The following is a transcribed video posted by BudsGunShop.com that interviews Jim Granger of Adams Arms. The video titled “Adams Arms Rifles at BudsGunShop.com” features Team Buds Velocity captain Tony Pignato and Adams Arms Vice President Jim Granger. Learn more about Adams Arms, our famous gas piston system, and our Competition Optics Ready rifle from Jim himself.
PIGNATO: Hi folks, Tony Pignato captain of Team Buds Velocity. We are coming to you from the inside of our training bay here at the gun warehouse and range at Lexington, Kentucky. We are fortunate enough to have Jim Granger the Vice President of Adams Arms.
PIGNATO: Talk to me about Adams Arms.
GRANGER: Adams arms is a 7 year old company, we started in Palm Harbor, FL, a little no where nothing town, and we have grown rapidly over the past 7 years. A year ago we moved from Pinellas County to Pasco County about 25 minutes north, and we became a full fledged manufacturer. Originally, we were having our parts made outside; we were assembling our rifles like 70% of the rest of the AR manufacturers out there. We decided that in order to control our future it was best to bring all of our manufacturing in house, so we have made substantial investments in equipment and personnel, manpower to assemble our rifles in house with parts that we have produced ourselves. Right now, we are producing about 70% of the rifle internally; we are hoping to be 100% self sufficient by March of this year. That’s not to say we aren’t going to use awesome products the industry has to offer like Magpul, and Samson manufacturer, and Diamondhead and other cool things like that, but we want to get to the point where we have the ability to be 100% self sustainable and that’s our direction.
GRANGER: We offer a lifetime warranty on all parts we make, and this isn’t one of the “read the fine print warranties”, this is the real deal. We are proud of what we do and we take pride in what we do. I truly believe we build the best rifle on the market. We will go head to head with any rifle manufacturer out there for accuracy, reliability, durability, and longevity.
PIGNATO: No fine print, no ifs, ands, or buts about it and that’s pretty awesome, and that’s very very credible in an industry like this.
PIGNATO: Now we came here today, we are doing some training and some shooting around with the gas piston rifle; and Jim you know I was a critic as soon as you walked in?
GRANGER: I figured you would be, which is why the best sales pitch for me is to hand you a rifle, hand you some ammo, go out and shoot it. Then we will talk about why our rifle is a softer shooting rifle, why our rifle holds up better over a longer period of time, and overall is a higher quality rifle for the money.
PIGNATO: Yea and I’ll tell ya folks, I’ve spent some time in here and I shoot a lot of standard gas guns. I feel like a lot of my gas guns really manage recoil pretty well. I shoot a lot of ARs; I’m a retired military guy, and I really felt that this rifle made a significant difference in the way the shooter actually feels recoil. I was a skeptic I said to him flat out yea I hear that the piston guns shoot a little bit softer, but I was a skeptic because I heard you got to clean them and I heard they get really really messy. Jim tell us about the difference between your system and all those other systems out there. What makes yours better?
GRANGER: People talk about piston guns and they lump all the gas pistons together, but there are definitive differences in the utility of the design. With our piston system, it’s very simple, very elementary. The piston system is accessible from the front of the weapon. You push your detent button down, turn it to the 9 o’clock position. The entire system comes right out of the front of the weapon, comes a part very simple. Clean the shaft, clean the piston, put it back together, re-install it.
GRANGER: All of the piston parts are Carbonitrided which is a controlled rusting process. It is a permeated coating process that doesn’t allow carbon to stick to the piston system. Therefore, there is really nothing to get dirty. The piston system itself and the way it operates is: on a conventional direct impingement gun, every pull of the trigger gas goes down the barrel, goes through a hollow tube, comes back into the carrier where the critical moving parts are and that’s what cycles the weapon. With our system, the gas goes down the barrel into our piston block and piston chamber goes through a co witnessing hole in our piston plug, into the piston sleeve, mechanically driving the rod rear work. The gas then does a 180 degree turn inside the piston system and is blown forward away from the operator. It rides on the cushion of its own gas. During the 180 degree turn of the gas, while it is being blown forward it slowed down from supersonic speeds to subsonic speeds. What that does is reduces the flash signature that is commonly associated with piston guns. When you vent gas moving that fast direct to atmospheric pressure there is a flash. There is also a supersonic crack. With ours because of that 180 degree turn, that’s all eliminated. Again it is blown forward away from the operator. As you were shooting before you noticed, you weren’t getting the gas in your face that’s because it is all going forward.
PIGNATO: He has been doing this for years, very big brained guy. He broke it down from me and I’m like alright man what you’re telling me is that gas goes forward, the gun shoots softer, and I don’t have to clean it as much and all my moving parts in the main component of the actual rifle are not exposed to any of that carbon or any of that crap? He was like yes nod your head yes! That’s what I want to do, I want to be able to have the gun, I want to have it function I want to have it shoot fast and I want to have it shoot flat. I spent quite a bit of time in here we probably shot 300-400 rounds out of this gun here inside of our range. You know I like to shoot, and I was really able to hammer the gun hard and there was no gas coming back to me. There was no shock coming back at all. Not that .223 has a whole lot of shock but it is very linear. The cool thing about it and I noticed with the gun and we were talking about being able to track that cycle. The way the gun cycles, is the gun cycles so linear that there is no movement. Whether it be with a comp, without a comp, whether it be a competition rifle or not a competition rifle everything was so linear that it was coming straight back into me as a shooter so every time I’m squeezing the trigger I’m not having to re-acquire my sights based purely off whether it be muzzle blast or even a slight bit of recoil felt, which is really awesome about the gun.
GRANGER: Absolutely. You know unlike a direct impingement gun you’re not cycling gas in a 360 degree circle getting that right vertical rise. With a piston gun, you’re getting a pulse coming straight back at you with allows you to maintain target acquisition a lot better.
GRANGER: The rifle that we brought out today, is our Competition Optic Ready Rifle. It’s a 16.5″ long rifle length piston gun. So you have a lot more rail, a lot more real estate, you can hold out further. We put a MOE rifle stock on it. We have the Diamondhead D45 sites, for you guys who haven’t seen these before they are pretty cool. Hit a button on the side of the site, pops forward and you’re locked in place. We also designed this entire rifle to operate with a minimal amount of gas, so that the majority of the gas goes out of the muzzle allowing the comp to do its job. We lowered the mass of the carrier with our new low mass carrier. It is 20% lighter than our standard carrier, and a standard direct impingement carrier as well. We took weight out of the carrier so less mass; less recoil.
PIGNATO: One of the cool things I noticed about playing with the rifle today, is it truly is a low mass carrier. It is very very balanced. Normally you take a carrier and you hold it at center balance off a finger or wherever it may be, and you can truly see a balanced carrier. The thing about balance when you are looking at any type of rifle is any type of imbalance can cause an imbalance in the way the gun actually cycles causes energy to go to different directions. The cool thing about it is it’s very balanced even with the bolt in the bolt carrier, the carrier is very balanced which means it cycles linear to keep that whole linear transfer of energy forward. Really awesome really cycles fast, very clean rifle. I dug it a lot. And again this is what I shot was their competition rifle. I love those Diamond flip out sites. The thing about it is if you got a 1-4 x 24 or 1-6 x 24 optic on it they flip right out around your mount. They are cool because it’s just a quick touch and then that way you can hit any of those close targets very very well. Now you may not be a competition shooter, but it’s really cool to take race technology like this and use it whether it be in your home defense rifle, or tactical rifle. There is a lot of great bolt on stuff that he got on here that these guys make. I love the free float handguard. It has a lot of real estate to get for. They got sling mounts on it; the trigger is unbelievable it is a really really cool rifle right out of the box to be able to put you in that game, or to have something cool from a tactical perspective.
GRANGER: The nice thing is this rifle is unbelievably light, 7.3 pounds basically ready to go. You can buy this rifle right here at Buds, you can pick this rifle up, pick up an optic, pick up your mount put it on there and you’re ready to go to the range. There is nothing else that needs to be done.
PIGNATO: I was beating Jim up about the hydro-graphics cause you know hydro-graphics is a big thing going on out there, but they take that process even one step further to make sure it is even more durable not just good to look at but actually really really durable.
GRANGER: Absolutely, we start with a hydro-graphic. It is really hard to lay hydro-graphic on every single time consistently without getting air bubbles. We go back afterwards and we airbrush all the imperfections, and then we take a hard care enamel and we enamel the whole rifle and it basically locks all that stuff in and protects it so that it holds up for a longer period of time.
PIGNATO: Really really cool rifles. They shoot well, they shoot great we are going to have these at Budsgunshop.com and obviously you know we are going to have great prices on them. I really enjoy the rifle, I’m really fortunate to have these guys come out and let me beat these things up. Trust me I’ve beat these up. I’ve shot them against heavier rifles 2-3 pounds heavier and the gun has really really out performed and I’m pleasantly surprised and I’m a believer! Jim I appreciate you coming out buddy.
GRANGER: I appreciate you helping us out, thank you very much.
PIGNATO: Remember folks stay safe, train hard, and win the fight.
If this BudsGunShop.com interview with Jim Granger of Adams Arms hasn’t convinced you to go with a gas piston system, check out more about the features of the C.O.R. by reading our Piston Driven Competition Optic Ready Upper blog.
