I attended another Appleseed 25m Clinic last month and had a cracking weekend. I managed to shoot Rifleman four times, increasing my PB twice for a new high of 228. The 10/22 performed flawlessly and I even cleared the Redcoat twice, sticking with my usual CCI SV.
Naturally, because it worked so well, I decided to mess with it! I looked at several options and eventually settled on a 20″, steel-lined Aluminium (spelt correctly for my fellow Brits!) barrel. I went with an Acculite (formerly WhistlePig), fluted and ported in an anodized silver that looks fantastic. It shaves about 1.5 lbs off the front of the rifle.
The teardown was a bit of a battle, though. The V-block bolts came out easily, but the factory barrel was stuck fast. I tried the hairdryer-and-ice-wrap trick from YouTube, but it wouldn’t budge. I ended up making a dash to Harbor Freight for a $20 heat gun. Even then, it took some serious heat on the receiver and a bit of “gentle persuasion” with a dead-blow hammer before it finally popped free.
The Acculite was a “sand-to-fit” job, so after a few rubs with the provided emery cloth and a couple of soft taps from a rubber mallet, she went home. I torqued the V-block bolts down after giving them a liberal coating of blue threadlock.
Once I had everything bolted back together and the scope boresighted, the difference was immediate. It feels much lighter forward of the support hand, which should be a massive help for the offhand and seated stages. I updated my ballistic calculator with the new barrel specs and headed for the range.
The following Saturday, I ran 200 rounds of “ThunderTurds” through it just to break the barrel in, gave it a pull with the boresnake, and set to work. The groups were lovely—my best at 28 yards was 0.32″ for 5 shots using CCI SV.
I’m planning to test this new build in a couple of weeks at my second 200-yard RKD, so I’ve already gathered DOPE for 50 and 100 yards using CCI Mini-Mags. So far, I’m really liking this barrel, though I did discover the first shot from a cold bore sits about 0.75″ dead right before coming back to zero.
A Rifleman is always refining his tools—even if it means a trip to Harbor Freight to get them apart!
—EnglishBob
