Quote:
Originally Posted by DonVoigt
You do not need to strip the pistol to clean it.
A good wipe will do.
After 2 or 5 thousand rounds, you may want to take it apart as you have in the picture. Depends on which brand of cartridges you use, some are much "dirtier" than others.
More .22s are ruined by excessive cleaning than they ever are by firing. JMHO.
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Cleaning can be done in many ways, and there's definitely a chance that you'll damage the gun (especially the barrel) by careless cleaning. The worst example I have seen was probably a P.38, advertised as "mint". The vet had brought it back after WWII, and since then he had wiped it down with oil several times a year "to dust it off and preserve it". I don't know what kind of oil he used, but the rag the gun was wrapped in looked like it had served since 1945 and was probably as abrasive as fine grit sandpaper. There was not much bluing left on that gun, but it was sure clean and shiny.
Anyway, clean ammo will save you a lot of cleaning, especially in 22s. The cheap bulk pack will usually leave a lot of soot and grit in the gun, to the point that some of my guns will gunk up and malfunction after 50-100 rounds. After I installed a bull barrel in my 10/22, I found that the mag would jam after 30-40 rounds. I finally realized that the new barrel was leaving much more grit in the action (tight barrel, more back pressure, ejects before the grit blows out the muzzle...?), and a lot of this ended up in the mag. I had lotsa fun cleaning those 10/22 rotary mags, but (knock on wood) I haven't had any problems since I discovered the miracle of clean ammo. Dry lube helps too, all I usually do is to run some lead cleaner through it now and then (always cleaning from the chamber end), the rest can be removed with compressed air and a quick wide-down.
The best bang for the buck IMO is Federal AutoMatch, with Blazer as a close second. These are pretty clean, and the accuracy is better than I can use, at least in a handgun. The 10/22 will shoot about 1 MOA at 100 yards with AutoMatch, could be better but definitely acceptable with relatively cheap ammo like that.
BTW: I have drilled a hole in the rear of the receiver on the 10/22, this makes it possible to clean the barrel from the chamber end. It's a good way to preserve the barrels on these guns, and it makes me wonder why Ruger didn't make the receivers like that to begin with.