Friday, October 01, 2010

Speaking of sensitive to ammo,

which a lot of .22 autoloaders are, at the range this morning guy was trying out an old Sterling .22 pistol
and having lots of jams, failures to feed and fails to eject. I asked what he was feeding it; Remington bulk-pack. I had a baggie with some Federal bulk-pack hollowpoints and suggested he try them. BIG difference, it ate three full loads of them with no problems.

Moral of the story: any .22 autoloader that has feeding/ejection problems, try some different ammo, as some will eat anything and some can be remarkably picky.

I'll throw in, when friend gunsmith gets in a .22 of any type that's having those problems, first thing he does is field-strip and clean the hell out of it, which solves between 50-75% of the problems; .22 ammo tends to be a bit dirty, crud builds up under the extractor hooks, in the chamber, etc., and sooner or later causes trouble.


Pic stoborrowed from over here

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I have about six brands of .22 ammo on my shelves, from Junior brand from Russia which cost me less than $3 a brick to some Eley for which I nearly had to take a second mortgage to acquire. The "Supremo El-Cheapo" Junior is apparently "standard" velocity stuff, looks like it was made in the dark and test run downhill and prints teensey little groups from my T-C Contender, but splatters shotgunlike patterns from all my other .22s except my 10-22 which won't function with it at all. I also have a Hawes Western Sherrif .22 single action that is fairly consistent with the stuff, making silver dollar size grouplets at up to 30 or 40 feet if I'm careful. So cost is not the only or even major factor in .22 accuracy. Sometimes.

Gerry N.

Firehand said...

Ain't that the truth? My Martini .22 shoots Federal Champion almost as well at 100 yards as it will Remington or Eley match stuff. And I found the Aguila SSS stuff to be very accurate in the 15-22 and an old Remington, but in all others I've fired it it goes through the target sideways at 50 yards.