A fun gun, Bumpfire .22 rifle
Written on December 23, 2013 By Tony in NFA, Repeaters, Rifles
About a year and a half ago, I bought my first bumpfire stock. It was around the same time that I bought my first machine gun. Of course, buying them at the same time meant that I had the bumpfire stock for almost a year before having my machine gun.
The bump fire stock I chose was the Fostech AA2 springless for the Ruger 10/22. It’s the updated version of the original Akins Accelerator stock. The original stock was approved for sale by the ATF, and then shortly thereafter reclassified as contraband. A number of folks lost their shirts and their cool on that deal. Several years later, Bill Akins made an arrangement with Judd Foster of Fostech, and the new and slightly less cool AA2 became available.
With the original AA, you simply pulled the trigger, and a spring mechanism would bump the trigger back and forth against your stationary trigger finger (this is why the ATF later changed their ruling). With the new version, your trigger finger remains stationary, as with the original, but instead of a spring moving the rifle forward and back, your off hand does by using the vertical fore grip.
At this point I have several of the AA2 stocks, but today I’m talking about one of the first ones I bought. Being young and impetuous, I decided that a .22 sounding like a machine gun might not draw enough attention on it’s own, so I had a local company hydrodip the stock with a flame pattern. The result is one of the visually louder guns that I’ve seen, and what is by far the most visually loud gun I have ever owned, and am ever likely to.
Over the course of the first year that I was messing with the AA2 stocks, I made several modifications that have added to the reliability and enjoyment. The first thing that I found to be important were the magazines. I only have 2 types of magazines that I would recommend for the AA2 guns; Ruger factory mags (BX1 or BX25) and Butler Creek “steel lips” magazines. Tactical inc TI25 magazines work as well, but are quite expensive in comparison and require tuning to make run properly. The HC3R magazines are alright, but don’t like the magazine quick loaders.
Another tweak that really helped with the guns reliability was to remove as much weight as possible. On the photo above the gun is wearing a Tactical Solutions X-ring barrel. The X-ring barrel is an aluminum outer shell with a steel sleeve in the middle that is the actual barrel. The construction provides heat dissipation and light weight. It weighs nearly a pound less than the factory barrel does! I’m also using a custom chamber reamer to chamber the barrels for any AA2 guns. A custom reamer isn’t needed though, just get a ‘sporting’ chamber reamer. The reason I use the reamer is to loosen the chamber slightly to improve extraction and feeding. A match chamber is great when trying to make the smallest group possible, but when attempting to shred pumpkins or knock over a row of steel plates, a loose chamber that causes fewer stoppages is much better.
The Kidd trigger assembly that comes as part of the Fostech kit is really an amazing piece of engineering. The trigger is light, but consistent, with the first stage providing a good tactile sensation to ensure you know you’re about to fire the gun.
If you listen close in the video, you can clearly hear the difference in rate of fire between the high velocity CCI minimags and the less powerful CCI standard velocity ammo.