On Target

Today, I got to give an Enidine Hydraulic Buffer a workout in my AR-15 Carbine. I have a well proven Bushmaster AR Carbine with a 16 inch barrel and a fixed stock that I thought would be a good platform for some product tests. I have had this gun since the mid 1990s and it has been a reliable firearm in practice, competition and even in a Thunder Ranch Urban Rifle Course firing over 1200 rounds in 5 days. I had always used it with a stock buffer and spring and it worked well for thousands of rounds with very few malfunctions. There were occasions over the years where a few malfunctions would occur, but they were normally caused by underpowered or less than optimal ammo. When testing the Enidine buffer today, I fired over 200 rounds of ammo which included mostly Federal 50 grain hollow point factory loads and some quality reloads with Hornady 52 grain A-Max bullets. The Federal hollow points are not the most reliable feeding ammo in a semi-auto due to a wide hollow point design. They will expand very well, but may not feed the best. This factor ended up pointing out an important advantage to the Enidine Buffer – Reliability. I fired 10 rounds at a time with the standard buffer and then fired 10 rounds with the Enidine buffer alternating back and forth to see what differences I could note. In 30 rounds of Federal HP with the standard buffer, I had 3 failures to feed which were bad enough to push the bullet all the way down into the case. That is a 10% malfunction rate. The bullets were hitting below the feed ramps and stopping without sliding up into the chamber. With the Enidine Buffer, I fired about 180 rounds of the Federal HP ammo before I had the first and only malfunction. That is a .5% failure rate with the hard to feed HP ammo. It was a failure to feed but it didn’t set the bullet back as happened with the standard buffer. It was clearly the buffer making the difference because after firing about 200 rounds with the Enidine Buffer, I changed back to the standard buffer and it again had a malfunction after just a few rounds. I then changed back to the Enidine and it continued to run fine with no more malfunctions. I also fired 30 rounds of the reloads with the Hornady A-Max bullets with the Enidine Buffer. They clearly were a better design for good feeding and had no problems of any kind. I also noticed that the bolt catch worked more reliably with the Enidine Buffer than with the standard buffer. It even worked with some magazines which never used to engage it. That was another nice surprise. Finally, the thing I wanted to really test was the Enidine Buffer’s effect on recoil. In switching back and forth between buffers, the Enidine did feel noticeably smoother and did kick less. It helped more with reducing recoil than with muzzle rise. While a 5.56mm AR does not kick that much to start with, if you want smooth it out to the max, you will want one of these. It made a noticeable difference both with and without a muzzle brake. If I were to guess the amount of difference, I would say at least 20% and possibly 30% less recoil. A good muzzle brake made more difference than the buffer alone, but the Enidine Buffer helped noticeably either way. The buffer with a muzzle brake is definitely the way to go for the softest and flattest shooting gun possible. Less recoil and more reliability, that is a great combination from the Enidine Buffer, and I will be keeping them in my guns from now on.