Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Ruger American Preditor Impressed me

Dogger,

I've talked quite a bit with Mark Gurney, the product manager for Ruger, about the RAR. He said that when the project started, several Ruger people got together and discussed what features they'd like to see that would enhance accuracy but would be easy to manufacture. Many of us are familiar with those features, but Mark pointed out those he considered most pertinent, including the action bedding block, which bypassed the vagaries of "traditional" action bedding; the detachable magazine, which bypassed bedding problems possible with fixed magazines; the 3-lug bolt, which distributes pressure-forces more evenly than a 2-lug bolt; the small ejection port, which stiffens the action; and of course injection-molded stocks. (As it turned out, the first stocks were pretty floppy, which caused problems, though they usually were easily fixed with a round rasp, but within a year or two the stocks were stiffened up, preventing most problems.)

I also asked him about the barrels, not just on RAR's but all Ruger rifles, because through my bore-scope many looked so smooth they might have been lapped. He said no, they don't lap them. Instead that's just the way they come out of Ruger's hammer-forging machine--but he also pointed out that hammer-forging isn't as "automatic" as many shooters believe. First, you have to start with a decent blank, but even then practice at "feeding" the blank through the machine results in better barrels. Ruger's now been hammer-forging their barrels for around 25 years, and as Mark pointed out, their operators are now really good at it.

He did not mention "minimum SAAMI spec on the chamber," but did mention the nut-attached barrels, which are easier and quicker to headspace precisely than the traditional threading of the barrel/action. But the reamers are not minimum to start with, because initial wear would render them useless, which would cost too much money when the goal is an inexpensive rifle.

I had another conversation with Mark after buying an RAR .22 Magnum from a local store, which turned out to be the most consistently accurate .22 Magnum I've ever owned. By "consistently accurate," I mean it shoots just about any kind of ammo reasonably well, not just a 2-3 brands as so many .22 Magnums do--thoigh it also shoots a couple of brands REALLY well. I specifically asked if they were doing anything special with the chamber, and Mark said no. I then noted that an informal survey I'd done on the Campfire resulted in about 3/4 of the respondents saying their RAR shot like mine, but the other quarter said theirs tended to be standard .22 Magnum "picky about ammo." I asked Mark if he has a guess as to why some some RAR .22 magnums were like mine, and others not. He said, "Luck," meaning manufacturing variation.

I've visited Ruger's plant in Arizona and they have some of the most advanced CNC machinery available, but CNC machining itself does not guarantee absolute uniformity. It does, however, make manufacturing reasonably uniform products possible at a quicker rate, and hence less expensively.

What I got out of our conversations, both personal and e-mail, is that Ruger did everything they could in the design stage to bypass the possible accuracy problems of "traditional" 2-lug bolt action rifles, then used state-of-the-art machinery to manufacture RAR's. The rifles will still vary some, just like any other mass-manufactured product, but because of the basic design and very good barrels, they tend to be more accurate than "traditional" bolt-actions--which have basic design features that tend to prevent obtaining the finest accuracy, unless, of course, we "accurize" them.

Among the most interesting aspects of all this to me was that the RAR is essentially a rifle designed by a committee, generally regarded as a bad practice. But evidently it was a good committee, and they worked well together.