Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires I bought a POS 10/22

It's been a year or more, probably two years but I found a beat up 10/22 ss carbine at a pawnshop for 175, it won't shoot any ammo worth a crap. Went out yesterday and shot it alongside my Cooper 57 at 100, Eley Club, different versions of CCI, Winchester, Federal including 711B, SK Standard+ and Stingers.

Five shot groups 3"-6" vs 1"-2" with the Cooper.

It's been hammered, barrel is beat up and scratched, same with the stock, I figure I paid 175 for an action worth maybe 50 bucks.

Salvage or flip?

If I salvage, I have no interest in a barrel weighing more than a factory sporter, so a .900" barrel would have to be carbon fiber or aluminum wrapped, it would be threaded.

Light was attached for a photo only, Leupold 2x7 in Burris Signature rings.

There are bunches of factory sporter barrels sitting in closets from where the owner built a target gun. I would start looking for a take-off. Some years ago I bought a beater 10/22 for $100 and replaced the barrel with an Alumalite bull barrel and a Hogue stock. After doing a trigger job, the thing is very accurate and came in under budget.

I guess if you're expecting a stock 10/22, let alone a "beat up 10/22", to shoot alongside your Cooper, you might as well flip it & move on.
A lightweight barrel by Kidd, Volquartsen, Tactical Solutions and possibly others, will help as will a good trigger and stock. Or you could get a complete Volquartsen, Kid or Tactical Solutions rifle already tricked out, but you'll be spending multiples of what you have into yours.

BTW, your action is worth more than $50, with alot of people doing custom builds these days it's hard to find a complete action for much less than you paid for your rifle.

What about cleaning the bore and touching up the crown with a chamfer tool? Seems like you have nothing to lose.

If an action is worth 100-125 I don't feel so bad.

I didn't expect the 10/22 to match the Cooper, but I would think it would group 3" or better in near perfect conditions like I had yesterday with a preferred ammo.

I have considered looking for good used parts, a threaded factory barrel is one thought considering I may buy a rimfire suppressor next month.

I started looking for a 10/22 probably 4 years ago, I had my eye on the deluxe sporter but this was prior to the desire to buy a suppressor and when 139.00 carbines just disappeared. I thought the premimum for the nice walnut stock was too much so I grabbed this rifle thinking I would cerakote it and pick up a used DSP stock.

I ditched the barrel band and floated the barrel but as you all know, that didn't work. This trip I added a temporary pressure point but accuracy did not improve much, previously groups were closer to 8" at 100.

The barrel is clean, I can re-crown it and may bed the barrel as well before making a decision.

I wouldn't feel bad about what you paid, I spent more than that a few months ago for a similar one but it has the threaded barrel. I had a deluxe walnut stock on hand that I put it in. I can't tell you how accurate it is at 100 because I mostly use it as a suppressed tin can banger and it does fine. There is a good selection of take off and aftermarket barrels on ebay including the threaded "tactical" barrels like mine. If I were going to buy another barrel I think I'd upgrade a bit over factory with a Kidd or TacSol.

Ditto on the Kidd, Volquartsen, Tactical Solutions barrel idea.

You can find factory contour ER Shaw barrels on Gunbroker for under $100. That's what I would do if it was mine.

There are several factors that could be in play here and you could try to eliminate them. You have already done the first thing I would have suggested in regards to the barrel band and free float. If you have access to anyone who has a 10/22 factory barrel that is know to be a decent shooter you could try to borrow it and see what the difference is in your groups to determine if your factory barrel is the issue. Another issue could be the bolt its self in respect to the bolt face and head space. Another option would be to place the entire unit into another stock and see what the results are. No sense wasting money on the barreled action if there is issue in the stock. What about barrel fit to action? Is it sloppy or loose?

That's a good point about barrel fit, my 10/22 saw an improvement in accuracy when I replaced the v-block with a new one from Rimfire Technologies.

I bought a 10/22 International and it shot poorly. After taking it out of the stock for a home brew trigger job, I discovered that the bolts holding the V Block were both loose from the factory. When I tightened them up it began to shoot very small groups.

Thanks for the input, it's currently disassembled and laying on the bench. I will start with a clean and lube followed by a trigger job after some more research.

I noticed the barrel to receiver fit is not tight, I can easily remove the barrel. I could not detect an issue with the v-block, it appears to suck the barrel into the receiver correctly.

I believe I will install a stud in the rear of the action and bed it into the stock, the process looks straightforward and this is a good stock to practice the modification. Shoot it with the barrel floating.VT

If accuracy is not impoved, fill some cells and bed the barrel, let me know if ya'll agree.

The Kidd ultralight threaded barrel is very tempting if the issues are due to a bad factory barrel.

Another thing to try could be a different bolt assembly.
or just send your current one out to Randy @ CPC and have him do his thing to yours. i would see if you could borrow a different bolt to see if that makes a difference, then if it does it would pay to send yours out to be trued up.

How does the bolt affect accuracy?

The bolt face might not be truly squared to the chamber face and the head space could be off a bit. That combined with a loose barrel fit combined with a poorly bedded action all can add up. My whole point though was to really determine what's all in play on your rifle is to replace one thing at a time and if no change put original back and try another piece to swap out.

Is the parallax on the scope set up for rimfire?

BTW since the cooper was grouping 1" to 2" I am assuming this was at 100 yards then?

The bolt to barrel relationship made sense after reading the information on CPC this morning..

Both scopes are set to 75 yards, parallax was undetectable to me and I was shooting at 100 yards.

I did notice some crud on the face of the barrel and that may contribute to the problem. The 22 centerfire Manson pilot fit so I recrowned the barrel this morning.

I'm guessing, you will get $175 worth of entertainment out of that rifle this winter, just working on it. When you get it to shoot, that will be a bonus.

It won't take long, I drilled and tapped the tail end of the receiver 5/16-24, cut and polished a carburetor stud to project about 3/8", bored about a 1/2" hole in the stock and bedded the stud with JB Steel.

Pulled the action out this morning and it worked perfectly. Nice and snug with no rocking front to rear, barrel is floated with plenty of room.

I did not bed the action yet, I wanted to make sure there were no issues removing the action with the stud in place so there is slight movement from side to side in the stock that I will correct later.

I checked the headspace, it measured .0457" with a caliper and that may not be as accurate as using the proper depth gauge, but close to the .0452" dimension I found online.

I will take it down again tonight and finish the clean and lube and work on the trigger.


Edit: I found a few homemade buffer pins including a nylon pin cut from a long bolt and what appeared to be a metal rod inserted into a piece of vacuum hose. I am sure I can find vacuum hose and steel or brass welding rod in the garage, I can find a nylon bolt easily.

What affect is the buffer tube material to accuracy if any?