Cats, Guns, and more. What’s not to love?
Since the scope was still out and I’d never looked inside the AR-10 barrel:
Clearly some carbon fouling down next to the lands and a bit of copper on them.
Ramps to the lands are dirty but not much in the way of erosion.
Lots of carbon at the mouth and inside the chamber. Not surprising with a direct impingement gas system.
Gas port is clear, maybe a little wear or buildup on the left.
Time for some Wipe-Out!
The “After” pictures. Remember, if you see blue, it means copper fouling.
Shiny clean lands:
End of chamber, ramping up to lands. Not much throat erosion.
And crown at end of barrel:
3,000 plus rounds. Wipeout for the win.
Well, d’oh. You get up early in the morning and scout those little rascals and blast the heck out of them . .
Really, though, you have to get up pretty early in the morning to claim your favorite shooting table at the club. The rock solid one that gives you the best angle on those little devils.
Here is the course of fire: Aspirin at 50 yards. Tums at 100. Know Your Limits steel at 150. Same at 200. .22 caliber only, but any rifle you want. Bipod and rear bag only.
10 aspirin on your individual cardboard target. One fluorescent sighter target. You may take up to 10 sighter shots, but once on the aspirin, you cannot go back. One shot per aspirin. If the round touches any part of the aspirin it is a hit. Yes, black wax streak on the side is a hit. Max score of 10.
Same thing at 100 yards with Tums. Word to the wise – this is the hardest stage.
At 150, the 5 hanging KYL targets start at 8” diameter and go down to 2.5”. You must hit each target before going on to the next. Once you hit the smallest one, you keep shooting at it.
200 yards is the same. So max score possible is 40 points. On a great day the winning score is 32-34 points. On a cold winter day in blowing snow, low 20s will win.
So what rifle do you use? At least at our club, everyone started out with Ruger 10-22s, and shot CCI Standard. But is wasn’t long before ammo changed to Eley, SK, Wolf, and rifles changed to CZ, Ruger
Precision Rimfire, and the like. My own upgrades were the Christiansen Ranger and the Ruger Precision Rimfire.
Let’s take a look:
This is the best I’ve shot. 9/10. Pretty sure won that day with a 34.
Tums are tuff. At 100, wind really kicks in.
An 8 will keep you in the running.
This is what you are shooting at.
And it looks like this:
Some people say that .22 at 200 yards is similar to large caliber at 1000. I tend to agree. The .22 LR is an anemic round; it gets pushed around by the wind a lot. But it’s been around for a hundred and fifty years and is arguably the most popular caliber. It is hard to shoot well at distance.
But would you stand there and offer to be a target? I don’t think so.
A quick recap to see how we got here:
At this point I’ve put about $150.00 and many man-hours into the project. My initial conclusions were that I had increased accuracy somewhat, and that it was a fun project. But final testing after finding the proper torque on the pillar-bedded rifle showed a significant improvement – from over an inch at 50 yards to just over 1/2”. For a stock 20 year-old Walmart-purchased Ruger 10-22, I’ll take that.
However.
Before I had figured out the absolute criticality of torque on the action screw, I was getting such inconsistent results that I thought that I’d just order a new barrel. I also wanted to shoot suppressed; therefore it needed to be threaded. Off to Green Mountain.
Now, the original barrel is stainless, 21”. There is constant discussion about the perfect .22 barrel length – 16, 18, 22”? My Aspirin Shoot rifles are 16” and are under 1 MOA. I decided to try the Green Mountain stainless, threaded 16.25” bull barrel.
But to install it, we have to change our bedding.
Off to the range!
Sorry, the Dirty Bird targets don’t splash with .22. But unsuppressed we get groups of CCI Standard – .846, .544 1 F; Wolf – .457, .346 1 F; SK Rifle Match – .618, 1.00; and CCI Green Tag – .861, .744 1 F.
Suppressed is a little easier to see. We get CCI Standard at 1.126, 1.207 1 F (ouch!); Wolf – .343, .615 1F; SK – .658, .847; and CCI GT – .861, .645 1F.
Looks like my old standby, CCI Standard is out of the running, at least when suppressed? But all in all, the barrel seems to perform very well with some ammo and decently with other. My one regret is that the rifle no longer feeds Eley ammo. That stuff is superb in my Aspirin Shoot rifles. Unfortunately, it has a flat nose with a little cone in the center (patented!). The flat nose catches on the chamber edge and turtles.
And that’s the end of this story. 😇 Don’t worry. There’s more. Much more. Can you say “Aspirin Shoot”?
Guns or catz, guns or catz? How about both?
KatNap Fever! 