I know this is difficult to believe, but the rail screws supplied with the latest Ruger SR-762 rifles are PLASTIC and break off flush with the handguard very easily resulting in a dangerous situation if a Ruger add-on rail with a front hand-grip attached breaks off unexpectedly as one I was trying out did.  Ruger will replace the plastic screws with metal screws if you call them.

ADDENDUM:  Other than that one Ruger screw-up, the SR-762 is an excellent soft-recoiling, accurate, all-purpose 308!  Loaded with 165gr bullets and 44.0 gr of Reloader 15 the velocity out of the 16" barrel averages 2513 fps, which is plenty good enough for deer & hogs.

Not a fan of anything Ruger except single action revolvers......this is one reason why.

Pretty sure the rail screws I received with the rails for my sr556e were metal..

Yep they are plastic and work OK for the finger pads as long as you do not pretend you are a gorilla. The plastic will not strip the threads out of the handguard either. The thread is 10-32 so your local Ace or True Value will normally have a good selection of machine screws as replacements. Mossberg QD studs will also thread in for a sling or a bipod mount.

UTURN:  Over the years I've attached numerous rails, sights and front hand-grips to rifles and never once did any screws break off...............except for the POS PLASTIC screws that come with the SR's.  I love my SR, but plastic screws?  That's ridiculous and dangerous.  And why does Ruger use them?  To save 25 cents?  Plus...........they did not break off due to over-tightening.  They broke off due to me exerting normal rearward pressure on the front hand-grip while dry-firing.

I also have a SR762 in the mid 4000 serial number range and my screws are also plastic. So far they have held up. You are probably correct that it was done to save a few pennies. I guess it is better to save a few pennies there than somewhere else. Of coarse most of us would pay a few more pennies to correct something as mundane as half a dozen plastic screws.

I went to the local ACE hardware and for 87 cents got enough screws for three rifles.

Wait, maybe it was $1.87.

Not sure how you managed to break the rail off by normal pulling... I took mine out today and pulled as hard as I could on the forward grip and nothing broke.

I didnt use he-man strength to tighten my screws, and torqued them to ~30 in/lb with my torque wrench and used locktite. So far they have survived 1 trip to the range and numerous dry firings here at my home.

Mine came with steel screws for the rails and plastic screws for the finger pads.

There it is.

TEXASBAGMAN:  I finally got back to working with the SR762 screws.  It took forever to remove one of the broken off plastic screws since it was flush with the handguard and I had to drill and punch it out.

You are 100% correct.  The 4 screws for the two small metal rails are metal.  The 6 screws for the longer plastic finger-pad rails are plastic.  Problem is if you install the picatinny rails with the plastic screws those rails will very easily break off from front hand-grip or bi-pod pressure.  I made the mistake of assuming all 10 screws were the same and used the plastic screws (which I mistakenly thought were metal) to attach a front hand-grip.