Volquartsen firefly

[alordnapa]

Has anyone tried the Volquartsen firefly bolt for the 10-22? This bolt was designed to replace a stock 10-22 Bolt and allow the feeding and cycling of the CCI .22 "quiet" round, which is light and sub-sonic, essentially a "gallery load" without the frangible dust bullet. These rounds, when fired from my 29 inch barreled 10-22 are indeed pretty quiet ( I suspect they are "coasting" when they putter out the muzzle, but with a normal 10-22, the claim is they are moving at 710 fps) My attempt to make a electrically-cycled 10-22 did not work out very well, and although it had the ability to keep the bolt fully in battery until well after the round had fired to eliminate port gas noise, ( And less mess inside the receiver) the 10-22 did not offer enough feed control to let me run the bolt quickly back, and slowly forth into battery without failures. Drat! Volquartsen is a company I have always had a lot of respect for, but their 10-22 bolt/magazine kit for .22 shorts was discontinued, and I heard they were very quirky. Since I plunked down the Paypal payment ( 180 bucks plus shipping) for this new bolt, and Inow wait for delivery, I thought I would see if anyone has tried this new bolt, and if anyone had tried it with a .22 short magazine. I am also wondering if other sub-sonic rounds might smash it into tiny little expensive bits...

[cdhknives]

What does this bolt do that can't be had via a lightened factory bolt and spring? The CCI Quiet round feeds fine in my 10/22 but obviously doesn't cycle the bolt. I had thought about lightening my bolt but didn't want a dedicated rifle for that cartridge...I have bolt actions for it already.

[alordnapa]

This new bolt will allow the bolt to feed and cycle with the CCI quiet rounds. True, semi-automatic fire, not a straight-pull, magazine-fed, bolt action. When Volquartsen built their old bolt to allow running .22 shorts, they had to build the bolt from aluminum to make it light enough, and they had to radically skeletonize it, to even half-way reliably run .22 Shorts. I don't believe you could really just lighten a factory bolt and spring to make a 10-22 semi-automatically function with a round that is not much more than a .22 CB cap. I am reluctant to start carving up my factory bolt anyway, since putting metal back is so much harder than taking it off! In my anti-tree-squirrel jihad, I have been running Aguilla Colibri , which is primer-powered only, but I have to hand-cycle them in my 10-22 with a 10-22 Magazine made for .22 Shorts. ( Aguilla may call them .22 LR, but their OAL will not allow them to work in most .22 LR magazines, although they work great in my .22 Henry lever gun, but its 16 inch barrel is a lot louder than my 10-22's 29 inch barrel) This rarely gives me time for a second shot, so I would like to make the 10-22 run as God and Bill Ruger intended, as a semi-auto! The E-Bay vendor tells me its on its way, so if anyone cares, I will let them know if it works as-advertised. The real goal here of course, is to make a street legal, non-NFA .22 that will shoot fast and accurately, with suppressor comparable noise levels. The opening breech and pop may nullify my improvement. Time will tell.

[BigWonton]

I'm running a Firefly bolt in a 10/22 Takedown.

No issues and it works well.

[alordnapa]

Excellent! TYVM!

[cdhknives]

My thought was to buy a 'spare' bolt or two and skeletonize it as much as I can. They are not expensive. Truthfully I need a couple, one light and one heavy for the hyper velocity rounds and to delay opening when shooting suppressed.

http://www.brownells.com/rifle-parts/bo ... ke_3=Ruger

[hardcase]

Have you ever thought about changing to a different gun? I have an older Remington 552 Speedmaster auto 22 that cycles shorts, long and long rifle cartridges. You would have to have the barrel threaded but there is plenty enough barrel distal to the tubular magazine. Having my 552 barrel threaded has been on my mind for a couple years now, just needed something like your post to jump-start the idea.

[Wesada]

CCI Quiets cycle my stock 10/22 occasionally. Couldn't this be accomplished with a lighter recoil spring?

[alordnapa]

I tried a lighter spring to run .22 shorts, but without good results. The new bolt ( I have not installed it yet) weighs 3 ounces, so its a fraction of the weight of a stock bolt. Once you get a stock bolt kind of working with a lighter spring, you have problems with the lighter spring having trouble pushing the bolt into full battery. I plan on just building this gun to run with quiets, I still have a .17 Mach II kit and will need to build a new 10-22 from the ground up, but I don't expect it to be very quiet...The Mach II kit has a massive Bolt handle ( I think its tungsten) that does a good job of delaying the bolt.

[Wesada]

Once you get a stock bolt kind of working with a lighter spring, you have problems with the lighter spring having trouble pushing the bolt into full battery.

Ahh yeah that makes a lot of sense.

[alordnapa]

I tried the new bolt/spring combo this morning using CCI 22LR CB caps. It occurred to me that the 29 inch barrel may be contributing the excessive port pop, but I will try to scrounge up a stock barrel and use the CCI "Quiet: ammo to see if it works any better. That is in fact the Volquartsen spec'd round...I just happened to be out.

FYI, The 22 CB LR caps would fire, cycle, and bring a fresh round into battery The hammer was apparently not back far enough to catch the sear. Is there such a thing as an aftermarket, light hammer spring?

Aguilla Colibri would not even begin to move the bolt out of battery, which is a shame, because its "Hollywood" quiet. It does not make the Hollywood "Pew' or "pphsist" But is is far quieter than the benchmark Daisy, Red Ryder ( No compass in the stock, no loss of eye(s) as mom so frequently warned)) More R&D is obviously called for.

[Wesada]

I believe Aguila Colibri are no powder and are only using the primer as propellant. I doubt you will find any combination that will cycle that. Also I think they're moving out at like 400 fps, sure it's quiet but at some point your diminishing gains make it fairly pointless. Throwing lead balls by hand is even quieter but, well you get my point.

[alordnapa]

CCI Quiet ammo is hard to find, but I finally found a brick, and tested it out with my 10-22 with FireFly bolt kit, and the 29 inch barrel. It feeds, cycles, and is "Hollywood quiet". Neighbor's dog has not caught on to me yet! I will have to get it out to the range for accuracy testing, but so far, I am a happy panda!