My gun looks like is was buried in a sand pit.

P

Pond James Pond

New member
Is it just me and my ammo, or is 22LR always this dirty?!

I really enjoy shooting my MkIII. Even my FTE issues seem to be resolving now that I am am using standard to subsonic ammo.

However, everytime I go shooting, I clean the gun afetrward and it looks like it was thrown around on a beach for half an hour!

Inside the receiver area there is a thick grey paste everywhere, even though I didn't go mad on the lube last time, and in the trigger mechanism and magwell, there was loads of oily, gritty residue. When I'm shooting, I don't put my gun in the dirt. I shelter it from any rain etc, so is all 22LR ammo like that?

Cleaning my rifle is going to take most of the afternoon!
 
I believe .22 's are the only 'heeled' rounds still on the market. Heeled means the bullet diameter is larger on the outside of the case to retain lubricant. In other words, most .22 carry some lubricate on outside of case. Non- heeled have groves INSIDE the case so they don't pick up dirt, pocket lint, ect. Some brands of .22 have gone to a dry lubricant, so as not to attract dirt and dust. That's why .22 ammo comes in those plastic containers with the slide-shut top. You have to keep 'em clean. But exposing .22's to dust and using cheaper ammo will get you more gunk build-up. Cheaper .22 use cheaper outside lubricant on the bullets. Look just above the case on a .22 round, and you'll notice some groves. Those have lubricant of some sort in them.
 
Yup, most .22 ammo is pretty filthy.

The upside is that most rimfire guns are built so they still work fine when filthy. I don't remember the last time I thoroughly cleaned my 10/22.;)
 
Yeah, and I can't remember the last time I cleaned my 60. They're made to digest anything you can chamber in them. I think I clean mine once a year, whether it needs it or not,
 
Yours is the 452, if I recall correctly? No need to lube so much- just a VERY light coat of Balllistol or whatever your prefered oil is. And, like was said before- there's really no need to clean the barrel until accuracy begins to taper off. On a bolt, I'll clean in there when it starts to feeling sluggish. Is SK or Wolf match ammo available in your area? I've found that quite clean for .22 ammo and a good place to start looking for accuracy.

Have you taken the receiver/barrel out of the stock and adjusted the trigger nut down yet? It's easy cheesy man- you can do it. This will cut your trigger pull by at least a pound.

A little more intricate- you can order a small fine semi-round gunsmith file and knock off the sharp edge of the rear portion of the locking lug groove. Mine had a terrible (i forget the term for a sharp raised lip from machining). Take the file and gently file out the sharp ridge until it feels dull and smooth because that portion seems to cause drag in the bolt. In more detail, the specific area can be found approximately 3/4" / 12mm +/- in on the left side of the receiver with the bolt removed. You'll see a groove running upwards and downwards where the locking lug rotates. Run your finger over the rear edge of that groove and you'll likely feel a sharp edge. If not, please disregard this last paragraph.
 
Yours is the 452, if I recall correctly? No need to lube so much- just a VERY light coat of Balllistol or whatever your prefered oil is.
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Mine is a 452, but this has not been fired yet. Indeed, I have only put a smearing of Forrest gun lubricant on the bolt and a teeny drop on the extractor grooves.

I will look into that burr that you described, too.

The gun that has been stricken with all this gunk is my Ruger MkIII.

Again re the lube. I used a healthy dose of ballistol to loosen all the dirt in the trigger mech and in the receiver, but I thoroughly wiped it all down, getting into all the nooks and cranies. Once that was done I only smeared the bolt of the MkIII with the gun lube and that was it...

So I'm not sure how I could use less lube!

Too much lube ...
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See above!!

Since you live in a different country, what ammo are you using?
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I have been frequently using S&B High Velocity .22s, but recently I also bought some Fiocchi: namely their MAXAC (350m/s) ammo, as well as some of their Supermatch range (320 or 300 m/s) and also some of their MAXAC Rapid Fire which is sub-sonic ammo (280m/s).
Trial and error have lead me to believe that it is HV ammo that causes my FTE problem: the bolt get thrown back too violently for the extractor. (That Volquartsen part may warrant a closer look in the future!)

Other brands I have tried have been CCI, Geko and Lapua. The cheapest is Geko at €8 per hundred. The likes of the lapua cost the same as 9mm cartridges, so I only tried those out of curiosity, but the .22 was supposed to be cheap to shoot, so....

I will say that I became very aware of the levels of gunk with this Fiocchi, but it has always been a dirty gun compared to my CFs.

I can live with it, though, if it means that the gun cycles which it has been recently.
 
yes 22 is dirty..some brands more so than others..
in a auto pistol i usually run standard (1080) velocity ammo
and have less problems with it than high velocity..

but its not always the case..depending on ammo..
some will give a FTE like you are having..
and depending on the filth level on the bolt/extractor
i may brush it off, or run a bore snake through it..

most sucessful ammo i have found that works in all my 22's is cci std velocity, federal automatch works ok as well..
some pistols will run on anything, others are a little picky, others are finicky..

on the picky pistols i have had issues with winchester, remington, cci blazer, mainly bulk ammo..shows up mainly as a FTF/FTE..

the bolt gun likes the wolf target..i'm enjoying shooting it as much as a centerfire
 
Where he's at, Mr. Pond may not be able to get CCI or Federal- or it may be higher than the stuff we pay high prices for due to import.
 
I would agree on the over-lubing.
If you're getting paste, it's not the ammunition entirely.
If you're getting an oily gritty residue, it's not entirely the ammunition. Gritty, yes; oily, no.

Back off on the lube.
I'd suggest getting all of the Ballistol out, and I mean ALL, then going to a more conventional cleaner followed by a more conventional gun oil or lube.

If you do, you don't need to "smear" your bolt, and you don't need everything very wet at all.

My 22/45 has had several hundred rounds of at least 8 different loads through it since it was new, I lubed the bolt with Break Free before starting & later wiped more on exposed bolt surfaces between sessions with a cotton Q-Tip. It has no paste or oily residue in it whatever & has not yet been cleaned.
Bolt cycles fine.

The waxy lube on .22 LR bullets can leave caked lube, powder fouling, and in some cases lead, but if your pistol is leaving a pasty or oily residue inside, that's just too much lube.
Ballistol has it's uses, largely in black powder, and it's not bad stuff, but I don't use it for smokeless.

Dry your gun out thoroughly & try more sparing use of something else.
Denis
 
"sand"

Well of course, but it's not sand. The lead-based primer in .22 rimfire ammo requires what they call a "frictioning agent" because there is no anvil in a rimfire primer like there is in a centerfire primer. And what do they use for this "frictioning agent" that's needed to generate the ignition?

Depending on whose specs you read, the primer is composed of 10% up to maybe 40% ground glass.
 
Yes My single -six is the same way,fixing to get worse,it part of the fun makes you think your a shooting fool.:D
 
Glad to hear the soot problem isn't unique to me :)

My MP161K has been totally reliable (with the exeption of two garbage ammo brands I tried), except it gets filthy after 50 or so rounds, and the last-round-bolt-hold-open (that's like a giant German word, isn't it?) stops engaging reliably after a couple hundred because of all the funk. That's more the fault of the wimpy spring on the thing, though.

I tend to run Yellow Jackets and Vipers through it, since they operate the bolt more assertively, but I have found they're pretty dirty (more powder to generated gunk, I guess), much more so than the subsonics I've tried.

I'll bet all semi .22s get nasty, simply because they are straight blow-backs that vent quite a lot of semi/unburnt powder into their guts during operation. The low pressure a .22 operates at may also contribute to unburnt powder mess, but I'm not a chemist. A sealed-breech bolt action probably stays clean forever, right?

TCB
 
I see the problem. Don't "thoroughly clean" the 22 until it starts to malfunction.
Wipe the outside down with an oil cloth and store it(unless you shoot in the rain, of course).
I've got 3 Ruger 22 pistols here that were taken out of the box, sprayed with some lube, and shot an unknown number of times so far. One or two may have had a boresnake dragged through them but that's not certain.
 
My bolt actions don't seem to get fouled up like the autoloaders. Thunderbolts were the most or among the most filthy. I think Aguilla high velocities burned cleaner and have given me very good accuracy results compared to others that did not perform quite as well. I had a 10-22 that was good for about 50 shots before gumming up the works. I keep a small stiff brush and dental pick in my range box to clear gunk out from extractors.
It's amazing to strip a 10-22, spray the action with cleaner, and see how much crud flushes out. A bolt action doesn't seem to have a fraction of the crud an autoloader has. I know it's a handgun forum, but the 22 filth can equally apply to handguns or rifles.
 
I've read that only about 50% of the powder burns in a .22 round. The rest has to go somewhere.

Our MKIII starts to get gummy after about 250-300 rounds. The action slows slightly and gets a bit gritty. Never had a failure though. Granted, we always clean it, so it's never seen more than 300 rounds without a cleaning. You might start to see failures related to fouling after about 500 rounds. Maybe more? I don't know. We've never put that many rounds downrange at one time to find out.
 
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