"Life Expectancy" of 22 Handguns

[.38 Special]

Any consensus here on how often you need to clean a .22 barrel?

Nope. You've got the hard core guys - "My drill instructor taught me to clean my gun every five minutes so that's what I do, dadgum it!" - and the lazy ones - "If it stops working, I'll clean it" - and the great unwashed middle - "Yeah, I run a brush through it and wipe it off each range session, which seems to have worked so far" - and they all hate each other. You've likely started a new war just by mentioning the topic.

 

[Jimbo80]

I expect all to be running strong for my great-grand-kids.

I just hope mine are interested in Great Grandpa's guns instead of the new Apple Tri-Polymer Modulated Pulse Pistols. I'm guessing many of our great grandfathers hoped the same thing.

 

[zaitcev]

Walther PPQ 22 has an aluminum slide. They added steel inserts where necessary, for example at the area of contact for the slide stop. However, it runs on rails and I'm sure it wears out quicker than a real PPQ. Wear and tear is a fact of life.

 

[SDGlock23]

I've got a Buckmark Camper model I bought back in the late '90's and it's still running strong.

 

[ontarget]

Point being, you are basically never going to wear out a .22LR pistol unless you shoot more than 99.9999% of people.

If you shoot all those people you will have a hard time finding a shooting buddy to go to the range with you. LOL.

 

[LoonWulf]

I've got a Buckmark Camper model I bought back in the late '90's and it's still running strong.

Same 'cept for a broken firing pin. THOSE suck to replace, Browning changed the design and wont replace a broken "flat" pin, you have to replace the the whole slide. I found a guy making them tho and bought a couple of spares.

 

[Hal]

Shoot 200 rounds a week & that's 10,000 rounds per year - every year for 10 straight years - to get to 100,000 rounds.
I've mentioned before that I have a Ruger .22/45 that I managed to put over 100,000 rounds through in about a year.
I shot very frequently - almost daily - for that year.

Other than a tiny worn spot near the muzzle, the gun looks the same as the.22/45 I bought that will someday replace it.
Nothing has broken on the gun - the bore appears as new - despite being fed only junk bulk ammo, I don't recall any misfires, stoppages or failures to feed failures to fire.
There probably were a couple, but, none I can recall.

I field stripped the gun and gave it a thorough cleaning after each outing. Matter of fact, I became so adept at breaking down and putting back together a Ruger Mark II series, I could do it three times in less than 60 seconds.

 

[film495]

IMHO you're more likely to have a barrel go EOL from neglect and pitting/rust than from shooting it for most people. The amount of ammo for a .22 to wear out, no idea, but - if you make it there and accuracy just sucks or you run into problems, you can just put a new barrel on it and start over.

 

[Meeks36]

Any consensus here on how often you need to clean a .22 barrel? I've heard from never to often.

Grandpa taught me to only clean if and when accuracy falls off. Then put a 100 or so through to season the barrel. I think you can do more damage over cleaning it. Or tis what ive read.

 

[SGW Gunsmith]

Probably 1.5 centuries, really.

.22LR was introduced about 1880--that's 140 years, and there are working examples from that age as well.

Modern versions will likely out live those originals, which will remain in circulation as well.

.22 rimfire ammunition was pretty tame back then though. When ammunition manufacturers started mixing black powder with smokeless, many owners got the wrongful advice that cleaning often was not needed. I've done quite a bit of barrel relining on many of those older, vintage Stevens Favorite rifles and I've not seen one of those that still had identifiable rifling in the bore. Somebody once opined that after shooting some of that Lesmok .22 rimfire ammunition you could almost watch the bore begin to rust if immediate attention was not attended to.
Also, look at some of the .22 Long Rifle rimfire ammunition these days. Some has velocities of 1400 to 1600+ FPS and Aguila has a Long Rifle round that churns out 1800+ FPS, if I remember correctly.
I must agree that the Ruger Mark pistols are built "tank tough", and with Standard and High Velocity (1200 FPS) these pistols will no doubt last a long time, but with some of the "Hyper Velocity" (1600+ FPS) the hope for grandchildren inheriting any of these pistols is most likely nil. Here is a bolt stop pin that I pulled out of a Ruger Mark II Bull Barrel Target whereby the young owner admitted his use of "lots" of CCI Stingers. Pretty hot .22 ammunition:

The front face of this bolt stop pin has been impregnated with the shape of the bolts rear end and this pin is slightly bent. What wasn't apparent, is how the rear of the bolt stop pin hole in the receiver is a bit elongated from the impact of the bolt and the "recoil impulse energy" generated by the CCI Stingers.

 

[Mosin Bubba]

Put me in the decades-old invincible Mk II club. Sucker doesn't even jam.