AR-15 Series Weapons Bolt Gas Rings: To stagger or not to stagger

A Friend of mine John Fabriele on Google+ posted this over the weekend.  I had noticed the gas rings on it were not staggered and mentioned this on the post.  Then a Thomas stocker said that they do not have to be staggered.  So with some free time I decided to put it to a test.  Also John had mentioned about oiling the gas rings, and I wanted to see how this would work as well, and also I had surmised that the CLP might cause a carbon build up in that area with the impinged gases.

The first weapon I used was a Bushmaster XM-15 with M-855 A-2 Ammo

With the initial 30 rd Magazine before Firing I put the opening of the gas rings together, carefully placed it in the weapon and fired.  I had no problems.  I took the weapon apart and carefully took the bolt out of the carrier and the openings were now staggered.

I repeated the procedure again aligning the openings, another 30 rounds no problem.  Again the rings were staggered when I took it apart.

I repeated the procedure for a third time.  This time I had 3 failures to extract, then the weapon fired fine.

My next three magazines I had the rings staggered and no problems except for a dud with a dented primer.

The Next three magazines were with CLP on the gas rings.  No problems shooting, and once finished I field stripped the weapon and no evident problems could be seen,  However I did notice that there was not very much CLP evident on rings.

I attempted this again with a Bushmaster Carbon and M-855 A-2 Ammo

I fired the same amount of mags as I did with the XM-15

With aligning the openings I only had 1 Failure to extract on the second magazine.  The rest fired flawlessly.  No problems what so ever.  Each time after firing a magazine the openings were staggered.

Fired 3 mags with rings staggered no problems

Fired 3 mags with CLP on the rings and same as the XM-15 no build up and I found very little evidence of the oil.

I would surmise here that if I was giving advice to someone I would recommend staggering the rings.    3 Rounds out of 90 on the first weapon, and 1 out of 90 on the second, and basically the weapon staggered them any ways.  I also need to add here I put the opening to the top of the bolt.