Quality problems with 22 cal Rimfire

[Hip's Ax]

Few (maybe several) years back when some guys were running Federal Gold Medal at the smallbore matches some folks encountered misfires. They'd recock and try again but some still wouldn't go. This is especially annoying in a custom match barrel as many won't eject an unfired round due to the amount of bullet engraving present as set up by the smith. They had to dig them out with a screwdriver.

They would save the problem rounds and later pull the bullets and dump the powder onto a white piece of paper to look for primer material in the powder. They would also look down into the case with a flashlight to verify that the round had a ring of primer in the bottom.

At this time Federal's GM primer compound was green and easy to see if it had shattered from the firing pin strike as flakes of green would be seen in the dumped powder. Federal had two problems, most prevolent was no primer compound in some rounds and to a lesser extent insensitive primer compound.

[Gussy]

I've had the best luck cleaning gunk out of my ruger as follows:

Remove the wood.
Lock the bolt back.
Use a dental pick to clean the chunks out of the bolt and extractor recess, case rim recess.

REALLY hose it down from every angle with starting fluid. ONLY DO THIS OUTSIDE AND BE UPWIND. Allow some air out time.

Reoil with small amount of good sythetic oil.

[NoDakJak]

All the answers above may be correct. I maintain the local range and see a lot of cartridges laying around that have misfired and have experienced them myself. One thing to check for is whether there is an indentation in the edge of the chamber where the tip of an over long firing pin can hit it when dryfiring. I have seen many cases of this and have purchased a special swaging tool to force the metal back into place. A severe case of this may cause sticky extraction as the brass expands around the extruded steel.
Crumby ammo definetly is the problem in many cases. I had several thousand rounds of MkII Winchester ammo that suffered numerous misfires. Then there can be the opposite problem. In 1961 I checked a Model 75 Winchester match rifle out of Special Services at Naval Air Station Fallon, Nevada for use in reducing the Jckrabbit population. I was using Winchester Hollowpoints. I was shooting across the top of my car and my final shot left me laying on my back on the ground. Tempororarily blind in both eyes. Armory personell sold me later that the rifle was shipped to Winchester. The entire rim had been blown off. The case was brazed into the chamber and the case head had been brazed to the bolt face. Winchester informed the Navy that it had been caused by a million ot one accident with a gross overcharge of priming compound. The Navy scrapped the rifle and i ended up wearing glasses. Neil

[Ed Barrett]

I've had problems with Federal 22LR's, maybe one in 100 won't fire. Recock ans try again still nothing, Rotate 90 degrees and about half fire. I have not gone to the extent of pulling bullets and checking primer distribution or anything like that. I went to Aguila standard Vel. hollow points and I'm on my fifth brick and have not had any problems at all.
A few years ago I got a bunch of 22's from a friend of mine who bought a house and in the garage were several bricks of various make 22LR, 22longs and shorts. From the markings on the boxes the newest stuff was 15 years old and had been stored in an unheated and uncooled garage for at least 6 years. I shot that stuff for a couple of years and I can't remember ever having a misfire. The brass was a little green but it worked fine.

[KCSO]

22's are not what they use to be, in particular the cheap stuff. I got ahold of some S and W 22 ammo years ago and had 5 misfires of out of every box of fifty. Sent it back to S and W and they replaced it with equally shoddy ammo. At that time I switched to Federal and had good luck
Lately it has been Remington in the 550 boxes and there are not firing about 1 out of 50-60. Since I test guns and have several to swap off I KNOW that this is an ammo problem. For the most part it seems to be poorly spun primer as if you hit the rim in different locations sooner or later the rounds will go.

In the 10-22 you do need to make sure the breech face and bolt are clean or the bolt won't seat fully and that will contribute to problems.

[HamGunner]

It is probably a miracle that the new mass produced 22 ammo will shoot as good as it does, with them producing it zillions of rounds a day. I started noticing more and more problems about 15-20 years ago, and I finally went out and bought a few boxes of every brand that I could get my hands on and spent about a week or two checking them all out for accuracy and functioning in a heavy barrel 10-22 Ruger.

Nothing seemed to make any sense as most of the old standby's that used to shoot well seemed to be only so-so. Many of the cheaper boxes shot better than the expensive stuff. I checked them all at the same time through a chronograph and consistancy was really sorry with most of the inaccurate ones having a wide range of deviation.

I picked out the best ones and only bought them for years and then even they seemed to start having that pop, pow, pow, pow, pop inconsistant ignition and velocity variation. I was constantly searching for a consistant brand. Some worked better than others, but I finally decided that it was futile to expect accurate 22 ammo such as it used to be years ago.

Winchester Superspeed ammo that I believe was manufactured in Austrailia was looking like the best for me, then for some reason it was not being imported anymore. My supply ran out and I just stopped shooting 22 as much.

Rifle magazine advertises a micrometer tool that checks the rim thickness of your 22 ammo and it can be sorted into piles according to brass thickness and therefore consistant primer strikes. Most serious match shooters segregate theirs and I suppose if we want to get accurate ammo these days, we will all have to do the same. Unfortunantely.

[Johnw...ski]

It's not always the manufacturers fault. Years ago I saw a UPS guy drop a case of Remington .22 Target from about 4 feet onto the floor at my favorite gun shop, guess what? there were a lot of misfires in that case.

John

[Ricochet]

With standard velocity .22LR in rifles, or high speed in pistols, the average MV is often right at the speed of sound. Relatively small velocity variations can then cause the bullet to exit the muzzle supersonic or subsonic, making a big difference in the sound of the shot when the actual velocity variation may not be too bad.

[w30wcf]

For the past few years, I have shot a few thousand rounds of PMC Scoremaster made by Aquila and stated to have Eley priming. Never had a misfire!

And the other great thing about it was that it shot as well as the much more expensive Wolf Target in my rifles.

Unfortunately, PMC Scoremaster is no more but Aquila Standard Velocity with Eley priming appears to be just as good.

w30wcf