scottp dot net - Scott Pilkinton

This weekend I finished the Ruger 10/22 that I was working on. Taken off the Wal-Mart website, here is a picture of the stock rifle:

The Standard Carbine as shown above can be picked up at your local Wal-Mart for $166.00, which I think is very reasonable for this rifle. They are very fun to shoot and have a TON of aftermarket accessories available for them. My rifle was picked up for less than $150 in a good used condition. By the time the project was complete, the only original parts were the receiver and trigger housing - everything else was replaced.

I did some searching to find a good source for aftermarket parts and found what turned out to be an excellent source on Ebay. The company name is called Hornet Products and sells on Ebay under the name hornet224.

The parts I purchased were:

• Green Mountain Fluted Match Bull Barrel Ruger 10/22 ($120.00)
• HORNET Deluxe Trigger & Action KIT ($59.95)
• Silhouette Rifle Stock for Ruger 10/22 - Midnight ($105.00)

Disassembly
After obtaining these parts, it was right to work on the disassembly of the original rifle. The stock is very simple to remove; one screw underneath the forearm, then the barrel/forearm band and the stock comes right off. Next came the barrel, which is very interesting how it is attached. The barrel is basically just slid into the receiver and a clamp that is located underneath the barrel holds it in place. The clamp has two screws that go into the receiver to keep it in place.

Next, the trigger assembly comes out by removing the pins in the receiver. These can be removed most of the time by just taking a punch and pushing them out with your hand. If that doesn’t work, try lightly tapping them out using a mallet on the punch.

Cleaning
While everything is apart, now is your opportunity to get everything cleaned up. Even if the gun is new, clean every inch of the gun to remove any packing or grease/oil that might have been used to store the rifle. For initial cleaning, I like to use Gun Scrubber - which works very well for removing anything from cosmoline to gunpowder.

Assembly

Trigger Kit
I installed the trigger kit first. This is probably the most trickiest part to the whole process. Because, once you start removing the pins in the assembly - small parts start coming out everywhere. I would recommend taking a picture before starting if you have a digital camera. However, even without a picture, the directions that were included with the kit was more than enough to figure out how it all goes back together. The kit that I purchased could be considered a lower end trigger job when finished. There are certainly more advanced kits (and obviously more expensive) that are offered. The advanced kits are more beneficial if you are going to be doing serious target shooting and you want to do everything you can to create that perfect trigger pull. One of the ‘nuggets’ in the kit is that you get an extended magazine release which replaces the original. This is probably one of the most popular upgrades that practically everyone wants done - even if you leave your rifle otherwise completely stock. The original magazine release is flush with the trigger assembly and is not the easiest thing to work with. Extended versions are just that, they protrude out from the trigger assembly and allows you to just ‘bump’ it when your ready to change magazines.

Barrel
Once the trigger assembly is finished and re-installed in the receiver, it is time to move to the barrel. Be sure on the new barrel to clean it well, the packing it comes in is very hard to remove. When ready, place the barrel in the receiver and line up the bottom to accept the clamp witch holds the barrel on. Attach the clamp with the two screws and you are finished with the barrel installation.

Stock
The stock I purchased was unfinished. The wood color was called ‘Midnight Black’ and all that was needed was the protective finish to go over what was an already beautiful stock. I took the recommendation included in the (again) fabulous directions and used Formby’s Tung Oil. First, sand the stock with some 400 grit sand paper following it with some 600 and finally steel wool. After sanding, wipe the stock down real good to remove the dust. Using a tee-shirt, rub on a coat of Oil and let it dry overnight. Once dried, come back and rub it down with steel wool which will prepare it for the second coat. Wipe the stock off again and rub on a second coat of oil. Repeat this until you have 2-3 good coats of oil on the stock. The instructions say that Poly can be applied at the very end as an optional finishing touch. Once the stock is finished, the assembled receiver/barrel can be dropped in. Only the forearm screw holds the stock on now, the barrel band is no longer used.

Here are pictures of the finished product:

Once the gun was back together I installed a weaver style scope mount, a set of quality rings, and a BSA Optics Sweet 17 Rifle Scope 2-7×32mm. Using technology developed for military and tactical scopes, the BSA Optics Sweet 17 Rifle Scope is incrementally calibrated to adjust for elliptic bullet drop at any distance between 100 and 300 yds.

Man, I can’t wait to shoot this thing!!!

Update: I had an hour or so to zero this thing in at the range the other day. Here is the best target of the day:

There are four rounds in the touching holes and the fifth I pulled off a bit. I’m pretty pleased with the accuracy of this setup…

This entry was posted on Monday, December 5th, 2005 at 8:05 pm and is filed under Hobbies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.