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That is really interesting!
No shaved gas block or skinny gas block, just the extended free float rail to keep hand guard pressure off the barrel. Quite a difference.

And, assembly must have been interesting.

More than likely the huge difference is not using the bench rest correct or running sling tension on a non floated gun.

855 is what it is, IMHO you don't make it better simply by floating the gun. The projectile is the problem, its mass produced for speed, not for accuracy.

BUT I have been wrong before.

I simply have not seen a huge amount of difference until you put slings on the guns. But I can count the times I've shot a gun without a good barrel on it, and with FMJ ammo on both hands and feet and have digits left over. Played the load ball bullets with care thing for a bit till I realized the bullets were the problem.. not the rest of the "load" hence the use of mexican match so common for years.

Amazing what could have been done with the sight out front. In the meantime with the sight in the wrong place the AR has eclipsed almost every M14/M1 Garand record out there in service rifle. Including 1000 yards. Firing the first ever perfect 1000 yard score that had never been done before.

And then we learned to play with aperture size and front post size on the AR and bingo, it works easy for even older eyes.

As to mounting scopes first, thats the first thing I do... test ammo with the least variables... then zero the irons.

Rost,

What would've happened to his groups had he released all sling tension for some of those rounds? How about if he rested the mag on the ground, or shoot off a hood of a vehicle, or around a barricade?







The see in the dark model. grin.









Ammo has nothing to do with it. MK262 was used for the tests.

The guns were zeroed by each shooter off of a bench. Then 2x10 round groups were fired at 100 and 200 off the bench as the control. Then 10 round were fired from 10 different alternate positions. Ie- 1 shot mag mono podded, 1 shot off a hood, 1 off a barricade, 1 with a vertical fore grip, 1 with a flashlight added, 1 with a Peq15 mounted, 1 with a tight sling, etc. Then the forends were swapped, guns were rezeroed and the whole thing was repeated.

The differance in group size between floated and non float off the bench ranged between .5 MOA and 2 MOA. The newer shooters had the most deviation presumably due to inconsistencies in hold. The best shooters showed little difference. Again off the bench. Once the alternate positions were shot the differences were huge.


That specific test was about more than just handguards, but for a field gun, a FF handguard is probably the best investment one can make.

You did not take my bait.

I hereby deduct 10 points. Or somethin'...



Travis

Dang it. Throw the rope out again. I can do it!

I KNEW I could poke a stick in your eye with that one!

There's a helluva big difference betwixt shooting competition and combat! And we don't need to discuss the overall impact force delivered by the old '06 round or even the 7.62 NATO at 1000 yards. That's a moot point.

Pretty simple really! It's NOT a combat type rifle!!

very interesting thread on upgrades. the only thing i've done to this gun is slap a can and light on it. can't even remember the last time i cleaned it, yet somehow it manages to kill stuff.

i like the golf club analogy. reminds me of buying my last truck. salesman invited me to look under the hood. i told him i didn't care what the engine looked like and hoped i never had to look at it. i just want to drive it.

i'm too dumb to offer anything informative here, so i’ll just contribute a kill pic.



and just in case this turns into a dpms thread...

OK, now I understand. Off the bench it may not matter that much, from various field positions the FF can make a difference, again regards how you torque the fore arm, or what its rested on or against.

DJones, what does that hog weight in the last picture?

What Jeff does not want to mention is that the little bullets actually stuck in the targets at 1000 yards and did not penetrate...

https://m.youtube.com/verify_age?next=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dtku8YI68-JA%26feature%3Dyoutu.be&client=mv-google

Thats why it took so long to mark the target after each shot. They had to pull the bullet and make a hole for the spotter spindle. LOL.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tku8YI68-JA&feature=youtu.be&has_verified=1

maybe this link is better.

Actually nothing with my buddy. His sling without a float tube was tied off to the barrel nut in front of the mag well basically.... easy enough to rig that way with a web sling. And the other varying positions, no difference because he is a shooter and knows how to deal with things, other than neither of us would ever rest on a mag... would rather use the sling if we had to do a mag rest...
Though a BIL used the mag rest a few times trying to cheat at a couple of matches and I asked.... said his impact never varied. Hard to believe for me, but I never did see him touch his rear sight.

I'd think that most of the variation would be shooter error, BUT shooter error won't go away from floated to not, so the error would be there but evidently the consistency gets better.

Its like my arguing that bedded rifles shoot better than non in the AR. They do. I shot enough groups to prove it. Not much better. But some. And much more round groups then once bedded...

Not enough to worry until you get good though.

But as noted, bottom line, float tubes are cheap, I'm betting you can find an ebay one for 50-75 bucks.... why not....

I'd take a good barrel ANY day over a float tube though. Trigger doesn't really matter, you can shoot just about as good with a crappy one as a great one, that is mostly in the head... but they make it eaiser to shoot well... a good trigger that is.

i haven't weighed hogs in a long time, but i'd guess under 200lbs. haven't shot a big one in a while. this one's probably a little over 200lbs. i make them look a lot bigger by putting the camera close to the ground. btw - i steadied the rifle by resting the magazine on the hood

The key words are "different shooting positions". Non floated barrels shoot just as well when all shots are the same and the shooter does everything the same. The free float allows for different pressures from different positions.

So you need an optic to help you kill deer more easily?



Travis

No you can't.



Travis

NO WAY?!?!?!?!?



Travis