I have a FAL
by the way, this really improved the sight picture for me:
I was interesting in acquiring one because of its historical significance. I have a large box of technical reports I purchased at an estate sale and one of them has results of the Army tests from the early 1950's. The Army was testing various potential 7.62 Nato rifles and the FAL was one of these. These service rifles typically shot 4 to 6 MOA and that was just fine. No one expected target grade accuracy. Mind you we were just out of a war where towards the later end of the war, the US was experiencing 65,000 casualties a month. About 20,000 of those were KIA, the other 45,000 were in various states of disassembly, and the US was running out Infantry grade cannon fodder. I talked with a man, who decades after WW2 ,was still mad about being drafted at the age of 37/38, and he had three kids and a wife to support!. Today the civilian shooting community, is all "
accuracy uber allis" but those who had served in the war knew of the low marksmanship standards around the second year of the war, and knew of, or actually saw troops going into battle with weapons they did not know how to load or shoot! Given that replacements were often lost, with all their equipment, in less than a month, no one could expect high standards of marksmanship from them. I believe given such conditions, target grade accuracy was traded off for function reliability, simplicity of operation, and ease of manufacture. Those who go to the range, shoot off a 600 lb concrete bench, will never experience the disappointment of having a weapon fail in combat conditions, in the face of the enemy, and so, priorities will be different. Those who shoot at ranges are not under mortar fire, artillery fire, or within the range of a Nazi with a MG42, which would eventually alter ideas of sticking your head out and looking for someone to shoot. If you can see them, they can see you.
I talked to one bud who was a NRA Highpower competitor and he had spent a lot of money trying to make a FAL a target weapon and he gave up the project. My M1a was wonderfully accurate and I earned my Distinguished Rifleman's badge and a Regional Gold with the thing. My M1a was not a combat weapon, heavy weight Gene Barnett barrel, heavy stock, glassbedded action, and NM sights. But it looked Mil Spec from a distance
I wish you luck on turning a FAL into a target rifle. Now these groups were shot prone with a sling in 100 yard competition, but if you can do the same, or better, off a bench with your FAL, you will have gone a long way towards making your case that a FAL can be turned into a target rifle
Go shoot some twenty shot groups like this, and everyone will be impressed!
There is an excellent article at the end of the Oct 2014 Shooting Sports USA on group size and accuracy:
http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/nra/ssusa_201410/ This foundational article was written by small bore prone competitors who wanted to shoot perfect scores. In small bore prone a Match is a 40 shot event of two twenty shot targets. The typical 1600 round Smallbore bore prone tournament is 160 rounds fired for record, divided up into four 40 round Matches. Therefore the referenced article assumes that a 40 round group is the baseline.
It is always amazing to find that so many internet posters regularly shoot inside these guys, but I never meet those amazing forum individuals at matches:
As anyone can see in table six, at least at 100 yards, a five shot group is 59% of the size of a 40 shot group, a 10 shot 74%, and a twenty shot 88%. A three shot group is below contempt, but three shot groups are the current standard for the shooting community because the leaders of the shooting community, that is in print Gunwriters, have convinced the shooting community that three shot groups are an exact measure of accuracy and consistency. However, the in print crowd are paid a flat fee, about $400.00, are not interesting in spending a lot of money on ammunition, also they are not really interested in proving the inherent accuracy of the rifle they are testing, because if the weapon is really not that accurate, the manufacturer might consider the results unfair and a slur to their product. If an advertiser pulls their ads, heads will roll at publications whose sole source of profit is advertisements!
I also believe three shot groups has resonated with the shooting community due to the human desire for symmetry. Humans are far from rational, have lots of biases, one of which is a dislike of asymmetry and a love of symmetry. Suggest three shot groups and everyone thinks of a nice pyramidal shape with the point of aim in the middle. Very few three shot groups are clover leaves, in fact a clover leaf is pretty rare. Not that anyone notices. The advertising community caters to our biases with nonsense that appeals to us. And they do it all the time, with every product, and it works! The secret to magic has been stated as timing and misdirection, but a better way to state it is that the secret to magic is timing and human biases.
The FAL is hard on brass, if you fire unlubricated cases you can expect case head separations around the fifth reloading.
The Lee Enfield is notorious for being hard on brass:
As can be seen in the pictures, at least with my M1a and the Lee Enfield, lubricating cases will extend case life. This is only of importance if wasting money is an issue. I consider a penny saved, a penny earned.