Well, I finally got to the range today. It was a absolutely beautiful day in North Florida: temp 60degrees, but we had a gusting wind for most of the shoot of 10-15mph with varying direction. As you might imagine, this impacted accuracy at 50 and 100 yards.

Ruger B as finished has a Butler Creek bull barrel, a over molded stock, Clark trigger with overtravel stop, recoil buffer, hammer and sear shims, extended mag release, and bolt release.
All the original parts have been polished, and the trigger return plunger radiused. The scope is a BSA 8x32x42mm with AO.



The first order of business was to zero the scope. A rough zero was obtained with Winchester Super X and then I switched to Wolf for the fine tuning at 25 yards. I fired six groups of five shots each. The group size was taken by measuring the largest deminsion of a group and subtracting .2 from it. The smallest three groups were .1". The two largest were .19", and the remaining one was .14".



At 50 yards, the groups opened up and the wind took its toll. Fourteen groups were fired. The best was .35" and the worst was 1.3"(first group fired). Three of the groups were 10 shot groups, and the rest 5 sot groups. The largest of the 10 shot groups was slightly smaller than the first, 1.3" five shot group. The smallest 10 shot group was .75". The smallest group (.35") was shot in a short lull, along with the several others below. Note the two targets with three & two shot groups. I think that this reflected the wind shifts we were having at this time.



I also shot Ruger A which has a Midway barrel and stock, and Voquartsen hammer and trigger. This rifle has been a steady performer, and has a Leupold 2x8x40 with AO. It was already zeroed, and I shot three groups with it at 25 yards. They were .19, .28, and .09" I fired two groups with it at 50 yards, one just under an inch and the other .33".




Conclusions: You can't shoot a 22lr in the wind over 25 yards! Well, you can, but you won't realize the full accuracy of the rifle. Based upon what I saw today, I believe that groups of .1" are quite doable at 25 yards and groups of .35" are doable at 50 yards in calm air. Several of the "double" groups would have been in this category in my opinion but for the wind.

What is necessary: Good ammo, a good trigger pull with overtravel stop, a good barrel, and a good scope of at least 8x, preferably a 20-24 max variable.

I made a trigger with overtravel stop by going to Home Depot, getting a #4 tap and drill bit, a #6-32x1/4 socket set screw, a drill and tap for that size screw, and drilling a hole in the hole in a factory trigger and tapping it. Considering that what I ended up with looked exactly like a $45 after-market trigger and the cost was $5 and about five minutes drill and tap it, it is money and time well spent. (The trigger is a light alloy.)

Stoning and polishing takes about an hour or two, once the trigger group is broken down. Putting the hammer shims on is easy. Putting the sear shims on can be a bear. The trick I found is to install the sear without the shims then back the pin out on one side, insert the shim and push the pin through it; then flip it over and do the same thing with the other side. Radiusing the the trigger plunger was a matter of chucking it up in my hand drill, taking a small bastard file and holding it on the turning plunger until it had the shape I wanted, then changing my file for a Arkansas stone for final polish.

Because of the amount of distance covered by the mil dot at 22lr ranges, I did not find any particular advantage in that system. A good clear scope with at least 8 power is necessary, and bigger is better. At 25 yards on 8 power, you can actually hold six o'clock on the ten ring of the target. On 18 - 20x you can do the same at 50 yards.

My next experiment is putting the original barrel back on the rifle, and seeing how it shoots with the trigger mods. The take is that the chamber needs to be tight for the rifle to shoot, but I am going to try and see how it shoots. Some of the orginal targets I fired showed promise. We'll see. Reinstalling the barrel may ultimately call for bedding the stock, but we'll just have to see. Kudude

Nice rifle you have on that scope!
Peter.

Nifty looking "black rifle". I can appreciate your comment about shooting a 22LR in the wind. The other day I was shooting my 10/22 HB using a new pressure point under the barrel, at 50 yd targets. I had a tail wind that was steady at 5mph and would gust to 20mph. Very annoying...I would get two or three shots out of a five shot group done, and then have to wait for the wind to die down so I could finish the string. Turned out ok though.