It was a stainless version so I can't speak to the carbon steel blued ones. But it was cast, bolt, receiver, and trigger.
Being a gas turbine and aviation engineer that's also helped restructure a foundry that made aviation engine parts, you can say I'm probably more sensitive and picky as regards metals than is healthy for any human to be.
So take my observations with a grain of salt as most people perhaps wouldn't notice.
Casting in and of itself is not the problem, it was the finish. The finish was rough. I would guess it was in as-cast condition for cost-saving purposes. No finishing except the machining of the bolt path. I cleaned a lot of this up with some very fine polishing agent (same type used for seating rings on a scope) and it smoothed out the action quite a bit but it never approached the finish and fit of my older ruger mk2 shown in my prior post.
I didn't expect a jeweled bolt or anything like a custom action but even with a lot of grease or oil, it had a gritty feel to it (before I polished it) that I was not comfortable with.
The trigger pieces were also as-cast and I replaced the entire assembly with a Timney which was an improvement.
The rings were cast and took way too much polishing to approach anything resembling even contact on the scope.
That being said, the action design is robust and puts the hunter very much in control as
@Hunter-Habib mentiond above. I also like the 3 position safety as it allows safer unloading than a standard safety.
None of this takes away from it being a robust design that has earned it's reputation, but I have reached the point where I don't want to put work and modifications into something that's brand new when i purchased it.
Ruger has exemplary customer service and I reached out to them and sent the rifle in. They returned it and told me it was within specifications. So i began the work of polishing and it improved as mentioned above but I was just not happy with it and eventually sold it despite it shooting some very nice groups.
On the plus side, the barrel had a nice satin finish that looked like it had been hit with 150 grit AlOx and kept the glare down. It also held a light bit of oil because of this. That was a good feature.
