Rifle Project: Ruger American 308

[Music] everyone and tyvan keep Hatcher calm here today to bring you a gun review of sorts and basically share with you my adventure and journey with this rifle right here this Ruger American back story a friend of mine and friend of the channel sent out this rifle it did not look like this initially it was a straight bone stock Ruger American chambered in 308 pretty light contour barrel but it's a Ruger and they absolutely shoot I took this thing out had a Redfield three to nine scope on it just duplex reticle put a bipod on there shot a couple different groups at a hundred yards this is what I got the gun obviously shot at that point though I was like well how could we basically make this better with respect to what I want to get out of this rifle how I intend to use it and that took me down the journey of this little Ruger American first thing I did pull this guy out of a factory stock throw that away and drop it into this Magpul American hunter stock I think there is a lot of value in these stocks one you have adjustable like the pole as well as comité so you have basically tailor this thing to you every time you mount the gun you're looking through the optic where you should be things rad I do definitely like the grip angle more on this then kind of the regular stocks and then all the added bonuses to to include detachable box magazine rather than just the internal magazine so you can actually swap mags rather than load this thing from the top in the forint so down here we have numerous slots in lock slots that's pretty cool one you can approach at different ways as far as mounting sling for example if you want you can put your sling mounts on the side to include run your sling back here so that when you sling this rifle it actually lays flat rather than having your studs here down here so whether it's in front of you or behind you it wants to flop one way or another way easier to just have it mounted here on this side if you're right-handed so it actually only flat up against your chest when you're walking and carrying this thing the other thing that's nice is mounting the bipod so I can go ahead and throw this piece of Picatinny rail right here because as much as I love mounting bipods to sling studs I don't they're actually a terabyte amount but they are kind of the gold standard because the hunting firearms industry hasn't really caught up so everyone puts a little sling swivels on there consequently people continue to make bipods that note much more secure though and you can remove it easily if you need to swap the bipod to something else or maybe you don't need a bipod next up not that I have anything against that little red field 3 de9 but I put this guy on here which is the Bushnell nitro 4 to 16 uses their mill deploy reticle so mill reticle first focal plane plenty of adjustment and this ultimately will let me reach this out further than I would with 1/9 power as well as just that duplex reticle being able to either use the holes that are in here or if I want I can take the turrets off and actually make adjustments lastly centerpiece of this project the barrel depending on use case what you plan to do with your rifle maybe you want like a 26 inch barrel 24 inches whatever it is personally I don't lots of times I am carrying a gun up in the mountains going through the woods last thing I want is something long that's just a big snag hazard and on top of that if I'm ended up shooting suppressed it's gonna be that much longer so I want to shorten things down especially for usually how I end up shooting guns like distances everything like that I'm not losing anything by having a shorter barrel personally I'm not so to that end I ended up going and paint a visit to Brad from IAT innovative ammunition technologies Brad is a amazingly talented gunsmith what he ended up doing for me was initially chopping the barrel down to about 16 and a half inches and I knew I was gonna want to be able to put one either muzzle devices and/or silencers on it specifically my silencer by Q so to that end I was like alright let's get this thing threaded well unfortunately due to the diameter of the barrel could really only do about half by 28 not ideal for pretty much any muzzle device for a 308 so to that end he set himself to work not only cutting the barrel down giving the threads everything like that to include making sure that they were actually concentric with the bore as yes you can have the actual like hole going through the barrel not actually Center in the barrel but after doing all that getting all that work done he also went above and beyond went ahead and made me a pretty awesome adapter so it would basically step up that 1/2 by 28 to the 5/8 thread pitch and in addition to that putting in a taper on it so I could crank on the Cherry Bomb and have that thing lock on there without I'm these rocks at or anything like that [Music] [Music] I now have a shorter barrel really handy as well as my cherry blow so I can drop a silencer in here so one happens to be the thunderchicken leaving me with a nice compact little package after giving this rifle put together then took it out and did some shooting with it here's what I got [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] never shoot the fifth round again never shoot the fifth well some of those groups were without the silencer I did some shooting with the silencer as well [Music] I also did a little bit of shooting at distance with the sky too [Music] where I'm out with this rifle I think this thing is awesome is it a quarter MOA gun no it's not I don't think it ever was it ever will be but does that matter I don't think so I think honestly with that Hornady if I actually do in my part this thing will probably hold at or a little under 1 MOA which is totally fine and realistically what's the application for this one I'm just kind of having fun which this will absolutely do as well as hunting and accuracy get out of this pretty much all those loads plenty good for let me get for hunting dropping a deer whatever it may be and yes someone out there is like you know what why didn't you just buy XYZ I could have absolutely could but part of its the journey man and when you have something and when you make it yours it's yours like you have a story behind it I give him the history behind it so yeah this could have came off the shelf but no I'm like I personally enjoyed the process of going through and being like oh hey what about trained s like let me drop this a new different stock you know what it don't really care for the barrel like let me cut this thing down and yeah I could definitely have started somewhere else but I started where I did and this is where I ended up and I think it's pretty rad little rifle if you have a rifle sit in the back here safe or maybe there's something a used racket and a local gun store think about picking it up and starting a project go down that path and see where it leads you make something yours make it personal see what you end up coming up with and if you do let me know how it goes I'm always curious what people end up coming up with and kind of the why behind it make something unique to yourself and get beyond your depth like say cutting and threading barrels find a good gunsmith there will be a link over on my site to brad at i-80 does amazing work you can hit them up if you have a special project coming up and lastly if you see videos before they're released little sneak preview make sure you sign up for my email list over at kit badger comm put out a weekly sitrep email each week kind of telling you what's been happening what is going to be happening and a link to a video before it's released but as always thanks for joining us to keep a calm look forward to seeing you next time [Music] all night

Channel: Kit Badger

Views: 394,768

Keywords: Kit Badger, Ruger American, Ruger, American, Rifle, Rifle Project, .308, Brad, Innovative Ammunition Technologies, gunsmith

Id: R7hnrPIx3NE

Length: 14min 33sec (873 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 14 2019