Good morning everyone, hope you’re all having a wonderful day today. Today we’re gonna be talking about PWS MK111 MOD-1-.
Full disclosure on the PWS MK111 MOD-1 is that I have absolutely no relationship with PWS also I didn’t actually pay for this, the upper receiver which is what we’re gonna be talking about here.
This is their 11.85-inch upper receiver was actually sent to me by a viewer on my personal channel ‘Focus Trip, they sent it in for me to do a review on that channel and I definitely think this is going to be of interest for a lot of you.
Getting into specifics on the PWS MK111 MOD-1.
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PWS MK111 MOD 2-M Upper, 11.85" Barrel, .223 Wylde, 3-Setting Adj. Gas System, Triad556
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PWS MK111 MOD 2-M Pistol .223 Wylde
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The nomenclature for PWS is fairly simple, so this is the MK 1 which is their long stroke piston system. The MK111, 11 is for the 11.85-inch barrel length. They also have MK114, MK116, so on and so forth, with a 14.5, 16-inch barrel. They have shorter, they have different calibers as well and they also have MK 2 series, which is their AR-10 platform I believe, and they have the MOD-1 which is this version. This is kind of the budget-ish or a low-end version and they have a MOD-2 that comes with a more expensive handguard and a more expensive upper receiver and they charge about, I believe, three to four hundred dollars more for it, so this is the, now, I wouldn’t consider this an entry level version but this is the simpler, less expensive version. The MOD-2 is slightly higher tiered, more expensive version.
Starting out with the muzzle device, this is PWS Triad muzzle device. It is a symmetrical A2 flash hider meaning it doesn’t really need to be timed. You have three ports that act like a slight compensation and does a decent job of flash mitigation. Nothing special, but it is just a fairly simple muzzle device.
The barrel itself, I believe is 4150 chrome-molly vanadium steel, it is a black nitride finish which looks very good. This one specifically is a 1:8 twist with a 2.23 wylde chambering. 2.23 wylde is a hybrid between 5.56 and 2.23 designed to take advantage of the accuracy characteristics of 2.23 but be able to withstand the pressure of 5.56. So, the barrel itself is kind of a middle-weight profile, we’ll take out the handguard so you can see the whole mechanism as it is but the barrel is, again, 11.85 inches long which personally is a very good barrel length, I don’t have any problems with that. 115 to 125 is kind of a sweet spot for a lot of people in terms of their shorter builds. I do sell some 105s and 103s for more specialized, short range scenario, CQB, home-defense, whatever you want to call it but in general 115, 125, those sort of barrel lengths are going to get you good ballistic, good terminal performance out to a set distance, whatever distance that you’re happening to use.
The handguard itself is a 10.5-inch M-LOK handguard 6061 T6 aluminum, hard coat-anodized, a very nice black, it looks very good. The machining on it is done quite well, it’s not what I would consider a light weight rail, it does kind of have these extended ridges on the three, six and nine o’clock positions for your M-LOK so in theory it should be a very strong rail as well but it’s not what I would consider to be truly light weight either. On the top here BCG tried to come out, on the top here you can see that it has a cutout for your gas adjustment system. It has a very simple three-setting gas block on which we will get into and take this apart so you guys can actually see it in just a minute, but the nice thing about this, of course, is that you can change your gas on the fly, which, if you’re taking suppressors on and off using different types of ammunition, which we did test this with a different types of ammo, you can set your gas block appropriately and it works, in my experience so far, extremely well.
Moving back from there we have the upper receiver. The upper receiver is just a standard mil-spec upper receiver. The MOD-2 will have, I don’t know if it’s a billet or just different machining marks on the forging but it kind of has that wavy pattern on it, I don’t know if it’s just specifically for lighter weight or just for looks. It does look very cool, but it’s also quite a bit more expensive than, this upper receiver, but that’s where all that machining cost, but the upper receiver does seem to be of high enough quality, nothing really special going on, you have your mil-spec board assist, dust cover, everything on it seems very, very standard. It’s not T-marked if you care.
One nice thing about these upper receiver is they come with the Radian Raptor charging handle which I like, it’s one of the best charging handles on the market, in my opinion it’s a little too expensive, but it is a very, very good charging handle, well regarded among many cool people who have used these throughout the years and it is a very nice thing to see standard on a more top-tier, higher-end upper receiver.
Getting into the BCG, this is where things get a little bit strange. You will see that we have a long stroke piston operating system. So, here, of course, we have our BCG charging handle and operating rod. While this is in the gun it cannot come apart, it is a completely contained system. When you take it out of the gun, however, you can actually disassemble this. We’ll start here with the first part of it and it has a couple flats on this little kind of ball-end that you can then take out, it has a detent here in the center of this and then a little divot or a little dimple in the end of this part of the op-rod so that when it’s locked in place it actually, it can spin freely but it can’t move left, right, up and down, of course, unless you put on those flats and physically take it off. When it’s in the system it contained within its own gas tube-slash piston housing so it cannot come loose while it’s in the system and so while it’s actually put together it essentially acts like one piece.
Taking a look here at the front you should be able to see how it has those cutouts. Those cutouts basically work as this is moving back through your system as gas impinges on it and pushes back, those little divots in there will allow gas to escape the further back that it goes, in theory expelling those gases and bleeding off excess pressure so that you have the slowest, smoothest recoil impulse you can get with a piston system or in this case a long stroke piston system.
The long piston system itself has been extremely well regarded throughout the years, being used very famously in the AK platform and a lot of other very well regarded guns as well. It is definitely a hard-use or duty-grade system, not all long stroke systems are created equally, but I believe PWS has done a very good job here. The BCG has a lot of cool things going on with it as well. It does have retuned geometry here in the rear end, which is actually a little bit thicker. That helps to reduce carrier tilt because, of course, this is a solid piece of metal that when it moves back it wants to slightly index up because, of course, the center of gravity is here, but the recoil is actually impinging off of the actual piston itself so it actually wants to tilt back a little bit which can damage your lower receiver so to counteract that they make this a little bit tighter to reduce that carrier tilt.
If you buy a PWS complete gun they come with an H2 buffer which also, in theory, will slow that down a little bit and hopefully reduce some of that carrier tilt just by slowing it down to where it doesn’t…it’s not quite as aggressive and it’s less likely to do that. Currently I was running, it was carbine spring and it was performing very, very well, though for most applications I would recommended and H1 or an H2. Now, the rest of the BCG is kind of standard except, of course, there are no gas ports on it whatsoever because there are no hot gases flowing through this BCG. The only thing that’s really gonna get dirty on this is the bolt itself because as this goes into chamber and then extracts the round all those excess unburned powders from the chamber will kind of bleed off and get onto the bolt and the front part of the carrier but, again, this is a solid rod here, there are no hot gases flowing through the carrier. Not only does that, not heap up the carrier quite as fast, but it also doesn’t deposit all that junk back into your operating system, almost all of it is contained in the gas tube itself and, of course, because there are no gases flowing through your BCG and by proxy the back half of your upper receiver this does make it an excellent candidate for suppressed shooting, if you do a lot of suppressed shooting with AR-15s with DAR-15s you know that:
With the piston system, whether that’s the Superlative Arms, Atom Arms, or in my experience PWS now as well, you get absolutely none of that because, again, most of those gases are trapped, you know, two to three feet away from your face rather than coming out the back half of the upper receiver.
In terms of suppressed shooting or long-term cleaning where you don’t need to clean this whatsoever because, again, there’s not a lot of buildup that gets on here, the only kind of grind that gets on here is whatever comes out of the chamber because, again, there are not hot gases flowing through this.
The bolt itself seems to be just a standard 5.56 bolt, it does not have gas rings so the carrier fit is a little bit looser than you would see on like a traditional 5.56 DI bolt because, of course, you have those gas rings creating a seal between your bolt and your carrier to trap those gases efficiently so that it can actually power the system but in here it’s not relying on that. There are no gas rings in the bolt, but it is spring-loaded, which is nice which helps to reduce some of that bolt bounce and because this is a heavier operating system you have a lot more metal slamming back and forth in your gun. By proxy of its design this is a little bit heavier so one it is going to add a few ounces in terms of your overall weight but it’s also going to add to your reciprocating mass so it’s going to have a slightly heftier recoil impulse so we’ll get into how it shot a little bit later on.
Before we take the handguard completely off, the handguard is secured via six set screws, six steel bolts. That bolt directly into the barrel nut itself and they were all appropriately red-locked hided from the factory which for me for a duty-use or a hard-use gun is something that I definitely like to see done from the factory. Now, it does have a very, very tight fit up against the barrel nut itself, but here is the interior of the handguard, it’s not what I would consider a lightweight handguard but on an 11.5 I’m really not trying to cut ounces, it’s not like it’s a particularly long gun so in terms of strength to weight I would also err on the side of strength with a shorter gun where weight is not necessarily my primary concern.
Something I almost forgot to mention is that the handguard itself does also have slight additional extrusions on the back end which do act like anti-rotation tabs. It is a very redundant feature on this upper receiver, though because the barrel nut itself acts like an anti-rotation tabs, it has these squared off sides where the handguard very tightly fits up and over it. So, the handguard cannot rotate, it cannot rotate whatsoever and the barrel nut cannot rotate whatsoever either.
As you’ll see here’s our piston housing slash gas tube. Gases do flow within here, but that’s not the mechanism of action with this most of that has to do with the gas block up front. This actually indexes into your barrel nut which is attached to your gas block. Your gas block is actually pretty much permanently attached via this huge notch up front that is cut into the gas block journal so the gas block itself cannot rotate, it has a large steel tab cut in the steel gas block journal on your barrel which is then fed into your steel barrel nut. There is zero chance of this ever rotating on you whatsoever, so anti-rotation tabs on an aluminum handguard, when it’s attached to all this steel, are a little redundant, but it is better than not having them whatsoever and it is just a nice thing to see and I think PWS really has created a system here that is incredibly tough while not being too absurdly heavy and it is incredibly robust and something that just via due design is very confidence inspiring.
We’ll go ahead and take out the BCG and op-rod again just to kind of show you guys how this is all working together without everything flopping out on me because, again, there are no gas rings in here so it will just keep trying to flop out the back end but it is captured via the charging handle.
Let’s go ahead and take a look at this very cool gas block. So, the gas block has, I believe this is a standard carbine length gas block, the barrel itself, you can tell it’s kind of a heavier profile in the back and then it has a little bit of step down taper before it goes up to a 0.750 at the muzzle device. So, it’s not a heavy barrel by any means but it’s definitely a more substantial profile than a lot of other barrels on the market. A government profile will have a much thinner taper back here and then a heavier taper up here front whereas this is kind of more the right way round if you will.
The journal itself, I believe is still a 0.750 journal though it doesn’t really matter because you’re never gonna be putting a different gas block on here so we have this large steel gas block that is, again, trapping all of those gases to actually power your system in varying degrees via our gas regulator up top which we will talk about in just a second but, again, it has this huge notch cut down here, I’ll show you a picture of this up close, it’s much easier to explain if you guys can actually see it but it basically just has this huge notch that actually digs in or is cut in to the gas block journal or gas block journal shoulder on the barrel itself so that gas block is never rotating whatsoever.
Rotating left or right, you know, that is a big deal, but how have they eliminated the lateral play, and the way they eliminated the lateral play is by this ratcheting system on the front end that is essentially screwing the gas block into position and I’m not sure how much torque that they actually put onto this. This is torque into position via this large nut on this that they actually thread a portion of the barrel, I believe, as far as I can tell, that’s what’s going on here. They actually threaded the barrel and then they have this large steel nut that actually clamps the gas block forward and back against the journal and then actually has that notch cut into the shoulder as well, meaning that the gas block one can’t move forward or back and it can’t move left or right. As far as securing a gas block goes that is about as good as it gets. That is even more substantial in terms of material contact than even like pinning a regular low profile gas block, when you think about actual contact area I think this system is one of the most substantial and most robust that I have seen on any upper receiver to date so as far as this goes, kudos to PWS for making a very, very bomb-proof system.
Talking about the gas regulator itself, this is another area that personally I think they did a really good job with because it is drop-dead simple. So, you have three different gas settings, one, two and three. One is the most open and will cycle just about anything unsuppressed. On setting one I was using it with steel cased ammo with a buffer carbine spring, again, it probably would have been a little better with a H2 a little softer and I was getting about three o’clock ejection. When I was switching to M193 that would be a little too harsh, it’s kind of like an adverse setting, it would be ejecting like two-ish o’clock, but when you go to setting two, then your high power to ammunition which you can literally turn this with just the tip of a bullet or anything that you have, I’m just using this little driver. If you put it into setting two which very nicely clicks into setting two, setting two basically will run M193 unsuppressed very softly like 330-ish, very, very nice ejection pattern so that’s for your full power military ammunition or your weak power ammunition with the suppressor on it. And then, of course, you have an additional setting and that is going to be your lowest setting, that’s going to be suppressed with hot ammunition and that’s going to get it run basically perfectly.
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Honestly, the way that these three settings are set up they are perfectly spaced so that you can do basically whatever you want to it. If you don’t own the suppressor you’re not gonna be getting all the benefits out of this system. You are still going to have a cleaner running system, but because you’re not really benefiting all that much from a DI system you are still dealing with some additional reciprocating mass, that sort of stuff, is gonna be a little bit snappier than your standard DI AR-15 but even with only three gas settings they are basically perfectly spaced at least for my ammunition and my testing to work very pleasantly with basically anything that I put through it. When I take this out and shoot at suppressed next time we’ll test our setting three with high-powered ammunition and see how that feels but I am very confident that it will still be a very, very nice gun to shoot because of how well it has performed so far so, again, setting one for me was with just the weakest of the weakest ammunition or sort of an adverse setting if, for some reason, you were having issues cycling, I’m not sure why you would but then setting two works extremely well for high quality military ammunition M193, Winchester 5.56, that sort of thing, was cycling very, very well and technically speaking if you wanted to turn the gas all the way off it does actually, I believe, have a completely off setting as well which isn’t a real setting, it’s just off but for the most part you’re gonna be using setting one, two or three depending on your ammunition and whether or not you’re using a suppressor and, again, in my testing they are perfectly spaced out so that it will be a very soft shooting in all of that configurations so, again, they set it up extremely well.
So, now that we’ve kind of given you a basic rundown of how the system works and, again, I’m by all means an expert here, this is literally my first PWS upper and if you want to get even more into the nitty-gritty specifics, I am sure if you talked to one of their reps you could get all of that sort of information but, now, let’s go ahead and get this put back together if I can. One and slightly annoying thing is it is slightly more difficult to put it back together just by virtue of the fact that you have to thread in the charging handle and the BCG at the same time, but this is my first PWS upper and I’ve only had it for a couple weeks so I haven’t really been playing around with it all that much. And real quickly just for emphasis, there is exactly zero wobble between the upper receiver and the rail and this is not bolted in, no bolts are attached whatsoever and the fitment between the handguard and the barrel nut itself, which does act as an anti-rotation device is basically flawless, there is no movement whatsoever but we’re go ahead and attach our six very nicely loctited bolts and we’ll make sure that this guy is ready to go.
So, now we got it all put back together, this is one of my super old Palmetto State Armory lower receivers perfectly fine, it is using a hipefire EDT trigger which is just their enhanced duty trigger, it’s like a 5-pound trigger, very crisp, very good reset so you’re able to run it really fast. SBA brace and, as I mentioned, a standard carbine buffer, carbine spring.
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When it comes to shooting these I have shot a few other piston systems before and this is going to recoil slightly more than your standard DI Ar-15. The reason for that is because you have, not only is the BCG I believe slightly heavier just by virtue of not having a lot of that excess material removes but also you have the entire operating rod that fits all the way up into here, slamming back and forth and that’s all made out of steel.
Now, PWS did not make it overly heavy and that is a god thing so that’s going to reduce your recoil a little bit, but it is still going to recoil a little bit more, it’s going to be a little bit more pushy than some of your DI guns.
A well-gassed DI gun versus this in its best setting for ammunition and suppressor, all that sort of stuff, you’re gonna notice that this is going to be a little bit more pushy, it’s gonna have a little bit more vertical rise, but overall the benefit, the trade=off of that is when you have an extremely robust system that runs extremely cleanly and, of course, doesn’t get any gas back in your face when you’re using a suppressor.
For me personally, at the end of the day, it’s still 5.56 so this was still very, very easy to run, very, very quickly. If we talk about over-gassed DI AR-15 for the most part this will run better than a lot of like really over-gassed guns. When we’re talking about recoil impulse we’re really only splitting hairs, again, it’s not that big of a deal, but it does recoil more and so I wouldn’t necessarily use this as a race gun, but as a duty gun like this would be an awesome set up especially if I was running a can most of the time though even with this system with just the three ports or the three adjustable settings on the gas blocks. Even as an unsuppressed gun it shoots very, very nicely and if you like to not clean your guns whatsoever, you like that piece of mind, maybe you just like piston systems versus DI guns, then this upper is going to kind of do that for you and do it in a very, very good way.
When we talk about the accuracy of the gun I did do a little bit of accuracy testing. Unfortunately, I only have two real loads to test. I tested the Winchester M193, the 5.56 M193. I did a five-shot group at 50 yards and got about 1 inch which is about 2M away, of course, because we’re only at 50 yards and then I shot some 75 grain Hornady Black, their SBR load which is like a home-defense load, it’s pretty hot ammunition for how heavy it is and that shot at about three-quarters of an inch a half MOA which, again, when we talk about a piston length an 11.85-inch barreled upper, for the intended, use case the intended distances one and a half MOA for me is perfectly fine and, again, I only had two loads and I didn’t have any match ammunition so I’m sure if you’re feeding this actual high quality ammunition you are going to be able to get very, very good groups out of it. Also, important to note, I was just using a red dot and a 3X magnifier to achieve those groups so I’m sure if I was using actual more magnification as well, I could fine tune my point of aim a little bit and shrink those groups down even a little bit more.
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Bottom line is that it is more than accurate enough and I’m sure when I actually get some high quality match ammunition to throw through them that will perform as expected.
With all that being said I am very impressed, very happy with the way this gun shoots, especially for being a piston system versus a DI gun. I really don’t have much to complain in that department. There are two downsides though that I should mention. The one thing is as you in the upper receiver and the barrel and the gas block and the gas tube and the operating rod and all that, you can see that it’s a pretty substantial system which means it’s going to be a half pound, three quarters of a pound heavier than say a comparable lightweight 11.5-inch upper. For me, for a duty application, it doesn’t really make that big of a deal, but it is something to note that this is not a lightweight system, it is definitely a little bit of a chunkier, heavier, beefier, stronger system than a lot of other 11.5 uppers on the market. The second downside is that this costs about a thousand bucks which a thousand bucks for an upper receiver really isn’t that bad. That’s kind of a little bit under Geissele and Daniel Defense, Triarc and ADM, probably a few others as well and it’s a little bit above BCM but for what you’re getting here, I’m actually very impressed that they were able to get it around the thousand dollar mark. When you think about say a Daniel Defense, they’re doing normal AR-15 stuff to a very high level while this is doing a lot of proprietary stuff to a very high level and they’re still not charging all that much money for them.
So, if you’re looking for an upper receiver from anywhere like BCM or Geissele in terms of your price range this is gonna slot right in the middle of that and it is an excellent option if you can take the weight. If you’re shooting dedicated suppressed or 95 suppressed or just a lot suppressed shooting in general you are going to reap a lot of benefits of that piston operating system, it’s gonna run much, much cleaner, be more pleasant to shoot for a long periods of time and so for a lot of people I think that this is an excellent option, I think that maybe not the first choice for everyone because it is heavier but this should definitely be an option that you look at, again, if you’re in the market for something between a Geissele or a BCM and a Geissele, if you’re in that price range already PWS should definitely be on your mind because I think it is definitely worth a look. If you know somebody that has one or a range that has one go ahead fell one out, see if you like it, see if it’s worth the money to.
Personally, I am very excited to get to continue to shoot this because I will be doing a longer term review on my personal channel as well and this was more of initial thoughts, initial break-in at this point, I think it only has about 400 rounds in total and, again, at this point incredibly happy with it, would recommend if you’re looking for an upper receiver in this length and price point especially for all the features that this has.
The MOD-2 doesn’t really interest me all that much, it’s basically the same thing plus 400 bucks. I don’t really see all that much interest in spending more money unless you just really like the aesthetics of that upper receiver more, but personally I think that this looks just fine and it is very, very functional which is a primary concern for myself.
