Over the winter, I purchased a Boyd’s AT-One stock to go on my Ruger American Predator in 223 Rem. The whole idea of this was to start a dedicated platform for improving my accuracy. This is the first rifle I’ve actually purpose-built for the job. Normally, I’m a hunter that shoots and not the other way around.

My first tries with the RAR Predator were back here:  Wringing Out the Ruger American Predator

Since then, I’ve gotten some good groups out of it. The reason I bought the AT-One stock was that the Predator’s factory stock just didn’t fit me all that well. I knew I was going to need something different, and the AT-One is adjustable.

At the same time I ordered the stock, I ordered a single shot loading block from Ragged Hole:

Ragged Hole Loading Block for RAR

It’s 3D printed.  It isn’t exactly the prettiest thing, and a bit of the latch fell off, fitting it to the stock.  Ragged Hole didn’t respond to a request to replace it.  It’s okay, I’ve got it in place and it is not coming out.

Part of the fitting of the AT-One stock required glass bedding.  There are steel blocks at either end of the magazine well that need to be glued into place. Boyd’s provides a small kit of Pro Bed 2000.

I used the Dremel to hog out a bit of stock in front of the front screw– about 2 inches of barrel. I also opened up the area around the back of the tang. There are two blocks that come with the stock that fit fore and aft of the RAR’s magazine. These have to be cemented into place. That’s the reason for the inclusion of the bedding kit. There are pre-designed gaps in the stock to take the epoxy.

The kit comes with a bag of release agent. I went over everything I could anticipate with it, and then took some old Johnson’s paste wax and goobered up all the screws and threads and nooks and crannies. I wrapped a couple of wraps of electrical tape around the barrel to make sure there was ample free-floating and then set to mixing the 2-parts of compound and fixer. I used an old butter knife to spread the epoxy around. I screw everything together and backed the screws out and used some more paste wax just to be sure.

Really and truly, it went off just like everyone said it would.

I got up early the next morning and went to check out the rifle. The glob of spare epoxy I’d left out was hard and crisp. I tried inserting the bolt and then using it as a pry bar like the directions suggested. Then I realized I needed to remove the action screws first ( Hey, it’s my first job!)

Once the screws were out, I lifted the barrel, pressing down on the end of the stock with my thumb and. . .

. . . Popped right out! There was only a wee dab of epoxy back by the safety that needed to be cut out. The rest had gone where needed and not stayed out of the places it shouldn’t. 

I had the RAR Predator down to the farm this morning.  I ran a few shots through it– more to check function than anything else.  All I had were some plinking rounds I had leftover from a test run I’d done with the Hornady LNL Auto Progressive.  They did fine, but it’ll take some better loads to make this rifle really shine.  More on that at a later date.

Bottom line:  If you’re looking for the easiest, cheapest way to get into more precise shooting, you can’t beat the RAR Predator.  It was recommended to me by the gun loonies at 24HourCampfire.com, and I could not have been happier. The Boyds AT-One Stock is the shizz.  The Ragged Hole Loading Block gets the job done, but they could have done better on customer support.

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