“Mind your language.”
Yes, it’s that time of year again. That time that all Ruger Mark Whatever owners dread more than being invited by your wife to go see a screening of Dead Poet’s Society. It’s absolutely time to stop putting off cleaning your .22 pistol.
Yup. Stop crying.
My 22/45 is more or less my summer EDC pistol. Since moving here I’ve killed more squirrels and rabbits and chickens and snakes with it than with all my other firearms combined. It’s precise and reliable and easy to shoot and I personally believe it’s the best value for the money in any .22 pistol. But after a brick or so of cheap ammo it stops wanting to cycle, and there’s nothing to do but take it apart, clean it, and pray you can get it back together.
Some have said “spray it out with brake cleaner and be done.” If I ever lose this antediluvian hard copy of the instructions I’ve carried with me for over 20 years, I might start doing that.
Disassembly is easy as pie. I’m told some individual guns need a mallet to take the barrel/receiver off the frame and put it back on but mine comes right apart. And then I clean each individual part very very thoroughly because I know that if I ever get this damned thing back together and working it’ll be at least a year before I consent to put myself through this again, because reassembly is a freaking nightmare. Even if you seem to have it together, you might very well be wrong.
I know of no other gun anywhere (there might be some, I’m not Ian and my experience is not encyclopedic) where assembly instructions have three separate steps dependent on the pistol’s position. Because the hammer and hammer strut are just rattling around in there, and for each of those steps they need to be in specific positions that can only happen if the barrel is up or horizontal or down. It’s absurd.
Even after I (apparently) get it back together and the action will open and close correctly, I’m never completely sure of success until I have actually fired the thing a couple of times.
🙂 Fortunately I’m in a position where I can just make that a step in the process.
Torso Boy hates that part, it turns out. Just like Ghost before him.
I humbly offer my own meager contribution:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6Fh0pKPSxc
Dad had a Mk.1 when I was younger,I think I saw him clean it a total of 2 times.
A friend has one of the new Mk.IV’s. It’s ridiculously simple to take apart & reassemble.
As this video demonstrates:
https://youtu.be/PsBA8jck5vg
Browning. Buckmark. Enough said.
Wait, I’ll say more: “Ruger, phhhhhhht….”
Just be thankful it’s not a MK III. I have a class rule: “If the gun you brought to class is a Ruger MK III .22LR pistol, under no circumstances are you to disassemble it during the “field strip and clean” portion of the class after live fire on the range. I will provide you with a semi-auto that you can field strip and clean for that portion of the class. Do not use your Ruger .22LR pistol.”
The MK I and MKIIs are easy; the MKIIIs require a PhD in mechanical engineering, two hours of enthusiastic chanting around a fire from assorted gypsies, proper alignment of all the planets and burning of sheep entrails to reassemble in anything less than two lunar cycles and have the gun function.
All that said, I’ve had enough idiot students who do not listen to become pretty good at MK III reassembly, but it’s hemorrhoid surgery with a rusty butter knife every freakin’ time.
The Ruger MK IVs, a catatonic one-armed kindergardener from a remote Pacific island tribe of stone-age aborigines could slap back together in under a minute.
Honestly, I never found the disassembly and reassembly of a Ruger .22 to be all *that* big of a deal. And mine’s a MkIII 22/45. (I have also disassembled, and successfully reassembled, a couple of MkII’s.)
Norman, I’ve got a MK III that isn’t too bad to pot together, it helps that the second time I assembled it it went together with MK II parts to delete the mag safety.
You have to love that the advertising videos for the MK IV just showed the takedown and reassembly,
It’s not a bug . . . it’s a feature.
😉 😉 😉
And to think, I almost bought one of these way back when…
Oh, it’s a very good pistol. Very point and click, no drama – it’s just got this one little thing…
One little thing that the MkIV’s eliminate…!
Agree on the “point & click” aspect of it.