.22 short from a 10/22?

A

archerynut

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so, while chatting with an employee at pro-line a couple weeks ago, as well as the father of a good friend of mine, informed me that it is possible to safely fire a .22 short from a gun marked .22lr

is there truth to this? not saying I've tried it, or that I am even thinking about it. I am just curious. I do not think it would result in a catastrophic failure. but in my mind, the bullet would travel within the chamber for a short distance before actually engaging the inside of the barrel. how likely would it be to work and has anyone tried it with success?
 
Back in the good old days most LR barrels were stamped S L LR.

Yes it will work and yes it's a big jump to the lands. I think that unless you are trying to compare a gun with a match chamber to a gun with a sporter chamber, you wouldn't see much of a difference.

It won't cycle a semi-auto though :)

CT
 
Dont see why you couldn't. My cooey shoots s, l, lr. You might get the carbon ring if you shoot alot of shorts though. That is easy enough to clean though. THey are nice and quiet as well
 
thanks for the great replies gents. glad to see the token guy "didn't you learn as a corner stone to only shoot the same kind of ammo as marked on the barrel" safety sally kept his words to himself.
 
You guys saying a 22 short won't cycle the 10/22 action, are you saying this because of the reduced blowback not being enough to fully cycle the bolt, or because they won't feed?

I tried subsonic 22 LRs in my 10/22 when new with dismal results, I had to manually cycle the bolt for each round. Then I tried them again after I polished the action, and all cycled perfectly. I've never tried 22shorts, but I suspect the energy would be pretty similar to a subsonic 22LR.
 
At one time, shooting shorts and longs from 22 chambered for 22 LR was very commaon, as the most common .22 rifles were bolt action single shots.
Now this is when Shorts were 59 cents a box vs. Longs at 69 cents and LR solids 79 cents and if your were into the money big time LR HP at 89 to 99 cents a box.

Bottle depost was 1 cent so as a young lad you had to pick a few to buy a box , the great debate was no need to buy LR as Longs were just as good.

Now shorts are 3.99 a box or higher and LR run 2.50 to 3.00 a box even those expensive HP are within reach . Not sure if Longs are still manufactured ?

By the way my first .22 rifle was a Cooey 39, 14.99 , brand new from a mail order outfit in Montreal , now you see then listed at 150 on the EE.

357,
 
Long Lee's where $10 at Crown Surplus in Calgary back in the day.
you could buy them by the crate.

the owners son laughed when i mentioned that a couple months back.
 
landphil said:
You guys saying a 22 short won't cycle the 10/22 action, are you saying this because of the reduced blowback not being enough to fully cycle the bolt, or because they won't feed?

I tried subsonic 22 LRs in my 10/22 when new with dismal results, I had to manually cycle the bolt for each round. Then I tried them again after I polished the action, and all cycled perfectly. I've never tried 22shorts, but I suspect the energy would be pretty similar to a subsonic 22LR.
Click to expand...

I bought a Kidd cocking assembly for my son's 10/22 awhile back, and it came with a lighter cocking spring for shooting .22 shorts, a standard
spring for regular .22 rounds, and a heavy spring for shooting .17 HM2 with a barrel change. Kidd wrote this on the instruction sheet.
 
You can do it, just load it 1 at a time...which is not super easy on a 10/22!!! Works much better in a bolt action.
 
pisces-guy said:
I bought a Kidd cocking assembly for my son's 10/22 awhile back, and it came with a lighter cocking spring for shooting .22 shorts, a standard
spring for regular .22 rounds, and a heavy spring for shooting .17 HM2 with a barrel change. Kidd wrote this on the instruction sheet.
Click to expand...
Thank you, I was unaware of such technology.
 
pisces-guy said:
I bought a Kidd cocking assembly for my son's 10/22 awhile back, and it came with a lighter cocking spring for shooting .22 shorts, a standard
spring for regular .22 rounds, and a heavy spring for shooting .17 HM2 with a barrel change. Kidd wrote this on the instruction sheet.
Click to expand...

Many aftermarket bolt manufacturer's package their bolts with different power springs... I have most of them, including a number of Tony Kidd's, VQ's, RT's etc... The power springs are so that you can tune for specific ammo's at a given energy level... If the spring is light and marked ".22 short" (I have not seen that designation in Kidd's literature with their aftermarket bolts) I can guaranty that it will NOT function in a 10/22 with short ammo... There is more involved to making a semi function with shorts than just changing the spring... Some have been mentioned above, namely magazine function, bolt weight and rebound rate which is also a function of action system friction (not just weight and spring tension)... A few years ago I did a shorts project gun and had it up and running perfectly with the VQ shorts kit and modified mags, but it was a lot of work and tinkering to get it working properly... I sold the gun and now just shoot semi's in dedicated subsonic guns in "bench" configurations and HV guns in speed/plinking/hunting configurations. I do also shoot bolt actions and have one gun set-up for CCI Quiet's. In my opinion there is little advantage to shooting shorts in semi guns when there are so many options now in low-energy long and long rifle loads. But to answer the OP's original question, "yes" you can safely shoot shorts in your LR chamber.
 
landphil said:
You guys saying a 22 short won't cycle the 10/22 action, are you saying this because of the reduced blowback not being enough to fully cycle the bolt, or because they won't feed?

I tried subsonic 22 LRs in my 10/22 when new with dismal results, I had to manually cycle the bolt for each round. Then I tried them again after I polished the action, and all cycled perfectly. I've never tried 22shorts, but I suspect the energy would be pretty similar to a subsonic 22LR.
Click to expand...

The only cartridge that a 10/22 will feed from the magazine is the LR.

Polishing the bolt really helps. Have you radiused it? That is a very helpful modification.

CT
 
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