• Cold Bore Ritual Contest - Only a Few Hours Left To Enter!

    What’s your cold bore ritual, that one thing you always do before your first shot to set yourself up for success? Winner gets new limited edition Hide merch. Remember, subscribers have a better chance of winning!

    Join contest Subscribe

Ruger SFAR small frame 308, 6.8 pounds

You are definitely in the minority then. But people’s definitions of shooting great can wildly differ. I see tards on YouTube shooting 1.5” groups and tickled to death.
Laughing, are they target guns, no they were never meant to be that. Why is it every gun is supposed to be a target gun from the rack? Like many I don't believe rack guns are for impressive groups on a square range. They are built to go bang,... But,... I understand most people think there are different levels of dead or out of the fight,... although I've never found that to be true. AK's are not target guns, but they get the job done,...
If I needed a tee box gun, or one for 600yd + work, it damn sure would,... Not,... be a gas gun. Reality vs Perception is hard to grasp for some.

Like many, bought mine for the following reason
Very lite gas gun that goes bang in 308, because if you have ever legged even once,... you would know, unless its close a 5.56 sucks and lite is right,...period.
 
For what it is 1.5" is good enough.

It's not a precision rifle.
It took me a long time to come to this conclusion about my gas guns.

I always had a pretty strict requirement for my large frame gassers. I wanted them to be at least sub moa all the time. For your off the shelf rifles I realized that's just not realistic.

It finally clicked when I was watching mountains mullets merica on youtube one day killing full size ipsc targets over 1000 yards with an sr 25 that only shot roughly 1.5 moa at 100.

Once I quit focusing on tiny groups out of my gas guns and just focused on shooting them more my accuracy actually improved.
 
2025..............

Is the SFAR still a piece of crap and eating up brass so that it cant be reloaded?

I shoot factory 95gr vmax ammo in my SFAR. I dont reload for 6.5 creed, so I cant specifically talk to case rim damage. Case head damage is no worse than my large frame .243.

For mine I bedded the barrel with 620.
Added an aero mod4 handguard
Replaced gas block to a superlative arms.

The SFAR buffer tube is about 1/8” shorter internal depth than an A5 length reptilia recc-e stock and tube I had on hand. Easily added 2 quarters to the buffer tube to keep the gas key from hitting the lower receiver on the recoil stroke. I shot it like this a couple range trips before switching back to the factory buffer tube and MOE SL stock.

I get about 3/4-1 moa out of the factory federal 95 vmax load. ~3200 fps

I am 1.5 pounds lighter than my large frame lightweight coyote 243.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: mtrmn and lash
It took me a long time to come to this conclusion about my gas guns.

I always had a pretty strict requirement for my large frame gassers. I wanted them to be at least sub moa all the time. For your off the shelf rifles I realized that's just not realistic.

It finally clicked when I was watching mountains mullets merica on youtube one day killing full size ipsc targets over 1000 yards with an sr 25 that only shot roughly 1.5 moa at 100.

Once I quit focusing on tiny groups out of my gas guns and just focused on shooting them more my accuracy actually improved.

This is a good take tbh. it's nice when you have a specific load or ammo that the gun will do stupid tiny groups with, but as long as it's 1.5ish with most, you can still do a lot with it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: lash
The is still one in .308 at my local gun shop , they keep selling them and haven’t had lots of complaints. And the owner is a good friend so he’d tell me .
I’m still intrigued by the concept - my current favorite Franken308 gasser is a real shooter now but she’s a heavy pig and I had visions of a walk around deer/ pig rifle with optic it’s over 11 . Starting light and throwing a 3 or 5 c micro prism on top and still being just over 8 pounds would check lots of boxes .
 
Once I quit focusing on tiny groups out of my gas guns and just focused on shooting them more my accuracy actually improved.
That's where it's at for me. I can get most all of my 5.56 guns to shoot .75-1" with any generic SMK load, get a fine zero and I'm done, time to go hit things and never shoot a group again unless troubleshooting is required later on.
 
I’ve been working my SFAR on steel targets out to 700 yds.

Shoot 100, then 700, then 400, then 200, then 600, then 500…. Or have somebody else calling out which target to hit in what order. Basically just judging holds with no dialing.

It’s been 100% reliable.
It will repeat at roughly 1 moa with me shooting it - if I take the time to aim well - but I fully acknowledge that I am not an expert, and this isn’t a target rifle.

I could not be happier with this thing.
 
  • Like
Reactions: doubloon and XP1K
I finally took mine out again after shimming the receiver, running some final finish rounds through the barrel, replacing the gas block, polishing the shit out of the chamber with gobs of Flitz on industrial Q-tips and whatever else I mentioned in the previous posts but forgot to take the toolbox so it was an incomplete run.

But, I made it through 2 boxes of Serbia's 2nd finest 7.62 freedom seeds with no failures to extract ... a first for me.

It shot well and barely left any marks on the brass rims at all. The only problem I had was some lazy ejections but I think it's actually slightly under gassed now after all the chamber polishing. The difference in the brass bases and rims is night and day.

I'll go back again with tools but I'm thinking (hoping) it's actually going to be fine now. I'll know after the next range trip.

If I was going to start from scratch with one of these again I'd probably take it to the range in the stock configuration just to see how it does and based on that maybe run some final finish through the bore, shim the receiver, polish the chamber with Flitz and/or replace the gas block.