doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com OT: The AR-10 follies (the AR-15 in .308)

I've been laid-off and have pretty-much run out of around-the-house projects for the time being. I also had this rifle sitting in the back room for the last few years without it being sorted out. I feel bad for the Canadian folks and even for people in states where setting up such a rifle isn't an option any more, but I settled in to my task with gusto. I've decided on 168-grain Match target loads as the primary fodder (but had to sort out a variety of lesser, cheaper loads, even Russian steel stuff). I wasn't very happy with the original trigger group so I finally installed a belated Christmas gift from my brother-in-law, an Elftmann trigger pack. Quite pleased with the results. This is at 100-yards. Never figured on a semi-auto military-type of rifle being capable of such accuracy...



I'm not really drawn to these types of weapons, but with all the uncertainty in the world now I'm pleased to have it ready for whatever happens next. I'll do final zero at 200-yards and start to pile up more ammo. A good lock-down project.

Nice work, buddy. Dare I say, it could be the rifle for the North American guy who only owns one rifle?

Best,
Ted

Ted: This one's a full-on southpaw gun too, a mirror image of the standard platform which ejects to the left. I even have a 5-round magazine which (I believe) is legal to hunt with out here and in many other states. Not pretty in my eyes, but....efficient.

Yeeee Hawwww, this is as good sitting down to a hearty beef stew!!
Thank you for sharing.

On the other hand,
Lloyd, what does future employment bode?
Mike

Skeetx: I'm "job-attached" so it's basically a (rather-well) paid waiting game now. Lots of projects pending whenever we get this country back to work.

Maybe when I get old, I�ll shoot a deer. Deer hunting was one of my Dad�s passions, and, I have two deer rifles around the place, a Marlin 336 in 30-30, and a Ruger carbine in .44 magnum. I shot the Ruger one time, one round, when I was 18 or so. Never fired the Marlin.
Dad got a big deer with the Ruger. He wasn�t far from the end of his deer hunting career when Mom, my brother and I bought it for him. I would use Moms Irish Setter to hunt grouse when Dad went north.
Hope you are back to work soon Lloyd.

Best,
Ted

Ted, down South 12 gauge rifled slugs are usually the weapon of choice for deer. It would be interesting to draw a line separating the deer hunters using shotgun slugs and the deer hunters using rifles. It is a demographic and sociologic profile I dare say. I'd bet the line wanders along the Potomac River, up into W.Virginia, down along the Tennessee/Ky border and meanders south in Missouri just above the Ozarks before dipping down into coastal Texas.

There are farmers in Northern Virginia that have created a new business. They will skin, dress your deer, and make the cuts you want including deer sausage, etc. for $200. Those farmers near Leesburg are doing a thriving business during hunting season. You can't bring a dear into the suburbs of Washington DC to do that.

The drive out to the range these days. Look up the Ben Lomond Gun Club some time. Nice big lonely facility way-out on the plains of Colorado. Lots of Antelope on the way.

Alabama woods. Probably why shotgun slugs dominate.

Gene,
We do both, here.
The dividing line is Highway 95 in MN. North of it, you can use centerfire rifles, south of it, you use slugs only. I have no clue who came up with this scheme or the reason why, other than to guess Minnesota gets flatter the farther south you go out of the metro area.
Given the choice between a swamp buck out of the northern half of the state, and one of the monsters that turn up in the southern, more agricultural end of the state, I�d take the southern deer.

I do eat more than my fair share of venison every year, based on the generosity of friends. Of late, a friend native to Kentucky, hunting just over the border in Indiana, has been keeping me in very tasty deer each fall.
You know it is good if my wife will eat it.

Best,
Ted

In times past, I've been in Wisconsin woods that look like that Alabama picture. The only place slugs dominated were in their so called limited range weapon zones. Some folks would use full house magnums. Why not, better put to use than just sit in a safe, but ther was generally a large area that had to be carved out. My sense was lever rifles far out numbered the slug shotguns. While the woods could be thick, I think most folks would look for stands with open lanes where they could watch more ground and might get a longer shot.

I suppose a big difference would be, up north there'd be more or less leaf drop depending. There was a tendency for deer hunters to take a mid day break, so I'd be out around lunch time for some grouse hunting. I hear there aren't as many birds these days.

I have a m1a NM that will do better than that.

�Minute of Orange� on the first trip out with the gun is nothing to sneer at.

There will be other trips, and the group will get tighter. Our hero will not end up with M1 thumb, however.

Best,
Ted

I shot a .308 M1 Garand in High Power Rifle matches for several years. It had a lot of $$$ dumped in it. Krieger heavy barrel, match trigger, bedded and assembled by an former US Army armorer. It took a lot of work to get it to shoot sub MOA....On the other hand, my buddy shows up at the range with a new AR-10 and cranks out a near sub MOA group out of the box. No doubt the AR platforms can be seriously accurate. I've had some that would nearly embarrass my good bolt guns.

He wouldn�t get M1 thumb shooting a M1A either. I used to shoot M1A�s and M-14�s in matches. My most accurate match winner was a TRW M-14. Pretty much bone stock except for the NM sights. The Springfield Armory M1A�s are usually match ready right out of the box. I�ve honestly never seen one that wasn�t. Shutting off the gas really makes it a tack driver. The platform is inherently accurate.

I used to build FAL�s as well. I put together around 5 of them total. All of them were new parts kits that were still in cosmoline, 3 were stg58 Austrian made Steyr�s The other 2 were all Imbel. I used Imbel receivers on all the builds. They too were all pretty accurate but nowhere near what a M1A was. You can also shut off the gas on the FAL and make it a �bolt gun �. I didn�t shoot matches with the FAL�s. They couldn�t compete. The sights on FAL�s suck compared to the old GI & NM sights found on Garands & M1A�s.

The AR platform has a lot of potential, no doubt. In my experience....it�s not as accurate as a M1A/M-14 platform. They are fun to shoot, accurate enough and can be had much cheaper than the other two platforms I mentioned earlier.

I've prairie dog hunted with a guy who had an AR in .223 that had been worked over. I didn't bench rest test it, but he had and he had no problem hitting prairie dogs out to 400 yards or so pretty consistently. The guy was a great shot and his rifle was as accurate as the Remington 700 in .222 or the CZ in .204 that I was shooting. With enough time, money and skill, you can make an AR do amazing things.

Which is also true of the M1A.

They are battle rifles.
The AR platform does 2x the work with half the weight.

Nostalgia aside of course.

Zapper's right about that. However that is not why the AR is the most popular rifle in the US. The popularity, it seems to me represents public disapproval of heavy handed government infringement on our peculiar, in worldwide terms civil right to own and bear arms...Geo

The talk of accuracy in AR rifles is interesting. I just acquired my own "platform", a Sig MP400. It shoots like crap. 6-8" groups at 100 yds. And with one magazine, it doubled or tripled 4 times. The other 3 mags that I shot did not. It seems to have all the precision of construction that would would expect in a box spring mattress which is what it reminds me of when listening to all the springs and vibrations humming with each shot.

I think its popularity is a function of 1. the entertainment industry, 2. familiarity for all ex military and LEO, and 3. it appears "high tech, modern" whether it is or not.

Aside from local or national salespersons, I think they appeal to folks that like to tinker. I understand there are shops that specialize in builds, but I'm aware of many that're respectable bolt rifle level tack drivers built with off the shelf parts.

I noticed AR 10's and 15's increasingly in ranch trucks. They must instill enough confidence to bounce around on a rack year round and perform on demand. So far, I don't even have thoughts of dabbling in that area.

I have numerous AR-15's in 5.56, 6mmar (Grendel necked down to 6mm) and 6.8 that I built for accuracy and an LMT AR-10 in 308. All shoot under an inch with handloads. They are a bit more difficult to shoot accurately than a bolt gun thought. Just awesome rifles. Then there are the chrome lined lightweights that shoot minute of grapefruit!

Don�t forget 30 cheap rounds available when a target of opportunity arises.

I've owned an AR-15 since working as a federal employee in Wyoming in the early 1980s. It's the early original Colt SP-1 version and doesn't have all the modifications that most of today's AR-15 (clones) seem to have. It's passably accurate and taught me a lot about the platform, the biggest thing being that I don't much care for the .223 (5.56) round (I don't much care for the springy sounds it makes when you shoot it either). I get that the .22 caliber ammo is advantageous for lots of reasons (weight & cost being the biggest) and I certainly don't begrudge anyone for enjoying theirs, but it hasn't seen the light of day here now for well over 20-years as it doesn't suit my "needs". This .308 version is a different case altogether. It strikes me as a "serious" rifle that offers all of the usual utility that any .30 caliber rifle does. I'll likely never hunt with it because it looks so non-traditional, but....you never know. People own firearms for all sorts of reasons, but mine are mostly "tools". I appreciate that some are more "artistic" than others, and that some have a pretty fantastic history that I have come to really enjoy. But in the end, the ones I actually use fit me very well and then... fit a very specific purpose. It gives me very little joy to own something like this AR-10, but it does give me a certain amount of peace.

Not on an AR platform but I have been thinking of building a
25-45 Sharps with a 1-14 for 75 grain bullets.

A Sig should shoot better than that unless you are using crappy steel case ammo or ammo not suited to the barrel's twist rate.

As to the noise, that is typical of the AR-15/M-16 platform.

It's popular because it is fairly easy to shoot, normally fairly accurate out of the box and modular, so you can do all sorts of things to the gun or set up multiple uppers in different calibers and configurations.

Having said all of the above, the AR reminds much of the Glock, a very good tool, but very bland and boring, it's just a thing.

I happen to know where an FN/FAL Match resides. (imported by Browning). I agree issue sights are pretty crappy. Somewhere in my sight box is a base that allows use of a Olympic or Palma rear sight. FAL's are Hell on brass.

I built one for accuracy. It is my most accurate rifle and I like the mild recoil. Oddly, it really likes 150 gr core-lokts which isn't what I would consider high-end ammo. Unfortunately, like most of my rifles, it is just too heavy for mountain hunting.

My initial foray into the world of .308 battle rifles was a PTR-91, a fairly respectable (and affordable) clone of the H&K-91. I did a fair amount of work on it over time and... in the end it was a fairly decent unit. It was not, however, truly ambidextrous (which something I've come to rather appreciate). Mr. Nelson, if you think FN-FALs are hard on brass, you should see the mess that a delayed-roller blowback action makes out of a piece of brass. Not hard to appreciate the popularity of steel-cased stuff after that unit.

Fluted chambers! Arrgghhhh

Perry,
Sorry, I can�t.

My Mother, brother and myself conspired to buy him that gun in about 1981, when he started complaining about how heavy his Remington 742 was at the end of the day-it is heavy. Brother has that gun, but, his disability will likely keep him from ever using it. The Ruger was about the only Christmas present I ever gave Dad that really caught him off guard, and very pleasantly surprised Dad.
These are not rare guns, but parts for them are. I have an old Shooters Bible article that has a couple suggestions to keep the carbine running. The article advised that no such tricks were needed for the companion 10-22.
You should be able to turn a Ruger carbine up fairly easily if you really want one.

Best,
Ted

I just can't get warmed up to the AR platform, swapped it for a M-14 and a Stevens pump in Vietnam.

I won a custom built AR in 20 Practical in a shooting match, this thing had everything done to and would shoot in the .3's with good handloads. On a coyote stand it is awkward. This past season I swapped out the 20" 20P barrel to a 16" 223 and it handles better and while not quite as accurate, it shoots about an inch reliably and is plenty good for coyotes out to 300 yards. I am spending time out on the desert shooting targets with it from field positions to get used to it.

As it is now, 223, w/Burris 1.5-6x40mm


As I won it 20 Practical, Alpen 1.5-6x40mm scope for coyotes and a 6-18 scope for small stuff


Way better 222 Rem, 1-4x20mm Leupold.


In some terrain even better 16/16/6.5x58R Leupold 1-4x20mm

I don't find them easy to shoot accurately, that is for sure. But in any case, I was using decent quality handloads made by the original owner, my father-in-law. The gun has been used very little. The twist is 1/7 I believe. The barrel is stamped 5.56 1/7.

I'll have to find some other ammo to try but my shotguns shoot better than this thing.

I titled this thread "follies" for a number of reasons and the fact that it's on a double-gun webpage is probably the biggest, but I had more unexpected challenges today at the range. My match-grade ammo source has evidently dried up so I'd switched to another. Things started out all right but then began to devolve.. Thankfully, I discovered the loose scope rail mount before expending too-many shells. I suppose that this would also be a good time to investigate some handloading options again. I've sort-of fallen away from that process of late, only setting up to load a pet load for my elk rifle when shells run low. I likely already have most everything I need (I used to load .30-06 many years ago) except for some dies.