Building the perfect Semi Automatic .22
For as long as I can remember, Ive had this vision that one day, I will own (likely have to build myself) the perfect semi-automatic rifle, a rifle that can give my bolt action a run for its money, whilst being the most comfortable gun to shoot.
The benchmark bolt action is my beloved CZ 452 American, a rifle I may never sell. It shoots better than me & I cant find anything wrong with it except its trigger which was easily fixed with a $15 CZ trigger kit. Please see my other post for details.
This might be the longest gun article I write, & will quite possibly continue to add to for some time.
So far Ive had 4 Ruger rifles & 3 Marlins. This post attempts to share my experiences from each attempt.
As usual, these are just my experiences & no one is paying me to write any of this.
Current Recommendations:
1) If you want superb accuracy, reliability & overall comfort & dont mind some extra weight
Get a 10/22 based design that you can customise the heck out of. You can either buy the receiver & trigger group, or start by buying a Ruger 10/22. Id recommend buying the whole rifle, then slowly adding components & selling off things when you dont need them. Its cheaper to do that than buy Ruger parts otherwise. Next steps:
i) Buy Volquartsen target sear, hammer & spring. Preferably get them polished & installed by a gunsmith but if not, just put them into the existing trigger group yourself.
ii) Buy a hogue stock, if you didnt buy the model that comes with it.
iii) Buy a $5 recoil bolt buffer, this little thing really does make a difference to your rifles vibration & reduce the wear on the bolt stopping pin's holes in the receiver.
iv) Invest in the $500 Volquartsen muzzle heavy target barrel. Have a read of my blog post on that barrel to know why thats my recommendation.
Thats it. Your combo will look somewhat like this once scoped:
2) Want something versatile, but more geared toward safe field use with a light safe trigger that YOU WILL MOSTLY USE WITH OPEN SIGHTS OR VERY LIGHT RED DOTs or ultra light SCOPES?
If you need to scope the rifle, go with the next option please. If you scope this config, the weight balance is not up to my recommendation & it will impact your trigger let off & your steadiness in the prone & kneeling positions.
If using minimal light optics, get a 10/22 with these options:
i) Buy a Kidd 2 stage trigger group & tune it to your liking. In my experience, its well designed in that it doesnt let off even on light trigger pull settings if you accidentally drop the rifle. Be mindful in deciding what kind of Kidd trigger blade you buy,
read my blog post for details on why that minute little thing matters.
ii) Buy a $5 recoil bolt buffer, this little thing really does make a difference to your rifles vibration & reduce the wear on the bolt stopping pin's holes in the receiver.
iii) Buy a .920 bull barrel Hogue stock, since the standard sporter stock is a narrow channel so play this smartly. It might be cheaper to buy a synthetic Ruger than by the Hogue stocked version. Dont buy the target version, Rugers bull barrel is ridiculously heavy much like most other 20 inch target heavy bull barrels. YOU NEED A WIDE .920 CHANNEL STOCK, but not the barrel.
iv) Invest in a $500 Volquartsen Carbon Fibre target barrel.
In my case, I scoped this rifle & straight away realised that my tough but comparatively heavy Burris wasnt ideal so took the scope off, & because I was not going to do much field shooting, had to reluctantly sell it off.
If you have a carbon fibre setup, for the balancing to be adequate, especially if you are going to use a trigger with a metal housing (thats extra weight) then ensure you get a very light scope. Else, your rifle becomes poorly balanced with a majority of the weight on the trigger end rathrer than the barrel end which is very unnatural to shoot steadily.
For more explanation on this, please read my previous post on Rifle Weight Balancing & its importance by clicking here.
I added a butt pad to increase length of pull, please do that if you need to.
I bought the blade trigger version of the kidd trigger group, which was not the best option, the curved sporterised trigger would be better especially if using a sporterised style hogue stock.
For thumbhole stock or a pistol grip, you might find the straight blade trigger face better, see if you can have a try of both.
I also attached a very light weight muzzle compensator, mainly because the barrel was so short I had to constantly make an effort to put the gun forward of the safe shooting line in the range, & also the barrel supports in my gun safe were higher haha. Otherwise it would wobble around in the safe.
It looked cool too but had no real bearing on the muzzle jump, all seemed the same to me.
Here is what your setup should resemble:
3) If youre on a budget & want a semi which you dont think youll ever spend dosh on to customise
Get a marlin 795 or a similar Marlin with that same action in that price class.
An out of the box marlin 795 will out perform an out of the box ruger 10/22 any day, for a cheaper price in a lighter better balanced more versatile & field usable package.
The trigger is pretty good too.
It is lighter than the Ruger 10/22 trigger but has a tad more creep, try it out. Best bang for buck.
Its a shame no one makes enough accessories for them which is why time & again I go back to the 10/22 as the primary design to build my perfect semi out of, else the Marlin would be my experimentation platform instead of the 10/22 toward the hunt for the perfect semi.
Here is the complete list of my 22 cal semi autos built to date
1) Standard Ruger 10/22 sporter, blued with wood stock.
The weight balancing on this rifle was funny when you put a scope on it, it gets too heavy on top of the trigger & that has a huge impact on how well you let off the shot. If your right hand is having to hold up more weight that your left hand, you are usually going to expect some trouble.
Have any of you noticed this? Post a comment & let me know.
This rifle was bought used, but not very old or too much use. I didnt expect it to be so bad. It shot 1.5 inch groups at 25 yards, so inaccurately that I sold it off to someone who only wanted to shoot bunnies in his backyard under 20 yards range.
It shot crappy with ever type of amo I tried, I think the barrel was to blame despite looking nice & shiny.
Thats when I started to wonder whether a ruger 10 22 will shoot well 20 years & 2000 rounds later.
My question has not yet been answered...
Have any of you owned a 10-22 & after 20 years & 2000 rounds felt it shot adequately enough? Please share you comments here.
For now, my advice, if buying a used 10/22, ensure you shoot it before you commit, else stay the hell away from it.
2) Marlin 795 semi Auto, blued with synthetic sporter stock
This Marlin was also bought used, but in as new condition after seeing some test shot cards.
It shot so well that Ive been a big admirer of these Marin semis since. An out of the box marlin will out perform an out of the box ruger any day.
Its a shame no one makes enough accessories for them which is why time & again I go back to the 10/22 as the primary design to build my perfect semi out of, else the Marlin would be my experimentation platform instead of the 10/22 toward the hunt for the perfect semi.
Despite what I had read about the durability & workmanship of the marlin as being inferior to Ruger, & all the long temr issues with micro groove barrels, let me tell you that the accuracy was so good, out of the box at 50 yards I had a 1.5 inch group out of a .22 semi. This was using all sorts of ammo, no fuss.
Now thats impressive for a $400 gun!
It has a very simple trigger assembly, & everything is light. Its the best rifle for field use, yet is very accurate. It is heavier in the front then the back, yet light overall, beautiful balancing.
The muzzle jump was also much lesser when rapid shooting. The marlin being lighter than the ruger, you would expect the opposite, but it was just brilliant.
The only downside was that the original factory synthetic stock had too much of an angle making it very uncomfortable to shoot lying prone. Your stock butt plate would be on your chest instead on your shoulder area which was not fun to use.
So I then bought an ATI dragunov style stock which was much straighter & that helped, though not entirely. It had a non free standing pistol grip, which didnt really make any difference either in prone, though very good for kneeling.
I put 300 rounds through that gun once in around 4 hours. No problem, it didnt even get as hot as the Ruger 10/22. I put maybe a total of 1000 rounds through it before selling it to the next buyer & he was happy too.
I didnt notice a single trace of so called 'inherent low life' of micro-groove barrels. Nice shiny bore, shooting beautifully.
