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Tight cylinder bores?

JohnMartin

Hot Rolled
Joined
Jul 8, 2006
Location
Cumberland, Maine
I have a Ruger Single Six, stainless, .22LR/.22mag. Was at the range the other day, noticed two things I had not seen before - although it’s been a few years since I’ve shot it.

With the .22mag cylinder, ejection was not free. The ejector rod is not quite long enough to push the .22mag cases fully out, and they would hang up at the last 1/8” or so.

With the .22LR cylinder, some brands of ammo hung up on loading, as the brass just started to enter the chamber. Winchester was bad, CCI seemed OK. May have only been a couple of chambers, but it was a PITA.

Looked at the chambers with a loupe, do not see any obvious burrs. They have sharp edges, though. Wondered if breaking the edges slightly with a countersink or scraper, or polishing out with emery paper, would be a mistake. Any thoughts?

John
 
Sounds dangerous, I will take it off you hands if you give me a dollar!

Sure would not use any kind of emery paper on it. Maybe some 600 or finer wet or dry paper used wet. You have been around here for a while. Do you have an access to pin gauges. Would want to know the dimensions of the bores right now. If they are indeed undersize, maybe contact Ruger. They like to have their stuff correct. I have heard if you send a gun to them for repairs they will replace any after market parts with originals. So they like their stuff to be "correct". If it is gaged undersize ask about warrantee if it is outside normal dates.
You have checked your ammo to make sure it is not corroded or damaged? Cleaned the cylinders with solvent and a brush, then detergent and water with a brush again? Clean as a whistle and no hardened gunk inside? Kind of odd that both cylinders are giving you trouble.
 
I have found that .22 rifles and handguns that suffer feeding or ejection problems with Winchester ammunition, are easily fixed by switching to CCI ammunition. This is true with Long Rifle or WMR cartridges.
 
I have a ruger single six with one tight chamber in the LR cylinder. Clean it chambers OK. after firing about 4 cylinders it gets tight. It's been that way since new in 1986. I have developed a strong thumb for loading.

CarlBoyd
 
Did some experimenting with the .22LR cylinder.

Two adjacent chambers are tight enough with the Winchester 36gr hollow point that they don’t want to load, one more chamber is slightly tight. All the others seem to be fine.

Tried a number of other brands that I have on hand. Winchester Super X 40gr is a bit looser. CCI Mini Mag 36gr is fine in all chambers, as is Norma Match, Norma TAC 22 and SK Match. Eley Match is loosest. Also tried some OSSI Tracer, which is very tight, and some Winchester #12 shot, which is the loosest of all.

I’ll measure some of the rounds tomorrow. I’ll probably polish out the tight chambers at some point, but until then will stay away from the 36gr Winchester.

As to the .22WMR cylinder, all rounds loaded fine. The ejector rod just barely misses pushing the fired cases completely out. I’ll have to think about making a slightly longer rod, or taking some coils off the ejector rod spring as it now bottoms out. Will probably polish those chambers as well.

Many thanks for all the suggestions,

John
 
Be careful polishing chambers. Get too aggressive and you can "bell" or "barrel" the chambers making them bigger on the forcing cone end or in the middle of the chamber and affect extraction.
 
Before I did any polishing, I would do some measuring.
This sort of info is available at the SAAMI website.

SAAMI .22.jpg
 
I did some measuring. I don’t have gauge pins, and I am not happy with using an expanding measure and measuring that with a mic, so instead I measured some of the cartridges that I’ve been using.


Here are the results. While I measured to tenths, I’ve shown results only to thousandths, as out of roundness for the cartridges was generally up to a thousandth.


Winchester 36 grain. .225 - .226 one at .227
CCI. .224 - .225
Eley. .224 or slightly under
Winchester shot. .224 or under

The Eley was the best for roundness, and had less variation than the others.

I couldn’t find tolerances in the SAAMI specs, but it certainly appears that the 36 grain Winchester was at the high end or slightly over spec.

The Eley is expensive, so I’ll probably use it just in my BSA Martini, and use the CCI in the Single Six. I’ve occasionally had feeding problems in a Marlin 39A, which may or may not be related to the Winchester ammo. I’ll have to keep a better eye on it.

When I get around to it, I’ll probably very carefully polish the loading end of the tight chambers, and try removing a few coils from the ejector rod spring. Or maybe not.
 
not uncommon in the cowboy shooting to hone polish
the chambers.
but that's on 357s an 45s with the light loads not much case expansion.
you just slick them up not remove measurable amount of material.
has no negative effect on acuracy.
 








 
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