Ever see those posts that are basically "Hey, I just bought this thing so now I want to know if it's any good or not."?
I personally find those sorts of posts to be extremely disheartening. It seems to say that the person asking feels so bad about their own decision making skills that they need post hoc third party reassurance that they're not as dumb as they themselves think they are. How sad. So what am I wasting time yammering about?
A bunch of weeks ago I saw on Farcebook a cute and blatant Chinese made copy of a Law Tactical folding stock adapter for AR-15's. I know the Law Tactical unit to be almost ridiculously good from experience and the copy was only 50 bucks so I wanted to see how bad bad could get. Then I thought, "How many guys have bought folding stock adapters blindly hoping for a good one only to be disappointed?" Then I thought, "Probably most of them." Which prompted me to ponder, "I wonder if there are any sources of useful information about FSA's." So I went looking because there's no reason rely on my fairly extensive but scattered experience with them. Let's see what other people who are being paid to say good things about them, have to say about them. I'll bet it's good things. What do you know, good things. We need to know what sucks, not what's great.
So, given that there aren't any real good wring-outs of FSA's and the few comparos of any sort that exist seem really to focus on gas guns and ignore the proliferation of bolt guns and even lever guns that are now using AR-15 style buffer tubes to mount their stocks on, I shall take the slings and arrows upon mine own self and answer the question myself.
So with that in mind, I'm going to evaluate all of them. I'm purchasing every one I can find from my own wallet (so the results I publish will be unbiased) and will be borrowing what I can from buddies and anyone else I can get to loan a unit to me knowing the very real possibility that I'll break it. I'll be comparing them against the geniune Law Tactical unit which to me is the best of the units meant for use on gas guns. Why compare to a gas gun unit when we're more interested in bolt guns? Simple, gas gun units have to have a big hole in the middle for the buffer of an AR to operate in. When applied to a bolt gun you don't need that hole which means that there's more area for rigid lockup systems to be implemented or to do other things with. A FSA specific to a bolt gun has the distinct (in my eyes) advantage of being purpose designed and not being saddled with archaic non-functional features. So I'm going to compare the best of the non-purpose-designed options to the rest which includes purpose built bolt gun designs and purpose built gas gun designs.
First thing first, the Law Tactical clone from Farcebook (pics below).
Unit cost $53 plus shipping and arrived in about 5 weeks shipped from New York with Chinese writing on the label and on the Paypal invoice. They are fraudulently listing "Clothing" as the category of stuff they sell so we also know that honesty isn't in their lexicon. It was an obvious reship from China to New York and from New York to California. Kinda an odd route to ship through but, ok.
I installed this on my Deadpool rifle which is a Savage 10 action with an aftermarket 6XC pipe in an MDT LSS chassis. Fix the chassis on one side and the XLR Industries Tactical butt stock to the other. It did not come with either instructions or the tool to tighten down the chassis side thread insert like Law Tactical provides so I had to use Youtube, a hammer and a screwdriver.
Once installed and set in the closed postion, I opened it and then tried to close it gently and it did not want to close. I pushed the button and it closed. I opened it again and tried to snap it closed and it wouldn't close, tried again and again and then broke the tip off of the locking hasp. Pot metal garbage. I left it on to go teach a student how to properly get behind a rifle and a thought hit me. I can use this to teach him about "the pocket". Turns out a broken FSA makes a good way to teach about recoil forces being kept inline to the shooter's spine.
Pictured is the FSA as advertised, the part that broke and the bolt gun being used for testing. I also will be testing anything that can work on a gas gun on my M4 profile AR-15. This unit did not survive on a bolt gun long enough to test on a gas gun.
I've ordered the XLR Industries folding stock adapter and the UTG unit already and in 10 days (hey, dude's gotta get paid first) I'll order the MDT unit and the Sylvan unit (no Christmas this year since the kids moved away so present money is folding stock adapter money).
Units that I'll be testing:
Law Tactical - Baseline. As good as a gas gun unit gets. 19/20
XLR: Ordered 10/31, Arrived 11/5. Excellent 18.5/20.
Doublestar: back ordered.
Leapers/UTG: Ordered 10/31, Arrived 11/9. Punches way above its price. 11.5/20
MDT: Ordered 11/10. Arrived 10/13. Excellent 16.75/20
SB Tactical: back ordered.
Sylvan Arms: Order Pending for ~11/26.
Facebook/Amazon/Ebay: Received 10/24/2020 - Garbage. Broke immediately after installation.
Hera Arms: Ordered 11/15.
If you know of others that are substantially different to the above, please let me know.
You can find the reviews at https://ballisticxlr.com/2020/11/08/folding-stock-adapter-comparison/
FWIW my website does not make ad revenue so blockers don't hurt me (they're encouraged) and I don't make any money from your page views. It's just most convenient to write the evals once and link them to the assorted forums I'm active in.
Doublestar, SB Tactical, Sylvan Arms
MDT, UTG, XLR
Law clone, Hera Arms
The busted piece
The Rifles
Deadpool Savage 10 in MDT LSS
Snake gun Mossberg MVP .223 MDT LSS
I personally find those sorts of posts to be extremely disheartening. It seems to say that the person asking feels so bad about their own decision making skills that they need post hoc third party reassurance that they're not as dumb as they themselves think they are. How sad. So what am I wasting time yammering about?
A bunch of weeks ago I saw on Farcebook a cute and blatant Chinese made copy of a Law Tactical folding stock adapter for AR-15's. I know the Law Tactical unit to be almost ridiculously good from experience and the copy was only 50 bucks so I wanted to see how bad bad could get. Then I thought, "How many guys have bought folding stock adapters blindly hoping for a good one only to be disappointed?" Then I thought, "Probably most of them." Which prompted me to ponder, "I wonder if there are any sources of useful information about FSA's." So I went looking because there's no reason rely on my fairly extensive but scattered experience with them. Let's see what other people who are being paid to say good things about them, have to say about them. I'll bet it's good things. What do you know, good things. We need to know what sucks, not what's great.
So, given that there aren't any real good wring-outs of FSA's and the few comparos of any sort that exist seem really to focus on gas guns and ignore the proliferation of bolt guns and even lever guns that are now using AR-15 style buffer tubes to mount their stocks on, I shall take the slings and arrows upon mine own self and answer the question myself.
So with that in mind, I'm going to evaluate all of them. I'm purchasing every one I can find from my own wallet (so the results I publish will be unbiased) and will be borrowing what I can from buddies and anyone else I can get to loan a unit to me knowing the very real possibility that I'll break it. I'll be comparing them against the geniune Law Tactical unit which to me is the best of the units meant for use on gas guns. Why compare to a gas gun unit when we're more interested in bolt guns? Simple, gas gun units have to have a big hole in the middle for the buffer of an AR to operate in. When applied to a bolt gun you don't need that hole which means that there's more area for rigid lockup systems to be implemented or to do other things with. A FSA specific to a bolt gun has the distinct (in my eyes) advantage of being purpose designed and not being saddled with archaic non-functional features. So I'm going to compare the best of the non-purpose-designed options to the rest which includes purpose built bolt gun designs and purpose built gas gun designs.
First thing first, the Law Tactical clone from Farcebook (pics below).
Unit cost $53 plus shipping and arrived in about 5 weeks shipped from New York with Chinese writing on the label and on the Paypal invoice. They are fraudulently listing "Clothing" as the category of stuff they sell so we also know that honesty isn't in their lexicon. It was an obvious reship from China to New York and from New York to California. Kinda an odd route to ship through but, ok.
I installed this on my Deadpool rifle which is a Savage 10 action with an aftermarket 6XC pipe in an MDT LSS chassis. Fix the chassis on one side and the XLR Industries Tactical butt stock to the other. It did not come with either instructions or the tool to tighten down the chassis side thread insert like Law Tactical provides so I had to use Youtube, a hammer and a screwdriver.
Once installed and set in the closed postion, I opened it and then tried to close it gently and it did not want to close. I pushed the button and it closed. I opened it again and tried to snap it closed and it wouldn't close, tried again and again and then broke the tip off of the locking hasp. Pot metal garbage. I left it on to go teach a student how to properly get behind a rifle and a thought hit me. I can use this to teach him about "the pocket". Turns out a broken FSA makes a good way to teach about recoil forces being kept inline to the shooter's spine.
Pictured is the FSA as advertised, the part that broke and the bolt gun being used for testing. I also will be testing anything that can work on a gas gun on my M4 profile AR-15. This unit did not survive on a bolt gun long enough to test on a gas gun.
I've ordered the XLR Industries folding stock adapter and the UTG unit already and in 10 days (hey, dude's gotta get paid first) I'll order the MDT unit and the Sylvan unit (no Christmas this year since the kids moved away so present money is folding stock adapter money).
Units that I'll be testing:
Law Tactical - Baseline. As good as a gas gun unit gets. 19/20
XLR: Ordered 10/31, Arrived 11/5. Excellent 18.5/20.
Doublestar: back ordered.
Leapers/UTG: Ordered 10/31, Arrived 11/9. Punches way above its price. 11.5/20
MDT: Ordered 11/10. Arrived 10/13. Excellent 16.75/20
SB Tactical: back ordered.
Sylvan Arms: Order Pending for ~11/26.
Facebook/Amazon/Ebay: Received 10/24/2020 - Garbage. Broke immediately after installation.
Hera Arms: Ordered 11/15.
If you know of others that are substantially different to the above, please let me know.
You can find the reviews at https://ballisticxlr.com/2020/11/08/folding-stock-adapter-comparison/
FWIW my website does not make ad revenue so blockers don't hurt me (they're encouraged) and I don't make any money from your page views. It's just most convenient to write the evals once and link them to the assorted forums I'm active in.
Doublestar, SB Tactical, Sylvan Arms
MDT, UTG, XLR
Law clone, Hera Arms
The busted piece
The Rifles
Deadpool Savage 10 in MDT LSS
Snake gun Mossberg MVP .223 MDT LSS
