Hello all, here is today's article posted on TheArmoryLife.com. It is titled “The Armory Life Interviews: M14 Maestro, Ron Smith” and can be found at https://www.thearmorylife.com/ron-smith-interview/.
Unfortunately, guys like this are few and far between nowadays. I’m talking about skilled craftsman, regardless of the field, with knowledge decades in the making. Young people didn’t want to get their hands dirty i guess.
Ron has been my M14 armorer since the 1990s... I met he and Andy Horton at SHOT SHOW 2011.
This is Ron Smith attaching his Wind Talker to the DC Vortex on the Crazy Horse M21A5 that he built for me.
Back when SEI was fulfilling multiple military contracts as GWOT was ramping up, Ron would call me a couple times a month to discuss new developments and feedback received from troops on the two-way range. Back then both Ron and I were fielding all sorts of questions from troops finding themselves with Sage EBR chassis stocks that they knew nothing about... we got them back in the fight quickly.
Love my M1A. Hated the M16 in the Marines during the late 70's, with the recoil spring going into resonance in your ear after every shot, and they had already fixed a lot of the life taking flaws at that point.