Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back to TFB’s Silencer Saturday, brought to you by Yankee Hill Machine, manufacturer of the new Victra 20-gauge shotgun suppressor. This week we have another one of Collin’s Creations. This one is an adaptation of the Ruger American into an SBR for suppressed use.
Silencer Saturday @ TFB:
The Ruger American has earned a reputation as one of the most accurate rifles in the budget tier. I've owned several of them, and every one has lived up to the hype. Ruger manufactures a wide range of models in various calibers. The standard models in the Gen 2 Series have spiral-fluted barrels, muzzle brakes, and a textured stock. There are also specialized versions, like the Ranch model with shortened barrels for handy use around the farm, and the Patrol models, which omit the spiral flutes and have heavier barrel contours with black stocks. Ruger sub-brand Glenfield re-released with its inaugural product being the Model A. It is, broadly speaking, similar to the old American Gen 1 Predator.
Then we come to my personal favorite member of the new American family, the Scout. It has a 16-inch barrel, iron sights, an extended sight base, and detachable magazines. The 7.62x39 model even feeds from AK mags. The front sight on the Scout sits well above the bore to line up with the rear sight on top of the receiver. This also places the silencer below the sightline, so the irons are still usable. Side note: Ruger, if you are listening, the Scout in 6mm ARC would be really cool.
My friend Collin, who has appeared in some prior Silencer Saturdays with interesting suppressed builds, did his own take on the American Scout. It started life as a regular American Patrol rifle in 5.56 NATO. He did not have a need for that particular model, but it was a good enough deal that he could not pass it up. Thus began the project to turn it into an even more handy suppressed bolt gun.
The first step was lightening and shortening the barrel. Ruger fits a heavy contour, 16-inch barrel on the Patrol models. For a precision-oriented setup, that is fine, but it is not ideal for a lighter and more mobile gun. Collin used his lathe to recontour the barrel and thin it down substantially. This was complicated slightly by his plans to add the H&R iron sights set. There are three front sight options, each fitting a different barrel contour. He matched his final barrel contour to the inner diameter of his front sight. The front sight lines up with the front of the handguard, which needed some relief work for clearance. The rear sight and scope mount assembly needed no changes.
This gun was going to wear a suppressor at all times, so a Form 1 and a shortened barrel made sense. He cut the barrel back to about 11 inches. For a silencer, he chose the Otter Creek Polonium K. That silencer has a good reputation as a robust and simple silencer that does not break the bank. It is not an exercise in advanced materials or innovative design, but it does what it does well enough while being affordable. That sounds like a natural pairing for a gun like the Ruger American. And, at 4.8 inches in length on an 11-inch barrel, the final length is awfully close to the original 16-inch tube.
The eagle-eyed among you will have noticed that the magazine well is not factory equipment. It is a 3D-printed adapter that Collin modified. The standard magazine fitting works, but is very simple. The American stock has an interchangeable section that can accept fittings for the old proprietary magazine, STANAG, AICS, or AK patterns, depending on the chambering. This looks cleaner with some of the options than others. The STANAG version is functional but leaves a large gap between the trigger guard and magazine, and covers up half of the magazine release. Duramag sells a special flush-fit mag that looks better if you want to keep the original fitting. But a rework of the part adds some functionality. This specific print adds an extended mag well with some flare for easy loading. It also leaves the magazine catch uncovered for easy access. And one of my favorite features is a small foot in front of the magazine well that locks into Arca tripod heads. There is some interference with longer mags and the tripod head, but having this option adds almost no weight and is still streamlined. You can see it mounted on an RRS Benchmark tripod in the cover image.
So how does it shoot? Far better than a gun at this price point would be expected to. Hitting a 10” coffin at 250 yards was easy from various positions. This gun will spend its days in more closed-in forested terrain than the desert where we were shooting it, and the red dot sight is a good call for that environment. An ACOG or LPVO would also be a natural fit for open country. Being a 5.56, there is almost no recoil to speak of. The Polonium K does a nice job quieting the gun down. I still always wear ear protection with suppressed guns unless it is a guaranteed subsonic setup, which this is not. But taking a shot at a deer or coyote with this rig when the timing is tight, and there is no time to grab ear protection, would not worry me.
A shorty Ruger American with a simple but effective silencer is a great setup. It doesn’t feel pretentious like many precision bolt guns. It doesn’t feel wrong to throw in the floorboard of a ranch truck. But with that short barrel and a K-can, it is still small enough to get out of a cab quickly without compromising the ballistics entirely or being obnoxious to shoot. Now that tax stamps are free (or possibly not even applicable, depending on how you get your item and if a certain injunction out of Texas applies to you), a build like this is $200 cheaper than it would have been in the past. And that cost savings, coupled with an inexpensive gun and silencer, means you can have a handy little suppressed bolt gun without breaking the bank. So go build that weird, short host gun you have been idly considering. It might just end up being one of your favorite ways to shoot suppressed. This has me thinking about building my own little Ruger American for suppressed use.
DEALERS: If you want your link to buy YHM suppressors included in future Silencer Saturday posts, email: [email protected]
