Just tossing it out as an option, it really isn't that hard to do it yourself.
Just recently, I bought a Pawnshop Bubba-special that... I am serious when I say this... someone decided to make their barrel Stainless Steel-looking with a dremel. And it as a POOR job with horrible gouges in the barrel.
But I got it for 50 dollars.
Took it home and cleaned it. Barrel was shot out and would not feed 3 rounds in a row without hanging up.
After reading Rimfire Central, I went to Hornet Products
http://www.hornetproducts.com/default.asp
And got:
18" Blued Fluted Match Barrel with Fire Sights
http://www.hornetproducts.com/ViewProduct.asp?ModelNumber=901512
And
Hornet Custom "B" Trigger Assembly
http://www.hornetproducts.com/ViewProduct.asp?ModelNumber=BBT
I opted for the Overtravel stop option:
http://www.hornetproducts.com/ViewProduct.asp?ModelNumber=OTTO
I already had a cheap Tasco scope laying around that I was going to use, so I bought:
Millet See-through Mounts
http://www.hornetproducts.com/ViewProduct.asp?ModelNumber=SE00709
I wanted the rifle to maintain a semi-stock configuration (no wild or colored stocks.)
So...
I bought a 1" Dowel and a pack of multi-grain sandpaper at Walmart. I wrapped sandpaper around the Dowel. Using the dowel, I sanded out the Barrel Channel of a Standard Birtch Stock. Once the Channel is sanded out, you have the barrel free-floated by a degree of .08 inches.
I got a Sharpie Marker out and drew a line as to where I wanted to cut off the front of the stock to remove the barrel band area. I opted for an angle that angled away from the barrel in order to give it an aggressive front end.
With a jigsaw and a vise, I cut to the OUTSIDE of my line. Then I put a flapwheel sander tip on my Dremel. Taking care and time, I sanded the end and rounded it until I got a uniform shape. I then used VERY FINE sandpaper to lightly finish the wood.
Afterwards, I stripped the stock using Dad's Stripper. After doing my home restoration, I can tell you that it is the best stripper you can buy.
Once the stock was dry, I began refinishing with Birchwood Casey Tru-Oil bought from walmart. It is basically a Linseed Oil finish with a few other things tossed in.
You MUST sand with a fine steel wool between coats. Otherwise, it will be very rough to the touch. I put a coat on, let it dry, sanded, and applied another coat over the course of a few days. I was able to put 8 coats on with one bottle of Oil.
The stock came out looking GREAT.
Because the receiver finish was badly marred when I bought the rifle, I decided to refinish it using the Brownell's Teflon Molycoat and baked it in. I put on 4 coats.
The finish is crap. It would not hold around the ejection port and the magazine well. I'll be stripping this off soon and refinishing with Duracoat. I've had VERY good results with Duracoat on 4 firearms.
At any rate, the rifle was reassembled, scope mounted (Tasco 3x9x40), and Zeroed.
I took it to a little local competition that weekend. The targets were 30 yards and you had to shoot freehand. When I zeroed the rifle on a bench, I could make one jagged hole at 30 yards. At the competition, I was able to win 3 rounds out of 9 rounds.
One in Three isn't that good until you factor this in...
Five of the times I lost, I lost to someone shooting THIS rifle. So that means the RIFLE won 8 times out of 9. An Airgun shooter with a $1K airgun won the other round.
Not too bad.
When my wife gets home with our digital camera, I can post a picture of the rifle.
My only future modifications to this rifle will be a higher quality optic and adding sling mounts to the rifle since this is also a hunting rifle (hence having back-up iron sights.)
At any rate I just wanted to let you know that if you like working on guns, you CAN make a very accurate 10/22 yourself. Prior to this project, I had NEVER toyed with a 10/22.
One word of warning.... if you take apart the trigger assembly, you may NEVER get it back together. After taking mine apart, I opted to just buy another trigger assembly pre-built. I now have a little ziplock bag of parts that will NEVER get put back together. I'd rather do a Rubik's Cube...
Hope this helps, and good luck!
-- John
