviews, after reading a bit about the Witt Machine history, I developed enough respect and confidence to make my decision and hoped that it won't happen to me.
    Anyways, I received the parts I ordered in about 2 weeks. The muzzle brake looked fine but the muzzle clamp adapter came in with a surprising concentricity error between the threads and the hole of about 11.5 mils. Considering the questionable barrel alignment added by the clamp section and the resulting muzzle break tilt, the total error is very likely to lead to a bullet hit before leaving the assembly.

    After attempting to install the muzzle clamp adapter on the rifle so I can measure the assy compounding concentricity error, to my surprise it did not fit onto the rifle barrel either. Even after reversing the clamping screws as instructed to open the clamp as much as possible and forced it in with a plastic mallet, the barrel stopped about half inch from bottoming out into the clamp adapter. The screw heads also rub into their seats stripping away the ceramic coating.
    Before returning the product and add to the bad reviews I found on the exact same issue, I decided to further analyze these 2 issues and give Witt Machine a fair chance to fix them. I found that the barrel fit issue was a result of a fundamentally wrong way to measure the rifle barrel end section as instructed, which is not only insufficient to describe the true muzzle shape/geometry, but actually detrimental. Although not obvious to the naked eye, the end of the barrel on my Remington 700, and I suppose other rifles owned by so many of the people that report with similar complaints on being unable to fit these clamp-on adapters, is not exactly conical to only require 2 measurements (at muzzle end and 1.625" deep), but it is actually rounded off towards the end, creating a curved outline. That would require at least 3-4 measurements along the 1.625” barrel end section in order to properly describe the true muzzle shape.
    So I decided to put in a few hours and made a detailed 3D CAD drawing to help us all solve this issue which I suspect is fairly common in barrel manufacturing, and hopefully improve their website measurement instructions to avoid encountering future issues for the benefit of their customers, but their company as well.
    I emailed the drawing with my comments for review and asked for feedback and their input on solving this issue, but no reply. I pinged them again asking how they want to solve this issue after another week, but again -no answer.
    After 2 additional weeks -still no reply, so I decided to call the company and talked with a CR lady who didn't seem to be neither sympathetic towards the issue, nor interested in allowing me to have a constructive discussion with a technical person to whom I could present my analysis concluding that the WittMachine measurement method and instructions on their website lacks the necessary detail and leads to inaccurate characterization of certain kinds of barrel muzzle geometries. BTW, she said that they read and respond to all their emails. Right…
    In spite of my insistent but polite efforts to make her understand that the improvements I am suggesting to their measurement method would correct the issues complained by so many customers in the bad reviews I have seen (which BTW I was cut off by her saying that it isn't true, but it's ok, I believe the countless online reviews and comments), minimize product returns and ultimately -not only significantly benefit us as customers, but the WittMachine company as well, the CR expressed no interest whatsoever. More than that, as she seemed to run out of patience, she told me to ship the part back (at my expense) for a refund, after which the call was cut short with a quick thank you then she hung up before I could even respond with a customary greeting.
    Obviously, I can't tell if this level of rare disinterest for constructive dialog with a customer who is willing and even inviting to do just that is a general company lack of regard, or if it comes from this employee's single ended decision or lack of interest in personal involvement -fact about which the company might not even be aware of, the bottom line is that I am very disappointed with the experience and I will never order from this company again, nor I advise anyone to do that.
    Given the experience, I am not even going to send the part in for refund because at this point I am not sure how this could end. I own a lathe and decided to take a stab at fixing this myself rather than pay return shipping and continue to deal with this company any further.

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