Ruger 10/22 Charger

[TMan]

I got an e-mail telling me that the Charger has arrived and is ready for me to pick it up. I was reading the new Midway catalog, and noticed that they had parts for the 10/22 and for the 10/22 Magnum. Wonder which ones fit this gun.

I'm also wondering what to mount on it i.e should I use a rifle scope or a pistol scope. I've seen one of the "National Champions" at the range and he shoots with a rifle scope, so the result is that the gun must be set very closely to the eye.

Am I making any sense? I'm going to bed.

[TMan]

Didn't get the Charger today. When I came out of the Barber Shop (you don't think I'd admit it was really a beauty shop do you?), the sleet was coming down hard. As I pulled out onto the road, I got sideways. I carefully made my way home, and then I went back to bed under the electric blanket.

I got up two hours later, and went into the bathroom. I noticed that I no longer heard sleet on the skylight. I didn't bother to look up. When I came downstairs I notice what was going on outside, and why there wasn't any noise on the skylight - snow.

We now have several inches of snow. Yes in Texas, Yes in March.

That moron Al Gore ought to give his Nobel Peace prize back. Global Warming my a..

[5ontarget]

Yup, still coming down here too, winds 20-30mph, wind chill close to 0. I looked out at my car and it is drifted up to the windows.
Not supposed to let up until this evening. Hey, I get to use my snowblower for the first time this year.

Better go see if I can get it started.

As for your choice of optics. I'd go for a LER/pistol scope on that.
If you plan on shooting it exclusively from a bench, it probably won't make a whole lot of difference. Not too much to worry about with a .22 recoiling the scope into your eye.
I'd think it make for a better shooting posture with the LER/pistol scope.

The last group shoot I went to in Jan had a couple of guys that are into WWII recreation/acting. This guy hadn't shot a WWII Russian sniper before...scope got him.

[MLB]

Got a good 20" here. It should melt away soon though. Sure does look nice; as long as you don't mind driving in it.

[TMan]

This sucker is heavy, too heavy for me to shoot as a pistol. I will be shooting it off the bench. Also, since I'll be shooting it at 25, and 50 yards, I'm going to go for an A/O scope.

Unlike most Rugers, this one didn't come with rings. What it did come with in addition to the bi-pod is a nice rug to carry it back in forth to the range. Hopefully, it will fit okay after putting a scope on it.

The other surprise is that the trigger isn't all that bad. It is breaking at 3lb 12oz, which is very surprising for a factory trigger. However, there is a lot of overtravel, which I'm not positive how to fix. I could drill and tap the trigger to put a screw in, if I screw it up, I can buy a new trigger. I could also drill into the back of the trigger guard and put the screw there.

There are a couple of problems with the trigger. There is an intermittent creep. Some times it breaks cleanly, and sometimes you can feel the creep. I've had other guns that had this problem, and I can't really visualize what is going on. The other problem is with the little plunger that is behind the trigger. Without the gun being cocked, you can pull back on the trigger and feel the plunger more in, and it feels gritty. What I don't know is if that is effecting the trigger pull. In other words, the plunger moving in may be during the over-travel. So if I eliminate the over-travel, it may get rid of the plunger problem. I'd just polish the plunger, but it is painted black.

[MLB]

I thought maybe a picture would be a nice decoration for this thread:

[TMan]

Well, I decided that I wanted the trigger to be better. Using a caliper I measured the height of the step on the hammer. Then using the belt sander I reduced it by 1/3rd. Next I lightly stoned both the sear and hammer to remove any burs.

Suddenly the light bulb came on concerning the over-travel. I reduced the spring tension on the little plunger by cutting off two coils on the spring. Then I figured all I had to do is restrict the movement of the plunger so it wouldn't go back as far and I would eliminate the over-travel.

Out came the caliper again to figure out how far back I wanted the plunger to go before stopping. I then noticed one of those slender plastic tubes from a spray can. It fit inside the spring. It took a little clipping, testing, clipping... Now, the over-travel is barely noticeable.

Oh, the trigger pull is right about 2 lbs. If I can find the scope rings I bought at Cabela's this week, I'll mount the scope and head to the range today.

[MLB]

I think "TMan" must stand for Trigger Man. Nice work, and good idea.

[TMan]

Had a little problem. Ahh, make that a big problem: Although it would work fine when I manually cocked the gun, it would occasionally not cock when shooting it. I really can't picture what was happening in my mind, but if I just gently applied pressure, it would work fine. However, if I pulled back hard on the trigger, it would sometimes fail.

So, last night I pulled it apart again and measured the height of the sear. I then stoned off .1mm off the top of the sear in order to get it to ride higher into the hammer notch. We put 80 rounds through it this morning trying to make it fail, but it wouldn't.

However, with the gun cocked, if I put the safety on, when I take the safety off, the gun fires. Bad news, but to be expected because the sear is now higher than before. So I'll take the sear out and bump the base of it where it goes into the safety and that should fix it.

Incidentally, I went a little crazy on this because I figured if I really screwed it up, I'd buy either the Power Custom, or Volquartsen kits, which replace the parts. Power Custom has a sear that has a set screw in the tail. By screwing it in, you reduce the amount of contact that the sear has with the hammer. Essentially, I did the same thing by removing metal from the hammer so there was less metal to metal.

I never bought the Series 1 adapter for the Power Custom because I figured I'd only own one 10/22, and why spend the $25.

Whoops, almost forgot: the trigger pull now is at 2lb 3oz, and working on the tail of the sear in order to fix the safety problem should not effect the trigger pull.

One other thing: this thing is really accurate. I'm beginning to think that on a scoped gun that length of the barrel has little to do with accuracy.