For some time around here people have been buying Ruger 10/22 rifles and immediately replacing the perfectly good barrel with something… I dunno. Fancier? More tacti-cool? Whatever, it meant that for some time the barrels could be had quite inexpensively. I bought two for $15 each. One of them I turned down into barrel liner and a pistol barrel. The other I saved for an eventual project.
As chance would have it I came across some 3/4″ x 2-1/2″ brass for dirt cheap, and decided the time had come to build a rifle. But what kind of rifle? I know the various ways that guns work, and I mulled over several options. My first time ought to be a simple single-shot. I considered variations of bolt-actions, a lever-action falling block, a tilt-breech, even a trap-door. In the end I settled on a rolling-block as the simplest ‘real’ breech mechanism.
I had no actual plans drawn up, I just headed in the shop knowing what I wanted. I’d just figure it out as I went… The one goal (aside from making a functional rifle) was that I didn’t want the end result to look like some schmuck made it in his garage.
I decided on a carbine, so I cut the 10/22 barrel to 16-1/4″. I wanted to preserve the front sight assembly so I cut it from the breech end, then turned the end down to fit into a receiver and ran a chamber reamer in to cut a new chamber. Next I set up a ‘working block,’ just a bar of steel to set up the basic geometry of the parts.
On a Remington Rolling Block part of the hammer blocks the breech from opening when the hammer is down. I opted for a simpler version of this that allows the mechanism to be more compact. When the hammer is down the breech is locked, and when the breech is open the hammer is unable to drop.
Once I had that set up I set to work on the brass. I opted for brass because I thought it would look nice and, more importantly, I was pretty sure I could mill it on my drill press with a milling vice. Turns out I was correct, and I transferred the breech-block and hammer to the new receiver. The barrel is closely fitted to the receiver, and glued in place with glass-filled epoxy.
The breech rides on a pin screwed into the frame. In the pictures the hammer is shown mounted on a bolt, but this was replaced with the same sort of blind pin that the breech uses. Once this was all working satisfactorily I added the trigger-
At this point I drilled the breech-block for the rebounding firing pin. This has a 3/16″ shaft narrowing to a bit over 1/16″ where it passes through to strike the cartridge rim. There is a short section of spring (liberated from a ball-point pen) to return the firing pin when the hammer is cocked. The hammer-end of the firing pin is slightly reduced in diameter and the breech-block is staked with a punch to hold the pin in place. Time to test!
I had some .22 blanks on hand, and fiddled with things until it would fire those reliably, then I moved up to CB Caps. Problem- while it had no problem with the copper-case blanks the brass cases of the CB Caps were too much for it. The spring just couldn’t accelerate the hammer fast enough. I tried several different springs with different thicknesses and geometry before arriving at one that worked without rendering the gun too hard to cock.
The new spring worked a treat with CB Caps, and then with .22 Long rifle. I made a side-plate for the receiver, and a trigger-guard, then is was time for the stock and fore-stock. I had a piece of Quilted Maple allocated for this and gor things cut out on the bandsaw. I fitted the tangs into the stock, then shaped it to what I wanted. I soldered a block of brass to the barrel. A screw passed through the forestock and engages a threaded hole in this block to retain the fore-grip. It’s very solid! After shaping the wood bits with the belt-sander, I stripped all the parts out of the receiver and shaped it to match.
I finished the wood with multiple coats of Fiebing’s Light Brown leather dye, then applied a hand-rubbed Carnauba Wax finish. I finished the internal parts and screws with Van’s Instant Blue and assembled it. Looks very rifle-like at this point!
I Still needed sights and a butt-plate. As it turned out I had a front-sight, and it was easy to mount in the existing dovetail. I ground a small flat on the barrel just ahead of the receiver, then filed a dove-tail for the rear sight, donated from a Kimber 1911a1. Most likely I’ll replace these sights with something more precise eventually, but they’ll do for now.
Testing with CB Caps at three yards it put five into one hole precisely at the point-of-aim. I’ll get out to the range soon and see how it does at 25 yards with .22 LR ammo.
As it sits the carbine is 33-1/2″ overall with the 16-1/4″ barrel. It weighs 4.65lbs. It balances dead-center of the action; it’s a pretty handy little package for small game or target shooting.
I’m pretty jazzed about this project; it’s gone very well with fewer bobbles than many previous projects. The polished brass receiver looks good and the wood is gorgeous. With more coats of wax and polishing it will be spectacular. I can hardly wait to get it out to the range.
Michael Tinker Pearce, 7 Feb, 2018