Gunky, filthy, dirty, yuchy .22 ammuntion

[230RN]

Misfires, jams, duds, and FTEs with .22 ammo....

I've found .22s in general to be sensitive to dirt on the bolt face and breech face (which leaves extra headspace) and firing pin channel (which results in a light firing pin blow), and under the extractor.

(The headspace on .22 rimfire is supposed to be 0.024" to 0.026", which is pretty tight, and I strongly suspect that converting measurements to the universal metric system in building production systems might result in some rounding errors. Just an additional thought.)

What with the waxed bullets leaving deposits all over the feeding routes and just about everywhere (especially if the gun is hot), I found, regardless of ammo quality, that I do have to brush/solvent these areas out every once in a while.

Despite my usual casualness about cleaning guns.

I also suspect that the lower pressure reduces the obturation if they happen to be  fired in a slightly oversized chamber or the brass is a smidgen hard, or both, thereby allowing blowback of all the gunk.  And with semiautos, I have no doubt that vaporized wax gets blown around in the guts when the case is extracted.

Crappy ammo just exacerbates the "dirt" problems noted above.

Just my thinking about it over 65 years of shooting.

Terry, 230RN

[Mannlicher]

for the past number of years,  with .22 LR ammunition in short supply,  the quality, at least for me, became almost secondary to the availability.  If faced with no .22 LR at all, or a box of Remington Golden,  I'd just clean the firearm more often,  and pay attention to the individual cartridges when I loaded magazines.   Chronically dirty stuff I just feed into a revolver, as they seem less sensitive than auto loaders.

[Scout26]

Yes, and with the extraordinarily high demand of that past few years; Machines get sped up, Raw material components that normally would not have passed QC now do, Finished Goods that would have failed QC get shipped to customers, and a bevy of other issues.

Having worked in manufacturing, I've seen it.   Customer wants it now, Now, NOW !!!!  And most were willing to accept a higher than normal defect rate, just to get product.

Now that "normalcy" has returned, people are starting to use that panic produced .22LR and discovering that some/much just isn't as defect free was it was in the past before the Great Panic.

[BlueStarLizzard]

...

        


Years of 4H shooting and all we shot was thousands of rounds of crap .22, AND WE LEARNED TO LIKE IT

[230RN]

First light of day pre-coffee vague recollection... wasn't there a .22 rifle with twin firing pins?  I know one of mine had twin extractors; that's not what I'm thinking of.

That thought keeps niggling at me.

Maybe it was one of those old "parlor pistols"?



X (Terry, his mark)

[dm1333]

My impression is that .22 has improved quite a bit over the years.  Some of it is still dirty but the primers seem to have really improved.  My 10/22 Take Down is a very reliable gun.

edit:  now that I think about it Thunderbolts and Armscor .22 does live up to the OP.