Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Rimfires Texted My Gunsmith

Disclaimer - punching a hole in metal at the back of a receiver leaves a place for things to come back at you, regardless of if the hole is covered by a plastic or wood stock.

...and asked him if he had a jig to drill a hole in the back of my 10-22 receivers,

He came back with "Hell no, I got a $21000 milling machine and I know how to measure"

I guess it might have been a stupid question anyway.

But I only use a bore snake to clean my 22 barrels anyway so it’s not on my list.

If the rifle holds groups consistent, leave it. If it starts getting out of line, might need cleaned. 22 barrels, cleaning, brushes and rods, gets into the fun topic of do I damage a 22 barrel if I clean it....

Have model 60 I pulled a cable through once after a few decades and decided to dissemble and clean, never had, looked like grey toothpaste in the receiver, work fine before and worked same after, accurate as always.

Not certain it’s worth the engineering time and effort.

What makes people think that cleaning a .22 will damage the barrel? I don't hear anyone saying not to clean a centerfire barrel or suggesting that cleaning a centerfire will damage the barrel? Cleaning any rifle/pistol barrel will keep it shooting well. When the rifling gets fouled with lead or copper and carbon residue and when the lead/carbon ring develops in the chamber's leade area you will lose accuracy. Whether that accuracy loss is important or significant to you depends on the level of accuracy you need/desire for the type of shooting that you do. Benchrest shooters will typically clean after every target (approx every 40-50 shots). Informal or casual shooters ringing steel, plinking cans or shooting squirrels or chucks can tolerate, or will not notice, a slight decrease in accuracy the way precision shooters will.

Cleaning a rimfire barrel from the breech using a properly fitting bore guide (where available or possible) will go a long way in maintaining your rifle's peak accuracy potential and is not likely to damage your bore with the proper amount of care. The method of last resort is cleaning from the muzzle. There's no proper or successful rod guide that will dependably prevent your rod from nicking the crown, the most important and typically tightest part of your barrel. However, nicks in the crown are fairly easy to fix by a gunsmith or skillful DIYer but it's best to avoid the possibility of such damage by cleaning from the breech. Some shooters have the idea that a bronze brush will somehow damage the bore. I've proven to myself that that isn't the case. I've taken a bronze brush and aggressively and forcibly rubbed it along the outside of a SS custom barrel. It didn't scratch, wear or affect the finish of the metal. If it won't scratch or wear the outside of the barrel, it won't scratch the inside. What will damage and cause wear to your barrel, besides nicking/rubbing the crown with a cleaning rod, is just shooting it. The priming mixture for many rimfire rounds (including match ammo from Eley and Lapua) will expel and leave behind an abrasive grit in your barrel. If you take the first patch run thru your barrel and put it between your thumb and index finger and rub them together you will feel it. This grit will, over time, erode your rifling and it can be typically seen at 6 o'clock in your barrel just ahead of the chamber with a bore scope. The good news is that this erosion has to extend quite a ways down the barrel for it to adversely effect accuracy. I have seen some still great shooting benchrest rifles with this erosion present.

First - tapping a hole for a 5/16 or so hex key plug is very, very, very simple to do - so we’re not talking a huge issue here.

To answer your question - stocks exist that would expose the “said hole” / cleaning port. Google “crazy Ivan” 10/22 stock

you’ll notice that the back end of the stock tang area is low enough that it wouldn’t cover the hole...
So once you mod the gun, you can’t restrict what the next kid might do in terms of swapping the stock out.