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My new to me Model 1121

7K views 50 replies 9 participants last post by  Tom_in_MO 
#1 · (Edited)
Picked up an 1121 today at my fave LGS. After trading in a few inexpensive guns, price OTD was $199. Pretty much in safe-queen condition; probably not a lot of rounds downrange. The Ruger website's SN lookup feature lists it as a 1996. Metal TG, 5.5# pull weight. Normal stock Ruger innards.

Took it apart and lubed it. It was already pretty clean, but ran some wet and dry patches. Pulled the TG and put in my Brimstoned BX, 1.6#. Added a sling stud for a bipod. Torqued the TD screw to 12 in-lbs.

Off to the range tonight! Gonna take some SK Pistol Match Special, after seasoning the barrel with SK Magazine. Later I will probably raid my sporter 10/22 for its JWH bolt, and Kidd guide rod/handle/spring. Gonna find out if it needs to be Randyized! :D

In the pic below, I have already swapped the TGs. Also, it's now wearing my Vortex Crossfire II 6-18x40.
 

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#35 ·
That is good news on the 'target mdl'! No tomato stake there :bthumb:
I expect you well know, but I'll pitch it out, it isnt just the dia., the length also matters. You might think on matching the chamber/throat oal to the ammo you find it likes best and optimizing it by facing the barrel breech and shoulder a smidge.
Or not......
At this point in my life I tend to take each project to a satisfaction level for me rather than seeing how far I can go. I Know, for a certainty, that I can just go un-safe the Martini MkIII Int. if I want my 'ultimate'; I dont have try to make the 10/22 approach it (lol).
 
#36 · (Edited)
Thanks for the advice. I think I'm gonna keep this barrel as is, other than facing or at least polishing the breech like you say. The only other mod I am strongly thinking of is a Kidd two-stage, 8oz/8oz. But first I want to see if more can be coaxed out of my Brimstone BX. Cheers!
 
#37 · (Edited)
Got my .020" wire today and have begun experimenting with it. I wound a piece of this wire into a torsion spring and installed it in place of Brimstone's in my BX trigger.

So far, it's looking like it's too light to get a reset, even with the lower-power Wolff sear spring. But here is what's interesting: with the Wolff sear spring and the .020" wire replacing the Brimstone torsion spring, trigger pull is a consistent 1.0#. But you have to manually reset the trigger with your trigger finger.

Re-installing the Brimstone torsion spring but keeping the lower-power Wolff spring is giving me a consistent reset, and a pull of 1.25 - 1.50#! It's basically a question of the relative strengths of the reset spring, whether the stock Ruger one behind the trigger or a torsion spring like Brimstone's, and the sear spring.

The feel is this: a 1mm takeup to the wall, then a quick creep before the trigger breaks. Very nice, and noticeably better than the 1.75# I had before.

I could perhaps cut the Wolff sear spring a coil to get it even lower, and then maybe the .020" wire would be able to reset it. That might then give me a pull weight of 1.0# with a reliable reset. But bear in mind also that so far this is just bench testing. I will be able to actually shoot the gun on Sunday to verify (or disprove) success.

Cutting the Wolff sear spring might make it unable to hold the disconnector. If that were the case, I don't know if you would have full auto or a single-shot rifle. Once I determine if the Wolff sear spring works properly at the range with the Brimstone torsion spring, I will look at cutting the stock sear spring, since I will now have an extra. I do not see that Wolff will sell you just the reduced-power sear spring.

Another possibility: I just received the Kidd pull weight tuning spring kit, for use with the Kidd "Trigger job" kit, with five springs and a slave pin for the trigger pin. The lightest spring (grey) seems lighter than the stock sear spring, and is 1/3 longer, .50" vs .37". It does fit in the sear and disconnector pockets for the sear spring. So I might experiment with cutting that one too. Stay tuned.
 
#38 ·
Did some more BX trigger experimentation this morning.

I discovered a stash of 7 Wolff reduced-power trigger return springs I forgot I had. One was sacrificed for experimentation. Long story short, after trying lots of combinations, I could get the pull weight down to .75# either with a drastically-cut Wolff return spring in the sear, or the Wolff reduced power sear spring, when using my .020" wire. But no auto reset, had to do it manually.

With either Wolff spring, when I put the Brimstone torsion spring back in, I got good reset again, and >=1.5# for the cut Wolff return spring, and <=1.5# for the Wolff sear spring. So the Wolff sear spring stays. If I want extreme low weight, I can use the .020" torsion spring and live with the manual reset. But for more common usage, I will probably stick with the Brimstone torsion spring.

I am now sourcing .023" music wire to see if I can find the sweet spot--light as possible with reliable reset.
 
#39 ·
Tom, a spring is a lever, and a coil spring functions via the dia. And length while a leaf does it via thickness/taper and length. A torsion spring can work in rotational (as in a torsion spring car suspension) or, as in this case, just like a leaf. Cutting a coil or leaf shorter in any of these applications actually stiffens the lever; ie, less length of spring doing the work.
With a coil you can compress to just shy of coil bind (max length) and tune with the wire dia.
With a leaf you work with the thickness and taper over the length to get the 'action' you want.
With a wire 'leaf', in this application, you have dia. and length between the fulcrum points, those points are the given leaving just the dia. and the manufactured tolerance for 'tension'; ie, one brand wire can well be different than another.
The interplay between the moving parts and the types of springs is more complicated than it seems, as you are experiencing. Probably why those pesky engineers get the big bucks..... And cutting coil springs to 'lighten' spring rate is SO common as to have become the norm, but.....it doesnt. We cut, then often stretch the spring out to get the function but if we had a spring gauge to test we would find we had increased the spring rate. Counter-intuative, I know.
 
#41 ·
Thanks. I knew some of this and forgot some.

Picked up a .023" coil spring at Ace Hardware. Uncoiled it and shaped it like the Brimstone spring. Didn't do the reset. Decided to declare victory and just use the Brimstone torsion spring with the Wolff reduced power sear spring. Back to 1.25 - 1.5#. It'll have to do unless I go Kidd two-stage.

Now to work on the CZ 457 ProVarmint I just picked up today.....
 
#43 ·
Shot the 1121 today with some Eley. It did OK. But I was having issues with the ammo itself not firing. This is most likely a firing pin issue, but only ever seems to happen with Eley. Out of 45 rounds fired today, about 10 gave me non-strike issues. All three types of ammo BTW.

It might be a feature of this particular JWH bolt, or maybe 10/22 bolt design in general. Does anyone else have such issues with Eley ammo?

Group 1 of the Edge was cold bore. First round is the CB one, second round at 7 0'clock from it. Then the group settled down. Numbers are with and without the CB shot.

In every gun I have ever shot, Edge has outperformed Match and Tenex. Guess I need better guns (cough Anschutz cough).
 

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#45 · (Edited)
Shot the 1121 today (along with my CZ 457 Trainer) at an outdoor range at 25, 50 and 100 yards. Temp was in the high 50s. Shot SK Magazine, groups measured CTC. Used a $42 Chinese CV Life 6-24x50 scope with AO. Set it on 12X @ 25, 24X @ 50 and 100.

25 yards
First group was warmers/lubers for this ammo, so not too impressive. Group 1 is .58" total. Group 2 was much better, the flyer notwithstanding.

50 yards
Left and right groups are reasonable, with decent 4-shots. Middle group is weird. Forgot to measure it: 0.85" CTC, but two shots in lower right hole.

The 2-shot and 3-shot groups circled in red are part of my holdover experiments with the scope, i.e. using a different elevation tic mark than the actual crosshairs. Need to experiment more.

100yards
My shooting at 100 didn't go well.....I used a different, much larger 8" bullseye target; but everything went low, due to my sighting in on the small target @ 50 and then shooting at the bull on the big target, using the crosshairs. All 15 shots missed completely! So I used that target for the CZ.

Still a fun day at the range. Having gone twice now within a week, my itch is scratched for a little while, and I can go back to 25-yard indoor shooting until we get another warmer day.
 

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#46 ·
Based upon your hold-over trials it appears using the 'tick' as the "aim small, miss small" tightened things up. Might reconsider using the crosshairs intersect.
 
#49 ·
Howdy. Well, first of all, Full Disclosure: It is 1:15 AM here, and I am an old man, so take what I say with a few grains of salt.

That said, I seem to think that those of you out there are missing a few things when you surmise that you should be able to predict the size of a group at 100 yards by simply doubling the size at 50 yards. Seems like that might be true if you were "shooting" a laser beam, with no drop. Hoeever, as we all know, the path a firearm projectile follows is an arc. Even worse, it is not an arc that is simple, like a section cut out of a circle, but rather an eccentric arc, with the drop/distance a higher value the further you get from the point of origin. Additionally, usually, somewhere between 50and 100 yards, with a lot of .22 ammo, there is a transonic transition that introduces instability into the projectile path. Add in the wind, which is inconsistent, and all the other variables, and I just don't think a simple extrapolation is feasible, or accurate. Just sayin'.....

OS
 
#51 · (Edited)
Took my 1121 to the outdoor range a few days ago and shot three 5-round groups @100 yards. Bipod, rear bag, 24X scope, SK Pistol Match Extra. Zero wind. I pre-seasoned the barrel to the oily SK lube with 20 rounds of SK Magazine. Not wild about using up too much of my best ammo in these times.....

Each group had a flyer, which I attribute to my head not being fully in the game; plus the bipod was a traversing/rolling type. Next time I will use a non-moving bipod.

Group sizes for 4 of 5 shots: 0.54", 0.75", 0.75". Pretty much exactly as predicted in post #48. As set up, this gun is not at all flyer-prone, so it was probably all me.

As set up. About $800 invested in the gun, with these parts. My most accurate 22 rifle.
Kidd drop-in trigger kit
JWH bolt
Kidd bolt handle/guide rod/spring
auto bolt release mod
Bushnell 6-24X AO scope
 
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