About Me: A certified yet non-professional gunsmith learning the trade through trail and inspiration

Monday, October 9, 2017

The Ruger 10/22 LTR Project part 6

If you missed the previous posts, click on the links below

As with all my 10/22s I polish the firing pin and extractor. Here are the before and after pictures





Any respectable tactical weapon cannot have a polished or chrome bolt, so after polishing the bottom of the bolt where it interfaces the hammer, I blued it.



Then reassembled it



For the trigger group, I am using a late model plastic housing, I'll save the aluminum one that came with this gun for another project.


I polished the internals and added a lighter weight spring from the KIDD trigger spring kit. See my write up here


While I was at it, I made another bolt stop. I use 1/4" OD Tygon fuel line (designed for chainsaws, weedeaters, etc..) which has a 1/8" ID, the metal rod is 1/8" stainless, I cut it to 1 1/4" length and trim to fit. They cost about $1 each.



When starting the final fit and installing the side plates, I decided to do something about the unsightly gap between the AK grip and the Ruger trigger


I had this piece of 3/4" thick pine in my scrap wood pile, so I started cutting, filing and sanding



The fit isn't that bad, but I figured I could fill the gaps with body filler and make it look seamless.....it's worth a try anyways...


 mix up the cake batter and slather it on....



The experiment worked. I will now touch up the body filler and begin sanding to make it look seamless.


I cleaned up the body filler with a little sanding



Time to start cutting and fitting the aluminum side panels




After getting the hole for the take down screw and the magazine/trigger group well opened up, I am now contemplating not putting the aluminum on the bottom. The stock, while shortened, still has quite a bit of taper to it, making fitting the aluminum difficult


So I removed the bottom part and fitted the side panel to the wood. I decided it was not worth it to create a bottom plate, by the time I cut out the metal for the trigger group, magazine well and picatinney rail, there wasn't much metal left, so I will attempt to fill the edge and make it look flat.


I will already have a bolt going through the stock for the rear anchor, so I decided to add some "dummy bolts" for looks. These were left over from a failed AK screw build...I knew I saved them for something!


After drilling the holes  the first side plate was epoxied on


Here it is after the epoxy cured, now I will trim the aluminum and fit the other side



Stay tuned for part 7