My %*#@&! Ruger

Add a comment about the 77/22 and read others' comments

The Ruger K77/22VMBZ is a bolt-action, rotary magazine fed .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire rifle. The metal is stainless, with a "target gray" finish, and the stock is laminated birch. The barrel is 24 inches long and is "varmint" weight. I topped mine with a silver finish Bausch & Lomb Elite 3000 3-9x40 scope.

First, if you've come to this page for help on making a decision to buy a 77/22, the short answer is that I have to recommend against it. I like the design and aesthetics of the gun, but Ruger is clearly afflicted with a lack of quality control and poor customer service. I've heard from and read posts from many other 77/22 owners. There are many satisfied owners, but an approximately equal number report significant problems. If you're happy with 50/50 odds, go for it.

If you've already bought one, and you are having trouble getting it to shoot, maybe you'll find something here that will help. I have finally produced some good groups with this gun, and you can view the target. If you have some tricks that helped you get your 77/22 to shoot, please share.

When new, my gun shot vertical and diagonal groups of 4-5" at 100 yd. Here's what I've done to try to get mine to shoot accurately:

1. Filed the front swivel stud down. Inspection of the barrel showed that the stud was making contact with the barrel.
2. Free-floated the barrel. Using sandpaper wrapped around a wooden dowel, I deepened the barrel channel until there was about a 1/32" gap below the barrel. I had to remove .2 to .25" of wood, and subsequently had to grind the front swivel stud down quite a bit. Point of aim dropped over 3 feet, out of the adjustment range of the scope. Groups did round out and shrink, however, but were still around 2" at 100 yd in no wind.
3. Replaced the gun. Even though I had kept the barrel channel straight and centered when I free-floated, the barrel would very nearly touch the left side of the barrel channel at the tip of the forend, even with the receiver held as far to the right as possible when tightening the action screws. After making some measurements, I found that the receiver was machined improperly, causing the barrel to point to the left and down (further down than usual for a Ruger). After a struggle with Ruger that lasted several months, they replaced the gun. When it was all over, I had an extra stock, extra set of rings, an extra magazine, and a lock that hadn't come with the first purchase. And an entire summer that I couldn't use a rifle that I had already paid for. The new gun didn't shoot too great, either, about 1.8" at 100 yd.
4. Sent the replacement gun to Connecticut Precision Chambering. Randy gave it a "combo", which consists of barrel setback (the maximum possible in my case), hand-reamed chamber, 11 degree target crown (no length was cut off of the barrel), bolt halves were tightened, and a spacer was placed in the barrel lock-cut that prevented the barrel from being pulled down so far when the barrel clamp is tightened. The trigger was lightened to about 2.5 lb., and an overtravel stop was installed. Though this wasn't the end of my problems, Randy did great work. The bolt feels soooo much better, especially now that it has loosened up just enough to work easily. The improvement in trigger pull alone goes a long way toward accurate, enjoyable shooting. This was the first time Randy used an over-sized lock-cut spacer to reduce the amount that the barrel is pulled down when the barrel clamp is tightened, and it worked well. With the barrel free-floated, I don't have to adjust the scope nearly as much as before, allowing it to operate closer to its ideal centered position. Groups shrunk only a couple tenths of an inch, but it was windy during testing, so the results were not meaningful. The groups showed some side to side shifting, which Randy thought might have been due to poor bedding condition in the stock. He also said that my gun had more problems than any other he had seen. And just think, this was the replacement!
5. Filed the rear of the trigger guard assembly. The rearmost part of the trigger guard assembly, behind the rear action screw, was long enough to prevent the receiver from moving rearward far enough for the recoil lug to contact the stock.
6. Bedded the receiver. No matter how much you read about bedding, the first job is quite intimidating knowing that you risk bonding the metal and wood together permanently. I decided to use J-B Weld as the bedding compound because I was familiar with its flow characteristics, and I have found it to be hard, stable, strong and chemical resistant. I couldn't find much advise on bedding the 77/22, so I decided to bed the front and rear action screw lugs, and the recoil lug and 1.5" or so behind the recoil lug. I chose not to bed anything vertically above the magazine well because the stock is rather weak in that area, and I didn't bed anywhere around the trigger or sear because of the complicated geometry. Whether these were good choices or not I'm not sure. I can imagine good arguments on both sides. During bedding I raised the rear of the receiver about 1/16" to bring it level with the stock and to lower the barrel in the very deep barrel channel I had created for the first (defective) gun. The bedding job went smoothly, and cleaning the clay off of everything was the worst part. The bedding was tight enough that with action screws removed, I could hold the gun upside-down by the stock and the barreled action would not drop out. If I were to do the job over again, I would be much braver and use more bedding compound, as some gaps didn't get completely filled. I didn't notice any improvement in accuracy, but again, there was considerable wind at the range.
7. Lapped the scope rings. The scope rings were well aligned on the original gun, but were way off on the replacement. The misalignment was bad enough to leave permanent indentions on my scope. I ordered a scope ring lapping kit from Sinclair International. It's a 1" (.999") steel rod with a handle and some lapping compound. The instructions say to leave the bottom halves of the rings a little loose, and mount the steel rod as you would the scope, tighten the caps and then tighten the bottom halves to the base. This gets the rings approximately in line with each other before lapping. It sounds good, and I tried it, but the rings were so far away from their natural tightened positions that they didn't seem very secure. So I just tightened the rings into their natural positions. I had to remove a lot of material during lapping, especially from the front ring. I could actually feel the change in angle from the original surface to the lapped surface on the front ring. Both rings were rotated cw as viewed from the top, and the front ring was also tilted forward considerably. After lapping, the scope set very comfortably in the rings, and no gaps were visible between the scope and the bottom halves of the rings, except at the front of the front ring, due to the forward tilt and the fact that I didn't lap 100%. So the surfaces in the bottom halves were now okay, but since the rings were allowed to tighten into their clockwise rotated positions described above, the ring caps did not line up perfectly with the bottoms when resting freely on the scope tube. I saw this coming, but figured it was better to have solidly mounted rings. Perhaps the caps flexed some to accomodate the misalignment. I don't know if lapping helped accuracy at all, but the misaligned rings couldn't have been good for the scope. The lapping kit performed well, though I suspect the canister of lapping compound might outlast the tool. The steel rod lost about .001" on its diameter during the lapping process.
8. Made a removable forend pressure pad. Some contributors to the Rimfire board reported that they achieved the best accuracy with their 77/22s with an 8 lb. pressure pad. The pressure pad is bedding compound between the barrel and stock at the tip of the forend. The pad is thick enough to exert pressure between the barrel and stock. This connection between the two alters the vibrations of the barrel during firing, and sometimes results in an improvement in accuracy. Changing the force that the pad exerts and its location will vary the effect on vibration. In stock configuration, the Rugers have a pressure pad that is a raised area of wood at the end of the barrel channel, but it may not exert its pressure evenly, which would be a detriment to accuracy. I wanted to try a pressure pad to see if it had an effect on accuracy, but the typical pressure pad is permanently bonded to the stock. I still wanted to test accuracy with a free-floated barrel, and wanted the option to use pads of various pressure and location. To make the pressure pad removable, I applied release agent to the stock as well as to the barrel. The pad extends rearward enough to fill the swivel stud recess, for two reasons. The first is that the resulting lug on the pressure pad serves to locate the pad. The second is that even though the bedding compound is prevented from bonding to the stock, it is still hard to remove the pad after it has cured. The pad can be removed by unscrewing the front swivel stud after the pad has cured and hammering a 1/8" rod into the hole until the pad pops out. Here's how I made the pad:
   1. After applying release agent to the barrel and barrel channel, I clamped the butt in a gun cleaning vise such that when the gun was level, the forend cleared the front rest by about 1/2". It is important that the stock not be tilted to one side or the other. I put a level across the stock to be sure (it would be best to ensure that the receiver is level laterally, but I didn't see a practical way to do this, so I just leveled the stock and hoped for the best). I moved the front edge of the vise to the edge of the table so that weight could be hung from the front swivel stud.
   2. If I'd had a hanging scale, I would have supported the end of the barrel with the scale, and hung weight from the front swivel stud until the scale read 8 lb. (or whatever force you want...8 lb. is just a commonly used force). [For the obsessive, use something flexible like string to suspend the weight from the swivel stud. Using something stiffer like heavy copper wire might cause the load not to bear evenly on each side of the swivel stud. If this is the case, the line of force of the weight will not pass through the shear center of the stock, and the forend will twist as it is bent downward.] I didn't have a hanging scale, so I used a bathroom scale as described below. I noted how much weight was required, removed it from the gun, and set it aside.
   3. Now I needed to support the end of the barrel. Any side loads exerted by the finished pressure pad would inhibit accuracy, so I used an old Civil Engineering trick to eliminate the possibility. Click here for a diagram of the support in Acrobat format. I didn't have a hanging scale, so I used a bathroom scale under the support to measure the load (zeroed the scale so that the weight of the support didn't count toward the 8 lb.). Bathroom scales are probably terribly inaccurate at light loadings, but it was better than nothing. Remember that the beam in the diagram must be level, and the rifle must not be canted.
   4. I then removed the barreled action from the stock and used two clay "worms" in the barrel channel to create dams that marked the front and rear of the pressure pad. Partially inserting the barrel helped to shape the dams. I taped up the outside of the stock, leaving the swivel stud exposed to hang the weight from.
   5. I mixed up some J-B Weld, and filled the area between the two dams.
   6. I eased the action into the stock, and turned the screws until they were about 3 turns away from being fully tightened. Then I hung the weight from the front swivel stud and finished tightening the action screws.
   7. Epoxy was all over the place by now, so I cleaned up all the excess and then checked to ensure that the gun was not canted and that the beam was level.
   8. The next day I took the metal out of the stock, and knocked the pad out of the stock as explained earlier. I squared up the ends of the pad and counter-bored the area that meets up with the end of the swivel stud so that there wouldn't be any interference if the swivel stud wasn't reinstalled to the exact same position it was in before.
   9. Removed tape and clay, cleaned off release agent.
   10. Though I've only been able to test the pressure pad in less than ideal conditions, it has always seemed to decrease accuracy. Good thing it is easy to remove. I may try pressure pads at different levels of force in the future. Some shooters recommend relieving the pad about a third of the way down on each side, and a groove about 1/8" wide in the bottom, so that there are two symmetric pads supporting each side of the barrel. I haven't tried this, but it sounds reasonable.

Wind can really push little .22 bullets off course, and before I realized how much, I had always shot at 100 yards. After I got my gun back from CPC, every time I went to the range it was quite windy. So to reduce the effects of wind, I backed up to 50 yards, and was able to find a less windy day to shoot. The results were good. With CCI FMJ, the gun and I were able to average .60" off of sandbags, or just over .5" if you exclude the one shot that went off before I had even gotten on target. Here's the proof. I'm not an experienced benchrest shooter, and my scope cannot be corrected for parallax, so the gun may be capable of even better performance. I would be thrilled to average 1" at 100 yards.

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