We are at a point where you can do anything you want with the AR platform. We’ve seen practically every caliber and action type you can imagine make their way to the AR. In 2017, Garrow Arms introduced something entirely original into the AR world: a direct-impingement, roller-delayed, blowback-operated upper receiver, chambering the .17 HMR.
The upper was praised quite a bit with great reviews, until it wasn’t. Then the company hit some hard times before folding up shop. Sadly, it’s a tale we’ve seen more than a few times in this industry.
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
The Internals
The .17 HMR is a super-light, super-fast cartridge aimed at pest removal out to 200 yards. It’s a rimfire cartridge that’s quite popular. In semi-autos, it’s well, finicky. Both .17 HMR and .22 Magnum have problems in semi-autos because most rimfire semi-autos are blowback operated.
When these blowback-operated guns are used, the chamber gets awfully dirty, so dirty that the round wouldn’t fully chamber, and the bolt wouldn’t be fully closed.
When you pull the trigger, the round would fire out of the battery, and when you’re using a round like the .17 HMR and .22 Magnum, you have a catastrophic, potentially injury-causing problem.
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
With the Garrow upper, the firing pin can’t make contact with the primer unless the bolt is fully forward. So if the bolt doesn’t close because the gun is so filthy, it just doesn’t fire.
Additionally, the .17 HMR varies widely, and the small fluctuations between cartridges make it difficult to create a reliable semi-auto .17 HMR with the widest variety of loads.
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
The system is fascinating. We have an uber short gas tube that cycles a portion of the gas from the last-fired cartridge. The gas hits the gas key, and unlike regular gas keys, this one moves rearward.
The Rollers
There are two ball bearings that are part of the bolt. When the gas key retracts, the bearings unlock, allowing the action to cycle. The gun is still an unlocked-action design and uses an AR-like bolt carrier, but it’s still unique. It’s uber lightweight, and extra weight isn’t needed to keep the action closed, thanks to the roller delay mechanism.
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
The upper features an 18-inch stainless steel barrel that’s threaded for muzzle devices. I tossed on my own flash hider that I had lying around, but a can would be great. The upper I have comes with the tube-style free-floated handguard, but both Keymod and M-lok were also produced.
It drops on a standard MIL-SPEC lower receiver. The upper comes with its own purple buffer spring and uses a plastic buffer. You also need to take your buffer, turn it backward, and drop it into the buffer tube. This has to be done for any kind of reliability.
Issue With Garrow Arms Development
I’ve owned mine for about ten years now, but I haven’t shot it for years. I recently delved into the lore behind Garrow Arms, and I found some issues. While the first batches of the rifles were highly praised, it wasn’t long until some shooters started reporting issues with the uppers.
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
Extractors would break, but Garrow Arms was smart enough to use Ruger 10/22 extractors; they were easy to fix. They also had issues with firing pens breaking. Gas keys started cracking and breaking.
The guns were still in demand, but Garrow had trouble producing them quickly. People would order and would go for months without ever hearing from Garrow Arms about their upper. In 2019, the website went down temporarily,
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
A forum poster claiming to be a sponsored shooter for Garrow told everyone they were having issues sourcing their proprietary bolts, as the manufacturer they used previously wasn’t working with them anymore.
That was the last update we saw from anyone associated with Garrow.
However, if you were to start searching the World Wide Web, you’d find a lawsuit involving Garrow Arms. Garrow Arms was suing its CFO and a founding partner for allegedly misappropriating approximately $33,047.64 intended for the plaintiff’s benefit.
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
A year later, the suit was settled, but I couldn’t find a conclusion. With that, Garrow Arms was gone. A lawsuit, potential theft, and issues sourcing parts they needed were enough to fold the company.
So, How Does It Work?
Okay, so by now you know my gun has issues. I have no idea why. Again, I haven’t shot it in years, but the last time I hit the range with the rifle, it worked like a charm. It was incredibly reliable.
Advertisement — Continue Reading Below
When I broke it out of the safe, I stripped it and oiled it. I cleaned the bolt and chamber and ensured everything looked good, but couldn’t get it to run. Even after swapping, it still had frequent failures to extract and eject.
I spent a small fortune trying various ammo from Hornady, Federal, and three different types of CCI. Occasionally, it would cycle a few rounds, but it functioned more like a straight pull bolt rifle than a semi-auto.
Color me surprised. I used to shoot this thing all the time and never had more than a handful of malfunctions. It’s like it had a best-by date and I blew past it. I checked the gas block alignment and whether the gas key was broken, and found nothing visibly wrong.
One old piece of advice was to trim the buffer spring by two coils if you got failures to extract, but with Garrow out of business, I plan to just keep it in a factory configuration.
It’s sad because it’s such a fun gun.
Recoil and Accuracy
The recoil is akin to an air gun. It’s utterly delightful to shoot. Rimfires never have much recoil, but this gun is exceptionally light recoiling. The roller delayed design is to thank for that. The reduction of recoil from even rimfire standards served a purpose. A gun like this is designed to shoot small game at longish ranges.
The less the sights move, the faster the follow-up shots are. When your target is prairie dog-sized at 100 yards, every reduction in movement helps.
Not only does it barely recoil, but it’s incredibly accurate. Like sub moa with the right ammo. I zoomed through a rimfire dueling tree with ease, hitting each little panel with a decisive smack every pull of the trigger.
Part of the reason I loved shooting this gun is that it made me feel like a competent shooter. It was so easy to take off-hand shots at 25 yards and stack them into a 1-inch dot. No rest, no prone position, just stand, shoot, and hit.
If I needed to hit some kind of small critter outside of shotgun range, this would be the gun to turn to.
The Design Lives On
The idea of a 17HMR upper hasn’t died. In fact, shortly after Garrow folded, Inland looked to have bought the design, although I don’t think they ever produced any. Alexander Arms and Rock River Arsenal both produce 17 HMR uppers, and the Rock River looks fairly close to the Garrow Arms model.
The folks at Garrow had some interesting ideas and planned to expand into both .22 WMR and 9mm, but alas, that never happened.