So, a few years back I was moving the man cave to its new location, I finally got a chance to organize all the spare parts I had in various places. One box held all my 10/22 spares and I discovered I was 75% on the way to having another 10/22, all I needed was a barrel and a few small parts. I already had an all black stock (Hogue molded plastic, a leftover 10/22 receiver I picked up at a flea market, bolt, and trigger group stripped). I wanted to keep it as light as possible so I started looking for light barrels and found the pictured carbon fiber barrel at Midway USA on sale. Once the barrel and other small parts arrived I started the build. I added a Volquartsen trigger kit to the build when I started to put the trigger group together. The rail was a leftover LaRue rail for 10'22's. The scope was a older Leupold 3-9X VX1 (I think) glossy finish I picked up in trade somewhere. Duplex reticule. Rings were in the box of parts. Project leftovers.
Anyway, the build went well. Until the barrel install. The barrel was super tight going into the receiver and it went in by hand about 25% of the way and stopped. I foolishly decided to mount the V-block and used screw pressure to force the barrel the rest of the way in until it was seated. All was fine I thought.
First range session it was a jammatic. Would not feed more than 3 or 4 rounds before getting a failure to feed or failure to eject. I got frustrated trying to diagnose the problem and the rifle ended up in the back of the safe for about 2 years untouched.
Last week I decided to try and find out what was wrong. I suspected that I had the barrel indexed incorrectly. But when I removed the V Block I could not get the barrel to budge from the receiver. I googled solutions and one of the first results was a post here about an easy way to remove a stuck barrel.
This is the post I found:
www.rimfirecentral.com
And it worked like a charm. I had all the wood parts lying around my shop. The barrel popped out as soon as I cranked down on the C-clamp. An ingenious trick to remove stuck 10/22 barrels.
Once I had the barrel out I opened the receiver channel by about .003-005" using 600 grit sandpaper. Then I polished it to a mirror shine using fine abrasives, in steps, finishing with flitz on a cotton wheel. The receiver channel was mirror bright. I gently sanded the Volqauartsen chambered end the same and did the same polish finish. At the end the barrel slid into the receiver about 90% of the way and stopped. Gentle screw pressure seated it the remainder of the way with little effort. I made sure to index the extractor cut dead center in the extractor using numerous test fittings.
A range trip confirmed the problem was fixed. I ran about 600 rounds in 25 round mags of several types of ammo and I only had 1 or two failures to fire (I attribute this to ammo age as some of the mags were loaded with Federal .22LR from the early 1990's).
I ran 5- 25rd mags of CCI standard velocity (my go to ammo for suppressor use) and function was 100%.
Love this rifle now. I've been sniping rats at a buddy's farm (yesterday) and it was quiet and accurate. Very light and easy to handle with the suppressor mounted.
The only drawback to this rig is that the barrel heats up fast. Long strings of 25 round mag dumps and the pattern will open up like a shotgun group. As long as shots are evenly spaced and the barrel remains somewhat cool its very accurate and holds impact very well.
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Anyway, the build went well. Until the barrel install. The barrel was super tight going into the receiver and it went in by hand about 25% of the way and stopped. I foolishly decided to mount the V-block and used screw pressure to force the barrel the rest of the way in until it was seated. All was fine I thought.
First range session it was a jammatic. Would not feed more than 3 or 4 rounds before getting a failure to feed or failure to eject. I got frustrated trying to diagnose the problem and the rifle ended up in the back of the safe for about 2 years untouched.
Last week I decided to try and find out what was wrong. I suspected that I had the barrel indexed incorrectly. But when I removed the V Block I could not get the barrel to budge from the receiver. I googled solutions and one of the first results was a post here about an easy way to remove a stuck barrel.
This is the post I found:
Removing a tight barrel the easy way (big pics)
Ever had a really tight-fitting barrel that didn't want to come back out of the receiver? I have. This time it's a Volquartsen that I installed with a mallet. I wanted to fix the beat-up finish on the receiver so I needed to separate the barrel from the receiver. I decided to build a fixture...
www.rimfirecentral.com
And it worked like a charm. I had all the wood parts lying around my shop. The barrel popped out as soon as I cranked down on the C-clamp. An ingenious trick to remove stuck 10/22 barrels.
Once I had the barrel out I opened the receiver channel by about .003-005" using 600 grit sandpaper. Then I polished it to a mirror shine using fine abrasives, in steps, finishing with flitz on a cotton wheel. The receiver channel was mirror bright. I gently sanded the Volqauartsen chambered end the same and did the same polish finish. At the end the barrel slid into the receiver about 90% of the way and stopped. Gentle screw pressure seated it the remainder of the way with little effort. I made sure to index the extractor cut dead center in the extractor using numerous test fittings.
A range trip confirmed the problem was fixed. I ran about 600 rounds in 25 round mags of several types of ammo and I only had 1 or two failures to fire (I attribute this to ammo age as some of the mags were loaded with Federal .22LR from the early 1990's).
I ran 5- 25rd mags of CCI standard velocity (my go to ammo for suppressor use) and function was 100%.
Love this rifle now. I've been sniping rats at a buddy's farm (yesterday) and it was quiet and accurate. Very light and easy to handle with the suppressor mounted.
The only drawback to this rig is that the barrel heats up fast. Long strings of 25 round mag dumps and the pattern will open up like a shotgun group. As long as shots are evenly spaced and the barrel remains somewhat cool its very accurate and holds impact very well.
