10/22 Magazine Maintenance Kit

Ruger’s 10/22 rotary magazine is perhaps the most ingenious and successful design among all rifles shooting the 22 Long Rifle cartridge. It is so successful that other rifles have subsequently been designed and continue to be designed today specifically to utilize it. Though robust with little to go wrong under a lifetime of hunting use, avid plinkers and competition shooters know that under heavy usage the magazine needs occasional disassembly and cleaning to keep it running smoothly.

With most detachable box magazine 22s and centerfire rifles, for that matter, a portion of the magazine protrudes below the stock. Because magazines and mag catches typically have fairly sharp edges, it can be uncomfortable to manipulate them and to carry the rifle one-handed, as the balance point on such rifles seems to always be right at the magazine. There are any number of rimfire rifles in which the maker has tried, with different degrees of success, to configure 5-round, single-stack magazines so that the bottoms are flush with the stock when installed.

Though not the first to make a flush-mounted magazine, Ruger may be the first to design a commercially successful flush-mounted 10-round magazine. It is truly flush with the stock, and even the factory mag catch is recessed, out of the way. Since then, of course, Ruger and others are manufacturing extended 15-, 25- and 50-round magazines for the 10/22, as well as what are essentially two 10-round magazines molded back-to-back for faster mag changes during competition. 

A helical screw rotor is the heart of the 10/22 magazine. The rotor turns horizontally as cartridges are fed into the magazine, compressing the axial spring that drives the rotor to feed cartridges upward into the rifle receiver. It’s not terribly complex (though the precise angle on the helical rotor is critical to proper operation), and the magazine is capable of complete disassembly by the DIYer. The 10-round magazine is composed of seven different parts, whereas typical detachable box magazines may have only four and may not be capable of complete disassembly. Fouling from firing many hundreds or thousands of rounds can gum up the works, and even if it doesn’t, many riflemen are fastidious about cleaning their rifles, and who wants to shove a filthy magazine into a clean rifle?

Though the 10/22 magazine is readily disassembled for cleaning, reassembly can be a stumper. Specifically, the rotor spring must be rewound

to its proper tension for the magazine to feed without a hitch. Do it wrong, and the last few rounds won’t feed from the magazine. Nearly as ingenious as the little rotary magazine itself, TANDEMKROSS offers a set of tools specifically for maintaining it, most especially for dealing with that strong rotor spring. The Magazine Assembly Tool with Pouch and Carabiner for Ruger 10/22 tool kit consists of a standard 9/64 hex wrench, a synthetic cap nut tool and a synthetic reassembly assist tool. All are contained in a small zippered pouch to keep them together. 

A three-minute video at the TANDEMKROSS website (click on the image of the tool set in the online catalog to get to it) demonstrates more clearly than I can detail here just how the specialized tools will improve the quality of your DIY life when reassembling the 10/22 magazine. Basically, for reassembly, the assist tool centers up the rotor for reassembly, while the cap nut tool is used to (obviously) wind the cap nut that attaches to a prong on the rotor spring. Remove the assist tool and insert the magazine’s cap nut screw, wind the cap nut and spring 11/4 turns clockwise, and tighten with the Allen wrench. You’re done, and you haven’t sent the cap nut flying across the room or had to struggle repeatedly with the strong axial spring as it resists the cap nut winding it.

It’s $15 well spent and also a DIY must-have if you’d like to build your own quick-change, back-to-back molded double 10-round magazines with the parts from your plethora of single 10-round factory mags rattling around in your range bag. TANDEMKROSS offers DoubleKross magazines fully assembled and ready to run, but you’ll save nearly $40 over the cost of the already assembled double mags when you pull the innards from your 10-round mags and use the tool kit to assemble them into empty DoubleKross bodies sold separately. At $12 each, these two-fer DoubleKross magazine bodies cost less than a new Ruger factory 10-round magazine, and they feature clear plastic bodies so that you can readily see your remaining round count.

One last magazine upgrade, since you’ve got the mags apart anyway, is the TANDEMKROSS Green Spring, a beefed-up mag rotor spring to replace old springs that have lost enough oomph to cause failure-to-feed with the last round. These come in a 3-pack for $10.

If speed or convenience is your thing, then another DIY drop-in related to the 10/22 magazine is the Fireswitch Extended Magazine Release. This has got to be the largest, most user-friendly 10/22 mag release on the market. Its large paddle surface works with either a push or a pull, and it’s easily manipulated even when wearing thick winter gloves. I’ve tested it with more than a half-dozen different loaded and empty 10- and 15-round magazines, and all fall away from the rifle like Olympic divers. This is an easy DIY upgrade, and virtually all 123 reviewers at the TANDEMKROSS website gave it five stars. Cost is $50 for black and $5 more for fire engine red.

Ruger’s 10/22 seems designed for the DIYer, requiring no large investment in expensive gunsmithing tools, though a few inexpensive TANDEMKROSS specialty tools will make life a little less frustrating. To see everything 10/22 DIY that TANDEMKROSS offers, go to Tandemkross.com and click on “Shop by gun model,” then “Ruger,” and then“Ruger 10/22.”