Rifles22

The $335 Thompson/Center 22 Classic is accurate, lightweight, and good looking—and much more affordable than the $950 Kimber Classic and $874 Sako Finnfire bolt guns.

Wood is alive. Wood absorbs moisture. Wood warps. Wood breaks. Because wood is wood, its economically impractical to manufacture wooden gun stocks in quantity that will fit a barrelled-action precisely when the two are merely screwed together. Such precision and the accuracy it achieves can only be accomplished by the hands of a skilled stockmaker that means big bucks.

Synthetics are dead, dont warp, weigh about the same as wood and are far less susceptible to outside influences. While there are many kinds of wood, each with its own characteristics, there are basically two categories of synthetic materials used to manufacture stocks: fiberglass and thermoplastic.

With fiberglass, h...

About 50 or 60 years ago, every boy had a .22 rifle, knew how to shoot it and had a place to shoot it. We are quite sure that each and every one of those boys longed for a bit more power from their rimfires. They figured they'd be happy if the darned bullet shot just a tiny bit flatter and hit with a bit more power. Unfortunately, the .22 Winchester Rimfire (WRF) was in the process of becoming obsolete, and anyone who bought one of those rifles seeking just a bit more power was doomed to run out of ammunition. However, its replacement was already on the drawing boards.

The .22 Winchester Magnum Rimfire (WMR) came into being in 1959. The first guns available were actually Ruger and Smith &...

Autoloading .22's are lots of fun and can be lots of gun. They tend to run you broke on ammunition because of the lure of easily and quickly firing off the entire magazine. In fact, this might be one reason to own a semiauto .22 that has a limited number of rounds in the magazine, say five to seven rounds. This limitation tends to force the shooter to make every shot count, much as the fellow with a six-shot muzzle-loading revolver is reluctant to shoot quickly because of all the work needed to make the gun ready to go again.

Be that as it may, self-loading .22's offer lots of shooting fun, but unfortunately many of them are not all that accurate. They would be more fun if they could hit...

Lever rifles in the rimfire calibers can do many things for the avid shooter. Besides providing casual shooting fun for the lever-rifle fan, these guns can be serious hunting arms. If the nimrod has a centerfire lever gun for any serious purpose, the rimfire can provide meaningful and inexpensive practice. This practice can extend from the rifle range to the small game field, and to just about anywhere in between. In the Idaho back country, many landowners keep a .22 LR of some sort, many of the lever type, by the back door for garden or yard pests.

Our test here includes a pair of lever guns, the Winchester 9422 Walnut and the new Henry Model H001, out of Brooklyn, New York, of all plac...

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Almost ten years ago, I purchased a North American Arms .22 Magnum Mini-Revolver. I carry it when I jog or rollerblade and as a backup to the .45 Colt Officers Model I routinely carry.

Three weeks ago, while disassembling the Magnum Mini-Revolver for cleaning I lost the $3 hand spring. Upon calling the factory, their representative (Mr. Wayne Martin) suggested I return the gun for replacement of the part and reassembly.

In less than three weeks, the gun was...

Without question, there are more pre-owned .22 rifles, pistols and revolvers occupying table space at guns shows, rack and counter case space at dealers and house space than any other caliber firearm. Based on the popularity of the cartridge, the guns that shoot it and the number of years both have been around, such abundance isn't in the least surprising. Due in part to that abundance, the prices attached to other-than-collectable .22s can be irresistible to the uninformed. All too often, many of these "bargains" become nightmares of additional expense once its discovered they don't function very well or not at all. You can be reasonably certain of one thing. A used .22 rifle, revolver or p...

The plinking/light-target .22 LR autoloader rifle market has long been one of the gun industry's mainstays; it seems there's an almost bottomless need for entry-level .22s that shoot well enough, function well enough, and don't cost too much. In recent years, Ruger has reportedly had the best of the segment, selling ten versions of its venerable 10/22 design, which was introduced in 1964, in the price span between $160 to $300. Likewise, at a slightly lower price point, Marlin's $100 to $160 Model 60s did almost as well, accounting for a good chunk of that firm's total business, a company source told us. But why wasn't the biggest name in the business—Remington—better represented in what was likely the most popular product segment?

Unquestionably, Remington hasn't had a hit in the autoloading .22 rifle market since the Nylon 66, introduced back when dinosaurs roamed the earth in 1959. Like the 10/22 that followed it, the 66's strengths were durability, reliability, and easy care, if not pinpoint accuracy. With those timeless attributes in mind, Remington went back to the well in 1997 and rolled out the 597-series rifles—which to our eyes were made to correct deficiencies that have gone long overlooked in the unchanged 10/22s.

We say this because of a recent four-way test we undertook to compare two basic 597 guns, the polymer-stocked 597 and wood-stocked 597 Sporter, with two of Ruger's better sellers, the polymer-stocked 10/22RP and the hardwood-stocked 10/22RB. In terms of price, weight, length, componentry, design, and options, these two lines look like twins separated at birth. It was as if Remington sales guys, a la Dilbert, asked the company's engineers to "make us a gun that looks like the 10/22, but different, and better."

Did they succeed? We think so, at least in part.

[IMGCAP(1)] Although there are many nice new bolt-action rimfire rifles available today, some shooters prefer the look and feel, and what they perceive to be higher quality, of older rifles. Whether or not yesterday's rimfires were of higher quality than the newest is a matter of opinion, chance, cost, and experience, and is hence arguable. Surely older rifles more commonly had real walnut stocks, and their bluing was, in some cases, exceptionally well done, even on relatively inexpensive rifles. Today, used rimfires are often bargain-priced. Some, though, are pure collector's items and are priced accordingly.

We were fortunate to have access to three rimfire, bolt-action, magazine-fed r...

[IMGCAP(1)] Looking for a bargain in firearms is usually a bad place to start, because, over the years we've found that in most cases, you get what you pay for. But on rare occasions, Gun Tests has found well-made, accurate, easy-to-shoot inexpensive firearms in all categories.

Perhaps one of the deepest segments in which to find a bargain is in .22 LR bolt actions, depending, of course, on your definition of bargain. What we wanted to find in this test was a step up from plinker-grade guns that usually retail for $100 to $150, something that didn't break the bank, yet shot accurately and had a good list of features—decent trigger, good stock, and wide application. That course led us to a...

Ruger's Magnum takes the cake as a dangerous-game gun, and we also like Sako's 75 Hunter. Pass on the Winchester Model 70 Safari Express.

Nearly all shooters follow the same trajectory when they are learning to use firearms as youths: They generally start with a play popgun, progress to a BB gun, and then, depending on their training and their parents' confidence in them, eventually receive their first real gun, a single-shot .22 LR rifle. As a result, anyone who has taken these steps to full-fledged gun ownership holds a lifelong affinity for the rimfire rifle, since it often ushers them into the gunpowder fraternity.

Of course, with age and experience handling firearms, the shooter invariably becomes more picky about the guns he wants to own, regardless of what pull-back-hammer rifle he began shooting with. He likes a con...