Hello Everyone,
Just wanted to share with you my two cents worth on a 10/22 build I did over the winter. I went with a plain, Green Mountain stainless, 24" .920" diameter barrel. So far it has been pure fun and very good accuracy. It really likes CCI Standard Velocity ammunition. Went with a stock Ruger receiver, Pike Arms bolt, Ruger BX trigger, and a Fajen thumbhole stock (that I bought off ebay). Rifle is a tad heavy, but, oh, does it hang on target nicely for Standing!
I set it up the rifle for use with both scope and Tech Sights. With the .920 adapter I put a 10/22 (tech sight) front sight on the barrel. My scope mount is an extended (20 MOA) picatinny style, and I mounted it backwards on the receiver. If I want to shoot with irons, I pop the scope off and install the Tech Sight. The Tech Sight I chose is not the normal Ruger 10/22 model, it is the Kel Tec sight so it simply clamps right to the scope mount. Puts the rear peep close to my eye and the stock is just the right height at comb. Am having a lot of fun with this rifle. Will add a couple pictures to this over the weekend. Will be heading out to Birchwood tomorrow. It is supposed to be in the 40s so I'll chronograph some loads and let you know what the velocities are running.
Anyway, Green Mountain barrels seem to be pretty good. If you are looking to build a 10/22 you may want to consider a Green Mountain barrel.
More later.
I bought a 10/22 target rifle from Kennebago a while back with a Green Mountain barrel.
It's fantastic. Makes small ragged holes.
Not sure about yours, but mine has some fine print on the barrel that bears mentioning: Warning - unfired rounds may not always eject.
Good piece of info to have when on the firing line at an Appleseed event.
Have a small flat blade screwdriver or the like with you to get unfired rounds out in stage 2&3 if you are not sure you will get them all off. I had to help a shooter with this after almost every rapid fire stage at a shoot last summer.
Had a good time at the range yesterday. Alaska seems to finally be edging its way out of winter: 40 degrees at the range in the afternoon.
Broke out the Caldwell chronograph and here's what the speeds were for the barrel:
CCI Mini Mag 36 gr HP: 1257 fps SD: 24
RWS Rifle Match: 933 fps SD: 19
Federal Target: 1106 fps SD 7
Aguila Super Extra: 1178 fps SD 10
Winchester Wildcat: 1143 fps SD 22
CCI Standard Velocity: 1041 fps SD: 22
CCI Mini Mag 40 gr RN: 1171 fps SD 23
Eley Target: 1084 fps SD: 4
The Eley Target so far is the most accurate and most consistent. Pricey ammo, but good stuff. For cost, the best performer in this rifle is the CCI SV. The Aguila Super Extra is also very consistent.
My barrel does have the little note about unfired rounds may not extract. Have not yet had to extract one though. The Pike Arms bolt has a very good extractor on it that seems to get a nice purchase on the rim of the cartridge. Pulls it right out. So far. We'll see how this goes after a few thousand rounds. So far I've fired it about 400 rounds.
I replaced a stock 10/22 barrel on a pre-owned rifle that couldn't keep a group no matter what with a GM 20" bull barrel. This was part of a rebuild where the rifle got Tech-sights, a hogue stock, extended magazine release, as well as the slingshot bolt release. The gun that couldn't group consistently is now a tack driver that has helped make several Riflemen. It now seems to do well with most any brand of ammo.
I have two 10/22s with GM barrels; one is 16" fluted bull, the other 28" taper. Oddly, they feel very close in weight and balance. Both are sub-MOA. The 28" is extremely quiet, like shooting suppressed.
Since that first build I have put together two more 10/22s with Green Mountain barrels: One with an 18" .920 Bull and one with a 16.5" fluted tapered. The 16.5" was for my wife. She wanted as light a rifle as possible and it is quite a shooter. I'll have to take a picture of it and include it in this thread. She is a lefty so I put the rifle together on a left handed stock and also installed a Tandemkross adapter so she can manipulate the RH 10/22 action much more naturally.
All three rifles have shown me very good to excellent accuracy. I'm very pleased with the performance of all the rifles.
Gus
Here are a few pics of my wife's rifle. Unloaded, with sling and magazine it weighs in at a skosh over six pounds. The Tandemkross action adapter works very nicely and makes it a natural movement for my wife to rack the action. The only thing it won't do is pull the action back far enough to be able to lock it back. But for her it makes using the 10/22 workable.
The rifle is particularly fond of anything CCI: Mini mags, Standard, or Green Tag. These Green Mountain barrels are not meant for the hyper velocity stuff so we won't run any Stingers through it. The Bentz chamber engraves the bullet upon chambering so no hyper vels.
As you can see I used a Brownell's BRN-22 action for this build.
Gus.
I used a green mountain barrel on a rifle built in 2007. The chamber was tight when new, and unfired rounds did not eject well.
Did some polishing with JB bore paste, with cloth patch on a brass rod. By hand, it seemed like no gain was being made. Finally used the cordless drill, If that affected the accuracy I never noticed.
Still shoots well.