We encounter an extremely small number of misfires in 22 LR ammo.

But, it depends on the rifle too.

Worse offender we have is Kimber's PRO VARMINT. This rifle has an adjustable firing pin - one can adjust its protrusion.

No matter how one does it, it still misfires more than any rifle we have ever had.

Frankly, the idea behind this adjustment seems very silly.

quote:

Originally posted by Saeed:
We encounter an extremely small number of misfires in 22 LR ammo.

The age of the ammunition seems to affect matters too, ten-year-old rimfire ammunition gets a little dodgy, and I suspect the bullet lubricant ages poorly too...

By preference, I shoot old single shots. Some designs, particularly the Winchester Single Shot, experience a much higher rate of misfires than other types. The firing pin hits the rim opposite the spring-loaded extractor/ejector & cushions the blow. I have never had a misfire with Ballard. With my Farrow, a redesigned firing pin eliminated misfires, but I suspect the poor condition of the original was the source of problems.

I have been testing Shorts for accuracy off the bench with a Stevens-Pope, 44.5 action, chambered for Shorts, with a gain-twist barrel. I went to a great deal of trouble to acquire a couple of cases of mixed types of match grade Shorts. The oldest tried were Remington intermediates, made in 1946-47. No misfires to date with those, or with Eley, Fiocchi, Lapua, CCI, or the Polish military stuff. Accuracy begins to deteriorate after about 40 years (+/-).

I also serve as a rangemaster at an "open to the public" range. After closing, the rangemasters sweep up, collecting all the fired cartridge cases and other debris. For safety, we pick out all the misfires. Often, we try them again, but duds are duds. Mostly they seem to be Remingtons or other bulk packed stuff, almost always of recent US production.

We have some ammo from CCI - BLAZER. Some ammo from Federal - GOLD MEDAL. Some ammo from Remington - HIGH VELOCITY.

All of which is many years old, may be 30 years or more.

None of them misfire.

We have some Russian made ammo, almost every second one misfires.

All this is the reason for never recommending a 22 pistol for defense !!

I have quit buying any Remington rimfire ammo due to a high number of misfires with Golden Bullets (7-8 years old), Subsonics (less than a year old), and 6122 SV Target (3-4 years old). I fire a variety of .22 rifles and handguns and none of the duds have fired in any variety of .22 guns.
On the other hand, my friend is still shooting the Remington HV ammo we bought together in a 1980 bulk buy. He has the ammo loose stored inside in sealed Tupperware containers. Every year I go visit him, he pulls down a pint container and we shoot it. Never had a single misfire.

I tend to agree with the age part and also the cheaper, probably "seconds" ammo.

I bought a brick of Super X HP sub-sonic rounds about 8 years ago. They were on sale when I bought them. I pulled them off the back of the shelf when I got my suppressor a few months back. They are old enough now that the brass is even showing spots of corrosion.

I had about one round out of 12 in all my .22's that FTF. Two autos and one bolt gun. With the first, an auto pistol, I thought it was just a dirty gun. Cleaning didn't make any difference. All had decent firing pin strikes. Most fired with the second try after reloading so the firing pin would strike at a different location.

These are OK for plinking but wouldn't trust the reliability of any .22 in any type of self defense roll. I don't use my .22s for any type of self defense roll anyway so I suppose it isn't an issue for me. There are a few mini revolvers out there that are advertised as self defense weapons.

I brought a couple thousand round of Aguila years back that had more then 50% miss fires.

I have had miss fire with most brands over the years not a lot but enough to make it note worthy.

Worse than a misfire is a squib, and my 13 year old grandson had one.

Before I handed Sam the gun — a Smith & Wesson 617-6 revolver — I told him that if anything didn't seem right, he should put the gun down immediately and tell me.

He's a very bright and obedient kid, and as I kept an eye on him from a few feet away, he shot, carefully put the gun down, and called me over.

He told me his last shot didn't feel like the ones before it had.

I checked, and there was a bullet lodged in the barrel. It was easy enough to get out with a cleaning rod, but I was chilled. And he, his father and I had a discussion about this later, and how important it is to exercise situational awareness when shooting.

Can't remember the ammo we were using . . . probably Peters or Federal Champion.

Well, I tried keeping track of the duds we get here.

In 8 different rifles, with about 25,000 rounds fired, we had a grand total of 2 misfires!!

One was an Eley TENEX round.

And one was a Winchester Western 1220 FPS bulk pack.

I took both rounds apart.

Both had powder, and both had priming compounds.

So what had gone wrong is a mystery to me.


We did have a lot of misfires, from different ammo, in a Kimber Pro Varmint rifle.

WE found the problem was due to the rifle - and I think it is basically a bad design idea anyway.

They have a screw at the end of the bold, one can adjust the protrusion of the firing pin.

Why they have it this way is beyond me.

We were getting more misfires than rounds that fired.

This is with the factory settings.

By playing around with it, we finally managed to get it to fire properly, but I am still at a loss of why this was done to the bolt and firing pin.