Can you wear out a .22 rimfire rifle ??

I have a great little Norinco JW15 A that cost the huge sum of $220 with a Burris scope. It's been a little ripper with accuracy many hundreds of dollars above it's purchase price.
The bore is off centre and the quality and workmanship leave a lot to be desired but it shoots very well.

However after two years and over 15.000 rounds I have noticed the odd extraction issue and wonder if the accuracy maybe dropping off a little.

Question is what is the life expectancy of a low end .22 ?
I have worn out a Stirling .22 with the bolt flogging out.
i brought the Norinco used and have no idea of past use or round count.

I thought it may have lasted longer but may be not ?

your using soft lead bullets at low velocity so i would expect a barrel to last several lifetimes if of good quality, cheap materials, poor workmanship & design then not so long . . . . improper cleaning or neglect i suspect has killed most .22s

Rimfire accuracy is pretty dependent on headspace, and its possible that on firearm with some parts indifferently heat treated or hardened that the headspace has increased somewhat - much more likely (but less well understood) than wearing a .22 RF barrel out

Old man has a voere semi that he reckons has probably had over 100,000 rounds through it, he had it when I was a kid and it's done many years on pest work and it still shoots like it always has

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Originally Posted by Ryan_Songhurst

Old man has a voere semi that he reckons has probably had over 100,000 rounds through it, he had it when I was a kid and it's done many years on pest work and it still shoots like it always has

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Same with my unique, 40 plus years old, multiple owners still as accurate as ever. Mind you neither it or the voere were cheap .22s.
Barrel life of the unique was claimed in the booklet to be in excess of 150,000 rounds and shooting lead projectiles the wear would be minimal. I think that would apply to most barrels on .22s.
Its the moving bits that would wear out first.

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Originally Posted by Ryan_Songhurst

Old man has a voere semi that he reckons has probably had over 100,000 rounds through it, he had it when I was a kid and it's done many years on pest work and it still shoots like it always has

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Same with my unique, 40 plus years old, multiple owners still as accurate as ever. Mind you neither it or the voere were cheap .22s.
Barrel life of the unique was claimed in the booklet to be in excess of 150,000 rounds and shooting lead projectiles the wear would be minimal. I think that would apply to most barrels on .22s.
Its the moving bits that would wear out first.

It's a nice rifle alright and hopefully I will one day get my greasy mitts on it, fires from an open bolt, I remember dad telling me when I was a young fella that it's the same principal as a sten smg when he was explaining how it works

Rusting in the barrel or bulging it from firing with water down the barrel are about the only ways to kill a .22RF barrel.

you could try this @viper . . . . made a big difference with my old Sterling and a small improvement with a mates Norinco

take a brand new, sharp drill bit and carefully hand cut a new crown . .. or go mad and give the job to a gunsmith

Cheers for the answers guys, I am sure it will come right and it is very occasionally. I think the fault more got me thinking about life span of a .22.
I also have a Unique and it does feel like it will last forever, amazing rifle.

This has happened to mine, solution is to clean the chamber out with a bronze brush. It's just suffering a wax build up in the chamber and the recesses for the extractor claws. Just use a bit of petrol and she'll be good for another 2-3000 rounds.

I have a TOZ17 with well over 100000 rounds thru it. Clean everything but the bore . Clean the bore only when accuracy falls off. (1000 plus )

The steel in the JW15 is quite tough and should last a lifetime with normal shooting. The extraction problem could be due to a slight rounding off of the extractor edge, easily corrected with good needle files (taking care to sharpen the edge without removing much metal). Stirling .22's do wear out because the steel used is soft free-cutting steel. This is not a strength issue but the soft steel just wears easily. Over-cleaning wears out more rifle than shooting does.

Get a gevarm, youll never have to worry about an extractor ever again cos they dont have one.

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Originally Posted by viper

Cheers for the answers guys, I am sure it will come right and it is very occasionally. I think the fault more got me thinking about life span of a .22.
I also have a Unique and it does feel like it will last forever, amazing rifle.

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Pretty crappy trigger though.

“New” extractor class from an old gunsmith fixed my JW15 extraction problems. That could give the impression the gun was wearing out but was 100% fixed.

The crown could also easily get a ding and is said to be the main cause of acquired accuracy problems. It’s a 1 Minute job to recross apparently not too technical so don’t pay a lot for it.

How accurate is it now ? My JW15 shots about 1cm spread of Centers at 25 yd but 3cm at 50m. If you need to shoot 50 then get paper and do 3 or 4 x 5 shot groups plus one with a good target ammo like elegy Marchand you might find accuracy is still fine. I think 2cm dread of Centers at 50m is good but if it does that at 25 it could still be perfectly useable.

apologies for auto correct in above post.
"Re cut"
"Eley Match"

Wore the action out in a 10/22 on the Pest board days but accuracy was still good. My Norinco had problems with the extractors so I replaced them and it has been good but now after many rounds spent shells do get stuck in chamber but as said earlier I just scrub the chamber out with a slightly larger brush than 22 cal and it will be fine for a while. My Norinco seems to have relatively weak extractor spring so maybe that's part of the problem, don't use at as much these days so no big problem.

The answer in reality is probably no. But you can have a shed load of fun trying.

Thanks GunDoc, had lots of fun pulling the bolt down fully this evening, extractors taken out and a very light filing. There was a small amount of fouling but nothing major.
However the extractor did look a little blunt a round , light filing seems to have approved shape. All back together ( fuck that spring clip that goes over the extractors is a mongrel to get back in ) chambered 10 rounds and extracting awesomely .
A field test will be the next thing, chamber was cleaned 30 rounds ago properly so I don't expect build up with wax there yet.
@ Bagheera , accuracy has always being good from this JW but I had a newer one that was poor. 100 mtr shots on rabbits with this one is very achievable .
As for grouping it's good, maybe 20mm at 50 mtrs if I do my part.
Living in Central and shooting the amount I do I have sort of lost interest in tight groups , sounds a bit harsh but a shot rabbit is a dead rabbit and I move on , if it is gut shot or wounded it's fucked.
Naturally I like a quick clean kill but it's all about connecting and numbers, farmers are paying for my ammo on some farms so I work hard at the numbers part.
I have one small farm of 200 acres with a lovely old couple, he buys my ammo. I shoot on at least one day of the weekend and a couple of times after work, few hours here and a few there. In two years i am coming up to 4000 rabbits.
They reckon 10 rabbits eat the same as one sheep so that is a lot of extra food I have generated .
I have a lovely French Unique that is to good to use as a work horse hence the $200 JW. It has proven to be an amazing little rifle, I look after my stuff but it's still done a lot of work and by the sounds of it has a lot more life left in it.

Kind of shame it's not a bit fucked really............would have been a great excuse for another .22 rabbit rifle.:D

Another thought on this, someone mentioned the crown, on some 22 crown designs they can get "crusty", the guys who use Anschutz target rifles firing very high round counts have noted this. Its just a matter of cleaning the crown area carefully.

One thing I've always done with .22 ammo is keep it in the original box or clean container when hunting. If I ever drop a round I biff it as there's more than likely going to be grit sticking to the bullet grease.

I have hunting friends who put a handful of rounds in their dirty jean pockets when rabbit shooting. This is in pumice soil country and pumice is very abrasive; makes me shudder. They're rough bastards so it doesn't bother them.