re: the 10/22
I owned one
way back in the day (probably my senior year in high school). Box stock plinker. Light and fun. Traded it off for a dual oil relief Type 1 VW case so I could build a decent engine in my college apartment but always missed it.
About 6 years ago I got the itch to get another one, but I wanted to mod the crap out of it. Trouble is, you buy a box stock 10/22 and then replace every part on it (which of course means that you have a 10/22 and a really nice 10/22 when you're done).
I decided to circumvent the process and order the factory target version, seen here:
Hammer forged target barrel. It never sees high velocity ammo. The only thing it really needs is to replace the gawd awful rusty jaw trap of a trigger with something real.
As for ammo, I found this rifle doesn't care what is popular, expensive or what the experts use. It is
superbly accurate with Remington yellow and green box cheap ammo. Oh sure, everything else I feed it goes "crack" and makes a hole in approximately the right place but that Remington is X every damn time if I do my part.
Cleaning it? This might get me banned, but on advice of my father I have never touched this rifle with a cleaning . The .22 doesn't go fast enough to leave lead in the barrel, nor does it get shot often enough to leave much in the way of goo.
For the record I do clean all my centerfire rifles, especially the bolt guns.
Oh, and another really fun .22 is the Henry lever action. Throw a golf ball out as far as you can and start shooting at it. You'll have a hard time not laughing your ass off after 5 rounds.