at twice the price
I bet Ruger could complete in that price range
to be fair, none of my Rugers are "pretty"
but then again, I neither wax my chest nor wear lululemons
Ruger American....wow, what a piece of crap!
- Thread starter Hitzy
- Start date
at twice the price
I bet Ruger could complete in that price range
to be fair, none of my Rugers are "pretty"
but then again, I neither wax my chest nor wear lululemons
Funny, I was reading up on the AB3 this morning...my brother has a stainless heavy barrel Browning with laminated thumbhole stock, nice rifle and shoots really well, way too heavy for me to lug around the mountains lol. He's 10 years younger and doesn't mind....yet.
I sighed in my old man's Abolt last fall, it's an older version in 30'06, shot well too but definitely needs the barrel floated...would start stringing bad after 2 rounds. We ended up shooting a single round every 10 mins to make sure the cold barrel shot was on target for him. Then he hunted all season with his .243 anyway...
hometownhero
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100% agree. The ab3 is very nice. I seen them for $699 I think last time I looked.
nomad 68
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
coincidently, when we all bought the $399 flamers at WSS, I had just recently grabbed a take off walnut sporter from the EE for 75 bucks. 5 minutes after I took the rifle out of the box, the sporter went on. So all worked out quite well.These new Vanguard Sporters look pretty nice....around $850CAD from IRG. May bite the bullet....
Superior to the Ruger American? Sure.
Superior to any Ruger? Hardly.
The T3 has thin, low quality bluing on blued models, plastic bolt shroud, plastic bottom metal, single action length, recoil lug is part of the stock. They are not a bad rifle, but they are certainly not superior to the current M77, No. 1 and several former Ruger models like the RSM.
I have no comment on the budget guns. The only ones I have seen that are not flimsy piles of crap are the Vanguards and the T3, but the are higher in price too.
Jmop, and I am a big Ruger fan...... All of us that are buying bargain basement budget rifles are only serving to drive up the price of better rifles and the price of said budget rifles....... With our purchases, we are sending a message to all manufacturers that we are willing to accept crap for our dollar because we can't afford more as a general population..... And that is what EVERY manufacturer is catering to......
Even indexed to the dollar and the cost of living we are paying way more than we should......
Even indexed to the dollar and the cost of living we are paying way more than we should......
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^^^x2^^^
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I like mine just fine.
Not quite as bad as yours, but not great F&F but that is what I expected.
Mine was only $370 a couple years ago when they first came out though, and for that money it was the best option I could find.
It is not a rifle for anyone who cares for quality finishes, and if thats what you expected I'd say you didn't do your due diligence.
For a beater hunting rifle that comes out for a few days a year I can't complain.
Not quite as bad as yours, but not great F&F but that is what I expected.
Mine was only $370 a couple years ago when they first came out though, and for that money it was the best option I could find.
It is not a rifle for anyone who cares for quality finishes, and if thats what you expected I'd say you didn't do your due diligence.
For a beater hunting rifle that comes out for a few days a year I can't complain.
What gets me is guys buy a budget rifle and then whine about the finish....its like buying a civic and then being pissed it cosmetically doesn't compare to a lexus....go figure!
Can anyone say Drama Queen!
I agree..... And buying this crap at "budget" prices doesn't help any of us....even indexed to inflation and the dollar, we are getting fleeced.....
Budget rifles are necessary or there is a good few guys/gals that couldn't afford to own anything.
But also agree - you should expect very much in terms of fit/finish out of them. Any firearm that was built in a G7 country and is on the shelf with a regular price of under 500 bucks (not talking sell off prices here) probably was never "touched by human hands" in any of the manufacturing process - you are getting what the machine can chug out.
You start having a worker spend "time" fitting or finishing stuff and you add $$$$ to the production cost.
You have to remember. When that Axis or whatever is sitting on the shelf somewhere for $350, that the dealer probably bought it for $280-290 (including the shipping to them) which means the wholesaler didn't pay a dollar over $225 for (which included their import fees and shipping) - which means, back when the buck was at par Savage was probably selling it to their wholesalers for $200 plus shipping.
That leaves "no room", after paying the rent, utilities, maintenance and raw materials to pay an "actual human" to be a part of that $200 process...
And that explains why you can get a Vanguard II for under a grand (for a nice sporter) but would pay over double that for a Mk5 Sporter - one is mostly machine made the other spends hours in the hands of a fitter - and despite costing over double, the Mk5 is NOT as accurate as the Vanguard II - but when you are chucking the bucks for a MK5 (or replace the two with Tikka/Sako) you are buying the "hand finish" - and it's not like they shoot "crappy" - but that seems to be the selling point with the "cheaper" rifles - they look like something the dog up-chucked but they shoot real tight.
But also agree - you should expect very much in terms of fit/finish out of them. Any firearm that was built in a G7 country and is on the shelf with a regular price of under 500 bucks (not talking sell off prices here) probably was never "touched by human hands" in any of the manufacturing process - you are getting what the machine can chug out.
You start having a worker spend "time" fitting or finishing stuff and you add $$$$ to the production cost.
You have to remember. When that Axis or whatever is sitting on the shelf somewhere for $350, that the dealer probably bought it for $280-290 (including the shipping to them) which means the wholesaler didn't pay a dollar over $225 for (which included their import fees and shipping) - which means, back when the buck was at par Savage was probably selling it to their wholesalers for $200 plus shipping.
That leaves "no room", after paying the rent, utilities, maintenance and raw materials to pay an "actual human" to be a part of that $200 process...
And that explains why you can get a Vanguard II for under a grand (for a nice sporter) but would pay over double that for a Mk5 Sporter - one is mostly machine made the other spends hours in the hands of a fitter - and despite costing over double, the Mk5 is NOT as accurate as the Vanguard II - but when you are chucking the bucks for a MK5 (or replace the two with Tikka/Sako) you are buying the "hand finish" - and it's not like they shoot "crappy" - but that seems to be the selling point with the "cheaper" rifles - they look like something the dog up-chucked but they shoot real tight.
Well if we are talking craftsmanship I must plug in this video. The talent of the craftsman doing to work equates into a exponential increase in cost.
https://youtu.be/qUXoNUzAyvk
[youtube]qUXoNUzAyvk[/youtube]
https://youtu.be/qUXoNUzAyvk
[youtube]qUXoNUzAyvk[/youtube]
The American I got was comparable to the Axis rifles but with more plastic parts and ####tier machine work....####TIER then the Axis, the cheapest, low grade cut corner rifle of our generation and Ruger made something worse and want twice the price.
Cheap finish I expect is a blast and blue, and I'm fine with that, lots of guns from the Axis to the Vanguard's/700's are blasted and blued. Running the entire gun faster then the CNC can cut smooth, running it with dull tools, not taking any time to clean up a single tool mark is just pathetic workmanship. These are not $500 rifles. They are not $400 rifles. These are truly a sub $300 Axis equivalent...they literally have the exact same ####ty stock, worse magazines, and rougher action then everything else in their price range.
I didn't read any reviews of how horrible the machine work was on these. Read lots about how ####ty the mag's are, how easy they break and jam up, few that said the stock was "solid and did not flex or feel cheap" which is complete bull####.
REM 783, have 2 of them, only thing I can gripe about is the molded in sling attachments MAY break at some point if you take a tumble down a mountain. Mags are solid, action is smooth, no plastic on the bolt, trigger is good, and the stocks are stiff/solid and equivalent to the Vanguard S2 plastic. Finish is smooth blasted black oxide. First one I got new was $299 shipped and there were $60 in MIR, so a $240 rifle that is way better made then the American. 2nd one I got more recently (2 months ago) was $399 with $40US MIR, again a $350 rifle that was just as well made and finished as the first one, and puts the Ruger POS to shame.
Even the Axis I picked up a few months ago was $240 after a $50US MIR. More gripes with it as the stock and mags are pretty low quality, but the action is smooth, the finish is smooth and not all tooled up like the Ruger, it's not nearly as embarrassingly finished as the Ruger I got.
Even out of the 2 Howa and 2 Vanguard's the most I paid for one of those was $525, and the cheapest was $399 all new. They are not comparable to the Ruger though as they are real rifles....
So maybe you didn't shop around very much when you got yours a couple years ago... Because it really is the cheapest made pile of #### out of all the budget rifles I've had the pleasure of owning.
On the bright side, those tool marks should hold a lot of lubricant
That's MICRO FLUTING. Space age stuff.
I wouldn't say that was from turning too fast with a dull tool. They just need to run the last pass at a slower federate. Probably increase the time it takes to profile the barrel by 30%
