This is a quick thank you to this forum for helping me with my H&R 22lr Sportster. When I first got it I was pretty horrified by the accuracy (hey it was cheap, right). Thanks to suggestions from this forum I think have it shooting pretty good. Here’s what I did –my humble experience. Although some is overtly redundant I hope some is also helpful.
By the way, the gun is a 2009 22lr sportster with a microgroove barrel (yup a microgroove barrel)
-Shot a brick or two of shells….I have no doubt that breaking in the barrel made a big difference in improving the guns accuracy. It also let me see the iterative effects of all my tinkering.
-Tried a bunch of different 22 shells. Ultimately found that it likes Remington & CCI non-hyper velocity shells.
-fitted the scope rail (honed down the screw holes) –I don’t know if this helped but it definitely fits a lot better.
-Trigger job –the trigger was so stout before that flexing my finger muscle would actually shake the rifle slightly. A home trigger job is easy with the instructions found on the FAQ page. Its hard to believe how much simply polishing the parts improves performance -didn’t need to cut down the spring.
-Forend (what a mess) I shimmed it up with a nylon washer around the mounting post and floated the front bed of the forend. That helped some. I then enlarged the screw hole and ground down the “stanchions” at the base of the forend. I think they were hitting the receiver and putting forward pressure on the forend (and thus forend mounting post) when the gun was closed. This had the biggest effect on accuracy. I leave the forend screw pretty loose.
-I honed down and polished where the barrel and the receiver meet. Both were pretty rough (especially the barrel) and knocking down some of the high points gave a better fit and the bullet a better seat. I think this has improved accuracy. Maybe more importantly it has reduced friction/wear between the receiver (right where the bulled sits) and the ejector.
-I also polished up the ejector mechanism because it didn’t throw shells that had been shot (although it would throw un-shot ones across the room. I don’t know what to think about that because the chamber seems so loose, and my shells get considerable residue burns on the outside after being fired. Is that common?
All in all I would consider the H&R sure needed a lot of fixing before it shot well, good thing I like projects. It went from +2.5” groups at 50 yards to around ˝” (3/4” on average). I hope I have as much fun shooting it as I did setting it up.
