Make Ruger 10/22 & SR22 look like AR15

Sprucing up the Ruger .22 Rifle into a M4 look alike

Anyone who has a Sr 22 probably loves the original M16 look that the rifle was designed to replicate.

Though it comes close, its not quite there yet. Yes you can get to Nordic components & buy some accessories, but they are very expensive, heavy, & hard to source. And unfortunately Nordic isnt the most interested in selling to overseas buyers either, cant blame them.

In this article, Ill point you to a few cheap cosmetic things that will give your SR22 that real assault M16/M4 look.

First, youll need to ensure your magazine doesnt give away the fact that its a .22

An original Ruger 25 round banana mag is also available, but its too skinny & gives away that its a .22LR calibre rifle. Also, in a place like New Zealand, you need an E cat license, else youre in trouble using a 25 round mag.

Well, here is a solution, a new trader on trademe called kiwistocks

And theyre also on facebook now

KiwiStocks on trademe makes these little dummy magazine extensions to fit any original Ruger 10 round rotary mag.
They just clip into the bottom & give your Ruger mag the .223 M16 magazine look!

No modifications of any kind needed, & they are easily removable & re-attachable.

Ok, its just plastic, but hey, the point of this exercise is to make the SR22 look sexy, & this little mag does it well.

Ive seen stuff like this on US sites as part of complete kits they sell to turn a Ruger 10/22 into a tommygun, but this is new, & its homegrown, love that!

The same kiwistocks fellow also sells a M16 style replica muzzle compensator :)

It slides onto your barrell & just looks cool. Its made of plastic & is quite light weight but strong enough to do the job. It has no effect what so ever on hiding the flash or what not, except that it looks brilliant!

There is also a shell deflector thing

And for those of us who want to get trigger happy on the range sometimes without the spraying our fellow shooter next to us on the range, the same kiwistocks also sells a plastic Shell deflector that just mounts off the scope rail, ingenius!

And my favourite, the angled slip on sunshade for any scope, this is just awesome!

This turns gives any normal scope a more military style look. Thats pretty handy.
Otherwise you'd only get such looks only out of a double the price tactical scope.

And then you want some picatinny weaver style rails to screw onto the front grip.

There are a few people on trademe that sell those. This kiwistocks guy seems to be the cheapest, but I have never done any quality checks against the other sellers.

Im not sure if I'd personally trust ABS plastic if you actually wanted to mount something on the rail, but saying that, well made ABS stuff is pretty strong.

Then there are accessories like a replacement scope rail made of plastic.

Helps reduce the weight of the rifle, which is great coz the SR22 though not heavy, is definitely not light enough to easily carry around.

Check out the plastic replacement front hand grip area.

It looks much more like the M4 & is lighter coz its plastic. In many ways that gives it a more authentic looks because its ABS which is very close to the material used on synthetic stocks.

... And all this stuff is Made in New Zealand which is such a breath of fresh air :)

....And its CHEAP AS..!!

Customise your Ruger 10/22 - Assemble your own 22 Semi Auto

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.

Kidd trigger for the Ruger 10/22 & other Trigger options

Kidd Trigger

So the first thing you will hate about your Ruger 10/22 is the crappy trigger it comes with.

One of the most common options considered by serious shooters is to buy a custom trigger group that entirely replaces the Ruger supplied stuff. In most ways, this is a very good option.

As always, no one is paying me to write these, Im merely telling you my experience. Please feel free to share your experiences with the community by posting comments here.

The upside to buying any of the custom groups is that they usually are made completely of metal includign the housing, whereas Sturm Ruger has a lot of plastic everywhere.
But wait, before you get too happy about it like I originally did, there is a downside to all that metal.

WEIGHT BALANCING!

Please have a read on my post here on why I feel weight balancing is very important for accurate target shooting

Yes, a standard ruger already has way too much metal too close to the stock. On top of that you have your scope & mounts. You add this group & you will find your rifle balancing rather weird.

This will impact your trigger pull simply because your right hand (or left whichever is your master trigger hand) will not only be used for the let off, but also to balance all that extra weight.
For accurate shooting, the ergonimics is very important, the rifle should almost float in your trigger hand while relatively more weight should be in the front.
Not too much more in the front, but just right.

All this metal on these custom trigger groups + scope will really goof up your ruger 10/22's balance.

I would highly dicourage you from buying a steel high weaver rail machined receiver, unless of course youre going for a target style set up ith a heavy bull barel, then the balancing will come right, otherwise, you will find it quite weird to shoot, especially if lying prone.

Tony Kid's trigger group:

Tony Kidd is credited to have made the best trigger for a Ruger 10-22.
Within reason, this claim is true, but Im going to tell you some of my experiences with the Kidd trigger group. Back then he only had the 2 stage, I dont remember seeing a stage 1 group. Im glad he's made one now, & if he always used to, I didnt find it, what a bummer.
My comments are about his 2 stage group, not the other single stage trigger he sells.

Before I continue, let me tell you that this is quite possibly the best realistic attempt anyone has ever made to give a semiauto a top line fully customisable trigger, but it falls shot in certain areas to my taste where some other, cheaper alternatives win.

The Stage 1 travel distance, weight, & creep is not avoidable.
The State 2 thus engages with this intentional travel distance needed & it cant be left out.

Would you have a soft light trigger at 1.2lbs that travels 3-4mm before let off, or a slightly harder trigger at say 2lbs for a considerably shorter almost inexistent creep?

Personally, to me the most important thing in a trigger is it must break cleanly. It should be like an olympic grade match rifle, clean crisp let off. The choice is yours but I recommend a crisp break because if youre feeling it move, youre going to develop the nasty habbit of anticipating the exact pull distance on your shot your shot & potentially develop a weird breathing routine out of the situational awareness anxiety in competitons. But if you like such triggers, go for it.

The kid trigger is perhaps the most customizable Ruger trigger ever engineered so once you accept this inherent design decision, youll enjoy the group.

Also, Tony has very good after sales service, he was prompt in answering my questions & thats very useful. He was quite honest in telling me how I couldnt quite achieve the clean break I wanted with his trigger because he designed it to be a2-stage trigger & thats just how it will be.
He also said that a semi can never really have a clean break, but on that point I disagree with him because heavier triggers do break much better if you dont mind the slight extra weight, as disccused earlier.

His Kid triger group has excellent resale value even if you dont like it. So if you want to try it out for yourself despite being unsure if youll like it, its not the end of the world.

If buying, youll get to pick a sporting style curved trigger face or a target style flat balde.
This might seem not so improtant, but thats the trap I fell into.
This is most important decision you will make when buyin the Kidd trigger!

I bought the target style straight blade because I felt it would be similar to my Anschutz match rifle & would work nicely with a multitude of pull lengths, & it would look cool haha.

When I first put my kit in, it was on a rather customisable target style synthetic stock made by Fajen.
It seemed comfortable. But when I decided that the fajen wasnt as comfy because the shape on the forgrip was diggin into my left hand, I moved to the standard sporting Hogue stock.

Thats when I relised this blade trigger just wasnt as natural.

If you are going to use the Kid trigger on a sporting style stock, get the curved standard trigger, dont buy the blade, I dotn think you will like it. Infact, a curved trigger is more versatile as you can still tolerate it even on a slightly more target style stock as I later found out with my other rifles.

The choice is yours but think carefully, it has a huge impact, more than you might think.

Other trigger options:

The new Kidd single stage trigger might be the best trigger yet. If any of you have had any experiences with it, please post it here & let use all know.

If buying a complete group, the other biggest contender is the Volquartsen parts. Very nice trigger upgrades, not really adjustable, & like everything else Volquartsen, its really really pricy. if you buy every single part, its almost the same price as a Kidd single stage group for what really shouldnt be so expensive, but its very good end result.

I would prefer it to the Kidd for the reason described above, but not for the price, so, I would recommend my next option:

Upgrade your own group with some custom parts, OR even better get a gun smith to polish & install them in.
My $200 Ruger trigger group with volq spring, target sear & hammer was then polished & installed by a gunsmith. Brought the pull down to 2.15lbs with practically 0 creep. Same effect as the volquartsen for half the price. Cant complain.

In hind sight, I think all I needed was the hammer, but well, Im not going to worry about it.
If any of you have experimented with the combinations, please let us know.

2 of my mates did this polishing themselves. Their results werent as great as the professional job, but all they spent was the $90 odd on parts & thats it. Next time around, Ill polish my own parts, watch my blog for that article when it happens...

Im going to get my hands on a Timney trigger soon, watch this space. They are supposed to be the next big thing give volqs the run for its money, & the prices look pretty good.

Volquartsen Muzzle heavy target barrel for Ruger 10/22

The Volquartsen muzzle weighted target barrel

A few months ago I bought the Volquartsen muzzle weighted target barrel for a Ruger 10/22
Despite being quite pricy at NZ$500, this was very well worth the dollars spent.

No Im not being paid by anyone this is just my personal experience, the good & the bad will both be presented here.

If you want to take an out of the box Ruger 10 22 & turn it into an accurate rifle, you need to do these 2 things:

Firstly & most importantly, IMPROVE THE TRIGGER COMPONENTS!
I bought Volquartsen target sear etc & got a gunsmith to grind them in for a pristine release, & you know, it was awesome. In the past I had just put the parts in without a gun smith polishing them, & it makes a huge difference.
Have a read of my post on Ruger 10-22 triggers here for more details.

Then, add on this Volquartsen muzzle heavy target barrell.
What I love most about this barrel it can fit a standard channel ruger stock because its not thick all the way through, only toward the muzzle end.
You dont need to buy a .920 bull barrel compatible stock to fit it in.
Also, its only 16.5" long & 1.2 kg (around 3 Lbs) in weight compared to full size bull barrels of 20 inches that often are 2kg.

At this weight configuration, its very usable even when standing up as opposed to bipods or prone positions. Though I personally wish something even more lighter was available for more comfortable shooting in the standing position, this is a good start.

Fitting it in wasnt difficult, but its a lot tighter to put into your receiver V-block than a Ruger barrel. Volquartsen recommend applying a lubricant & then tapping it in with a mallet, but even then this needed some solid whacking before it was all the way in (ok I didnt mean to make it sound dodgy to some of you dirty minds out there haha)

But once in, the fit is snug & the accuracy is brilliant. It gave me the same 0.5" grouping that my bolt action CZ 452 does at 25 yards (around 23 metres)

Mine was a factory threaded version with a matching thread protector, but the complaint I had was that continuous firing would make the protector cover loose & had to be tightened often, a little bit annoying.

Also, the breech is tight, very tight. Certain types of ammo will jam. I had great results with Eley & Winchester T22 & was happy with the cheap CCI standard too. It will jam if the projectile is thick or the case rim is too thick.

Overall a nice addition to any Ruger 10-22 type semi auto rifle. Hard to get here in NZ though but keep a look out.

Last words, if you can spare NZD500 get this barrel, you will love it.
But if you cant, dont get a full weight bull barrel which is a tad cheaper, you wont enjoy it much. If you find the barrel too heavy, forget it.

The secret to shooting well is being comfortable. Ergonomics is far more important than people sometimes realise.