Rock River Arms LAR-8 Standard Operator Review

you hey guys this is Derrick I wanted to do my first gun review today because mostly there are no other gun reviews about this particular model so there are a handful of Rock River Arms lar 8 reviews but this particular model the lar state standard operator has not been reviewed specifically at all and I know how it is when you're looking to get a gun you really want all the information about that specific model that you can and so I wanted to give you guys this information to help you out so how is it different than other models of the lar 8 lineup if you got a 20-inch barrel a hunter compensator I don't know that the compensators are really that much different but definitely got that 20 inch barrel which is unique to this model and this handguard is unique so it is a full pick rail on top and a quad rail on the front here with about a 3-inch quads on the left and right sides and on the bottom I have attached just a really cheap bipod to the bottom doesn't really swivel at all and I also have a Bushnell banner scope with a riser here a banner scope is super cheap but yeah the gun itself is really nice I really like this model I wanted to get this particular model because it has the 20 inch barrel versus a lot of the I think the x1 is like a 18 inch barrel and it has a fluted barrel but I wanted that extra 2 inches for just I think it's only another 60 feet per second or so really doesn't add too much to velocity but I wanted this primarily for hunting believe it or not because it is a heavy weapon but primarily for hunting but also to kind of fulfill multiple different roles so I've had this for two years I've had about 450 to 500 rounds in it and the reason I got it because I had an FN FN AR before this which is a 308 semi-automatic rifle I ended up getting this because I was having reliability issues with the FN I don't think that's standard with the FN but I did buy used and I was having some issues with that model that it wasn't too impressed with the other thing was I shoot in the desert a lot and there was a lot of in that event action it was very open and a lot of dirt a lot of dust was getting in there and I always thought from reviews and from my limited personal experience that the ar-15 platform which you know ar-10 basically the same thing just in 308 Winchester instead of two two three five five six the ar-10 platform and the ar-15 platform are very well designed to resist environmental conditions and so that's another reason I wanted it the other reason is I got the FN because it had a minute of angle guarantee I wasn't able to get a minute of angle with the FN again it was used I don't know how well used but I like is kind of like Tommy Boy I like that guarantee on the Box calling out to me and so I wanted something with a minute of angle guarantee because I knew I wanted to semi-auto 308 but I wanted something that was able to deliver very good accuracy and this thing absolutely delivers I'm going to talk about it here in a second but it absolutely delivers on that so I can hunt with this even at longer distances and feel very confident in its abilities so I'm very pleased with this gun but that's why I got it just those few reasons also the they are 15 organ onyx I feel are a little bit better than the FN so how's the reliability on this again I said 450 to 500 rounds not a single failure however there is one exception Rock River arms makes proprietary magazines which I've heard are based on the inch pattern foul mags so I think I've also heard some things like can accept both metric and inch pattern here's my experience with it they only guarantee the Rock River arms magazines to work in these rifles and that is kind of my experience because I got these this thermal magazines which is FAL mag and the difference is on the back here that I can see anyways the difference is obvious on the back right up here this thermal one which I've kind of dremeled a little bit here to make it more flat but it's got a ramp at the top this is just flat this is just a cylindrical block this is a ramp I'll try to cut some discount in any case what I ended up happening was I put this in and every time I fired it would eject the magazine so I didn't work at all at the magazine so I don't use that anymore but these work perfectly I haven't had a problem with any of the rocker Armas magazines I've had and like said not a single failure and feed failing to eject any kind of failures whatsoever with that 450 to 500 rounds and I've had it in many different conditions the oh the the magazines are proprietary I think Rock River Arms got started kind of in that Clinton era ban where they were thinking well if there's going to be blanket bans on a lot of different things maybe we can go in a different direction so if there's a blanket ban ours won't fall under that blanket ban that's just what I've heard so they designed their rifle a little bit more uniquely including to take those FAL magazines instead of say like a Magpul I think they're the DPMS pattern because the AR tens I should mention are not they don't they're not standardized like the ar-15 or you can get this brand of lower with this brand upper etc etc and put it all together and make your own build you have to be very a lot more careful with the air tens because DPMS makes their own pattern Armalite makes their own pattern and rock river arms have their own pattern you might see some the interchangeability but for the most part you just want to stick with one brand with all your parts if you're making an ar-10 build so what's the build quality like on this I'm not sure what the finish is it looks like an anodized finish and it's worked excellent the only problems I've had is I have this single point sling which has got this hard steel attachment point here and I left it on the CLA r8 is very ambidextrous it's got points to attach a sling on either side it also has well you of course you can switch the charging handle around both the magazine release is on both sides as well as this is another unique [ __ ] feature this is actually the bolt release you push it down to release the bolt I'll show you that here in a second but it's on both sides as well very ambidextrous by going back to the coding issue I have this attached here and I left it in the case and it was flopping around and it kind of got some scratches there which I'm not happy with because it really liked to take care of my guns especially this one so yeah other than that the finish has been really nice the only other where I've seen is on the charging handle here it's got quite any step sling in there but as you can see there's some wear right there on the charging handle so this is a twelve and a half pound gun so I'm struggling to hold it one-handed there yeah so you can see right here there's a little bit aware there you're going to see that on just about every charging handle in an ar-15 or AR 10 again this is the bolt release so you're trigger finger is going to be right here and you can access the magazine release and also release the bolt just like that and it's not super hard to push it down it's also not too easy so you have to worry about accidentally activating it it does pretty good job let me just make sure it's not loaded okay so the coding very well very weather sealed I found this in really poor conditions I took this hunting last year in kind of a sleety rain that turned into snow I've also had it in freezing conditions and excuse me and in the desert where it's very dusty a lot of dust and grime that can fly around and the outside got quite dusty but the inside of stage really nice and clean the barrel is free-floating so if you're not familiar you may have heard free floated barrels and accuracy you know you want that for accuracy the deal with that is when you fire a gun you've got a blast wave of pressure which creates waves that go throughout the barrel and so they talked about the harmonics of a barrel and how that pressure wave can affect the effect of harmonics of it and uh if I'm butchering this at all for the people who are more expert about this feel free to comment about it below but if you have different things attached to a barrel and it's not free floated then it can affect your accuracy because it's affecting the harmonics of the barrel so up here we have the gas block which does have these sling swivels on either side and on the bottom I don't know if you can see that right there and the gas block itself has a pic rail on it very small one and also this pop-up site pop-up iron site which I'm not going to use it all I kind of wish that I didn't have it on there because it just adds a little bit more weight not enough to notice but it does add to the overall weight which the Box weight on this I think is ten point two ounces once I had added this riser and a scope and the front bipod and you put in a full magazine there you're going to add another couple towns so we're we're talking over twelve pounds here but it's yeah it's very well made let's see of the barrel twenty inches talked about gas block here so the barrel is a chrome molybdenum so back I'm not sure when the military decided they need to start chrome lining their barrels because they had too many people shooting full auto and burning out barrels and so to extend the life of the barrels they started lining them with chromium some people there is some debate as to how that affects accuracy because it's usually done it's usually a chrome lined after the rifling is done and so if you you do your rifling and then you line it with chrome then it can accentuate any little bumps or imperfections in that rifling and so some people say Oh chrome-lined barrows it affects accuracy I'm not an expert enough in that field to say whether or not it does I just know that this thing is chrome moly is a chrome moly barrel and that's the chrome moly thing versus just crumb lined I'm not sure what the difference is it almost sounds like the steel itself is maybe impregnated with it I'm not sure you're going to have to ask Rock River arms about that I just know that it is hardened versus standard barrel it's hardened to extend the life of the barrel so props to that I guess we talked about the handguard so I should mention that I think we did before that you can't interchange a lot of parts between the ar-10 style patterns because DPMS Armalite and rocker varieties I'll make their own if you've already talked about that however Rock River arms does sell different uppers for this lar 8 lower so they have one also in 665 Creedmoor 243 Winchester and several different configurations of the 308 Winchester if you wanted to switch it up but certainly don't put a DPMS upper on here or an arm light one the okay talk about found mags talked about bullies and the buttstock is also one of their designs surprise surprise a lot of proprietary things but it's adjustable it's very easy to adjust and it locks really well I haven't tried to beat this thing on the ground or anything I usually don't do that with an expensive rifle but it seems sturdy it doesn't wiggle around a lot much at all really I've never really had a problem with it at all but the clothes thing about this is it has a little button and you can get inside the buttstock and it's got a little compartment in there you can put things in and even this which is have gaskets to keep this watertight and took that out you need both hands for this okay so in there you can put some double-a batteries I think I've done that before you can actually fit three double A batteries in each side so six all together and that has rubber gaskets on it and seals up nice and just know that if you collapse your stock you're going to lose that space up in there so you have to keep it extended if you want to store things in it so between the compensator and that buttstock this is so much more a pleasure to shoot than the FN and I hate to be taken on that FN it's just the only other 308 autoloader that I have experience to draw from again it was used but as far as the operation of the gun that was a lighter gun probably by about four pounds I think and well maybe about three and a half three and a three to three and a half pounds lighter and it had no compensator on it and so you really felt that recoil I have kind of [ __ ] shoulders I don't even really like shooting shotguns that much 12-gauge shotguns anyways and I felt like I needed a little bit of padding shooting that FN but this I could shoot half a day and not have a problem with it whatsoever I had my sister shooting this and they didn't complain about the recoil at all either and I guess while I'm talking about my experience with my sisters they couldn't even pull the charging handle back so I guess you could look at that as like a safety feature I certainly wouldn't advocate saying that you know just leave it around with kids being able to have access to this and they won't be able to pull the charging handle back so don't worry about it but they couldn't even pull it back and I even show them the proper technique let them have the best attack at it and they just could not pull the charging handle back that is not I don't think that's unique to this weapon I think all AR tens are have a much more stout recoil spring so if you're an experienced shooter guy or girl as long as you have enough muscle to move this thing around you're going to have enough muscle so you pull that charging handle back so I wouldn't worry about it the trigger is excellent I have never had a trigger like this before I've never had an aftermarket trigger so keep that in mind but I'm used to standard GI triggers and ar-15s and this is lightyears ahead of it amazing I know Rock River Arms makes an aftermarket drop-in trigger for ar-15s that's a two-stage trigger I have full confidence that it's just as good as this trigger because they just make it super nice I'll demonstrate it for you you still unloaded here that's good always good to check before messing around sugar so here the take-up is super light basically nothing and then it leaves you at that second stage and the second stage is still maybe I think four pounds or so and a really nice clean break on it I've taken this out to a thousand yards I had never shot a rifle over a hundred yards prior about three months prior to shooting at a thousand yards and so I started shooting this thing and I think the trigger really felt it shooting a distance but I shot it at a hundred yards to zero it in that first day and I'm going to be starting to talk about accuracy here because that trigger really helps with the accuracy but it took it out the first day at 98 yards I'll show you the pictures from that day very first shots of this weapon and I was getting under minute of angle groups and ever since then I've done it again at 100 yards and it still maintains under 1-inch groups I've been super happy with the accuracy and that little guarantee they had on the box and vengo guarantee it's real and it didn't let me down very happy with this gun see I was talking about you like you're seeing yes so I took it out of 98 yards and then I took it to 300 shot at plates really easily moved it to 600 I started getting a feel for how much I needed to compensate for the drop in my reticle and then I took it to 708 the next time at a different location and then I took a couple days for the first day just lased a path to a thousand yards wanted to make it really accurate right at a thousand and took it out there shot a couple times before the Sun went down and then the next day hit an eight and a half inch cast iron plate at a thousand yards with this weapon and I was ecstatic I certainly don't have the skills of a sniper never claimed to I know that snipers definitely have much more skill to be able to put shots on target that first round it took me seven shots which may be that some shot might have might have actually been a pretty lucky shot but once I was able to get zeroed in I did get some pretty decent groups even though I was doing a minute of angle max 100 yards it didn't exactly translate into 10 inch groups at a thousand more environmental factors come in to play there so but I was still really pleased with the groups very happy with the accuracy of this community I took five as far as an autoloader goes if you're looking to be in competition I know you're probably gonna be looking at a back ssin rifle because they can get pretty happy quarter minute of angle groups with those guns but in an autoloader I know some Auto loaders clean better than a minute of angle they'll guarantee you like half banana bangle groups those are usually goober expensive rifles as far as accuracy goes unless you're really good I think a minute of angle is going to do you just fine up to a thousand yards and if you've ever shot at that distance before you know just how far it is it's incredibly far so I'm very happy with the accuracy couldn't be happier using this in a hunting role which is what I wanted I wanted an autoloader mostly because when I was looking at getting you gonna before the Clinton Trump election and I thought it was going to be gun pocalypse and you know I wasn't going to be burying guns or anything but typically they don't get enough support to outright ban things and to confiscate them and so they'll say okay well you can no longer buy this and you can be grandfathered in if you already have it but you can no longer buy new ones so I wanted to have something like this in the 308 platform and I'm glad I made the purchase I already talked with the recoil so it's about comparing it to the FN the only other things I have to say about this I think are maybe discussing a few different scenarios of why you would choose to purchase this firearm so maybe you want to purchase it for plinking for just having fun you know clinking with the 308 now I think you could play around with this thing just fine and have a lot of fun because the recoil is very manageable you put it in a twelve and a half pound gun I keep saying two and a half pound that's because the configuration I have so 10 pound 2 ounce gun without it being loaded and no other accessories on it you put in a heavy gun with that excellent compensator and it works great and very pleasant to shoot like I said I have [ __ ] shoulders but I can shoot this thing all day and not have a problem with it it would be a fun plinker it is a fun clinker I really consider it blinking when it's like shooting really expensive and like you know I think I'm thinking is just kind of shooting around and and almost wasting ammo um is shooting 22 and not caring so much about each shot so yeah I wouldn't shoot this willy-nilly because it's really extensive ammo but certainly it's a fun gun to shoot it's all I really meant to say so what if I wanted to get it for long range absolutely the trigger combined with I don't think you need that 20 inch barrel I think you could still get a thousand yards out of the 18 inch barrel would it make that much difference in weight I don't think so I don't think he knows it would it make that much difference in balance no I don't think so um even with that bipod on there it's got really nice balance d again I'm going to pick on that FN and I feel that if you're an FN lover you know I feel bad that I'm picking on them it's just the only other gun I have it to have to compare it to and it was used and I'm sure they're a lot a lot better than I'm giving them credit for but the balance on the FN was like way front heavy you pick it up and it just immediately drops but this because I think it is in the air 10 style the ergonomics are much more balanced I find in my my opinion yeah long range it'll deliver minute of angle accuracy or better I was when it before I bought this I was really hoping that the guarantees would be true and because you're kind of stuck if they're not you know you can send it into the factory or whatever and no and they'll do some stuff to it but for the most part you just want it to work out of the box right and it's delivered absolutely what about hunting mentioned how I took this hunting if you're asking or thinking about getting this for a hunting role what are you really asking you're asking what is it like hauling this thing all over creation you have 12 and 1/2 pound gun is it killing your arms is it breaking your back so when I took this hunting and I kind of went up in this area in a way to test just that question but I went up to Utah's high you went as wilderness which was in my hunting unit and I hiked up to a place called whisky island lake which has got to be about the worst place for deer I didn't see a single track in the snow up there didn't really know what I was doing still had a lot of fun but I'm kind of getting on subject here because i heiped three and a half miles to the lake three and a half back it was about an 800 foot elevation gain up to above 10,000 feet and I was going slow because I was hunting so I was just trotting along going really slow but it wasn't bad at all I think I needed to stop and readjust these straps that I had on this about every every 20 minutes or so I had to readjust switch shoulders or switch positions do something with it because it did start getting heavy after about 20 minutes I had to switch it up a little bit but just walking along even holding up the front end my arms were getting super tired totally doable for hunting thumbs up there I know probably a lot of people who are used to the bolt actions that are you know 4 pounds or under are laughing at that dragging around 12 and a half pounds remember I bought this before the election and I'm really happy because you know maybe one day I'll probably switch to a bolt-action rifle I don't know but for now this definitely fulfills the role I don't feel like it's not enough caliber to handle the things that I thought I'm choosing to go hunting I've only really been once but the plans that I have to go hunt but yeah I think hauling this around totally fine for hunting how would it be for home defense um I don't know why you'd be shooting a 308 for home defense seems like way more then enough stopping power than you need the muzzle blast is going to be blinding you your ears are going to be bleeding after the first shot there could probably going to be bleeding indoors from a pistol shot but I mean this will absolutely destroy your eardrums so I don't know why you'd want it for a phone defense scenario but you could certainly again it's long so maybe getting around corners would be harder but maybe there's some scenario where you can see this 308 fulfilling a role as far as home defense kills what about the killer tomato apocalypse killer tomato apocalypse the 308 for those thicker skins killer tomatoes is going to be great a lot more stopping power a lot more barrier penetration in case they're hiding behind walls and certainly can reach out further if you're sniping killer tomato generals whatever those would be but in the apocalypse scenario you probably don't want to be hauling around twelve and a half pounds of gun kinda goes back to the hunting I was just walking along strolling along wasn't really trying to walk eight or nine miles a day which may be for hunting and walking in or nine miles a day maybe you might want to reconsider something a little bit lighter but as far as the apocalypse goes yeah a lot of gun a lot of weight and so maybe if you had vehicle support maybe that would be a better scenario to be in otherwise you're going to get pretty sword hauling this thing around but hey our military halls around those light machine guns light machine guns and they still do just fine they're able to toughen it up so it depends on what kind of person you are but that pretty much sums up my review guys this is my first gun review if you have some tips or advice for me I certainly welcome that I just wanted to do this review to give you guys more information my thoughts on on how things have gone with owning this gun and how much I like it things that I really like about it what could I say about it that I don't like I guess the weight but even the weight it's well balanced what else what don't I like about to sweat but it's just awesome oh the flip up front I would get rid of that whoop knocked the camera there I would get rid of that front flip up site it's nice to have backup irons I thought in case I was way out in the woods hunting and I did something to my scope and needed backup irons but I was going to go with a offset ions and you can't really do that with this because it's already part of the gas block so I can't mess around off with that at all unless I just buy a completely different gas block so I'm just leaving it on there no iron site for the back it is what it is but overall if you're thinking about getting this gun take time to save up your pennies it is so worth it they do an excellent job all around the build quality is excellent it won't disappoint you as far as accuracy goes I was worried about that after my f that experience but it just delivers on so many different levels and I look forward to having a lot more years with this gun and yeah nothing more to say well next time guys this is Derek reminding you you're working too hard see you next time [Music] [Applause] [Music]

Channel: Gone Far Afield

Views: 12,501

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: RRA LAR-8 Standard Operator, AR-10, 308 semi automatic, 308 rifle, Rock River Arms, shooting, firearms, apocalypse gun, SHTF rifle, 308 hunting rifle, 308 semi auto hunting rifle, RRA 308 review, gun review, long range shooting, Rock River Arms long range shooting, 20 inch barrel, WROL gun, guns for WROL, review of RRA LAR-8

Id: _0d2qtjh9mg

Length: 32min 21sec (1941 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 20 2017