The Smith & Wesson 22A, Part 1

Regular readers know I'm a big fan of the Ruger .22 auto Mark series and the functionally identical .22/45. These guns are inexpensive, accurate, practically indestructible, easy to work on, and there are hundreds of custom parts available for them. So why the 22A? Well, I've always been curious about them, and this one was cheap. How cheap? About a third of what new ones are selling for locally.

This is a simply constructed pistol that combines a cast aluminum frame (the registered part) with either a solid steel bull barrel, or an aluminum barrel with a steel liner, which is what you see here. It's a development of the earlier 22S, which had an all-steel frame that weighed several ounces more, and cost more as well. Functionally, they're pretty much identical. The one seen here is actually a 22A-1, a modification of the 22A design that corrects a problem having to do with barrel mounting in the original 22A design that could result in cracking the frame when the barrel was removed.

Barrel removal is as simple as you'll find in a pistol. Depress the  button in from of the trigger guard...

...which releases the lug that anchors the barrel assembly to the frame:

Now you can easily clean the barrel, or swap it out for different one. Fans of the old High Standard pistols will probably recognize the method of barrel attachment.

I've noticed that on mine, sometimes it takes a light whack with a soft hammer to get the barrel release button to move at first. After that, finger pressure is enough.

One particularly nice feature of the 22A is the full-length Weaver rib that allows the easy attachment of a scope or dot sight. It's finished in the same semi-gloss paint as the rest of the aluminum on the barrel assembly; bullseye shooters using iron sights might want to repaint this part with some flat black. If I were ambitious I'd strip the frame and treat it with Birchwood Casey Aluminum Black Metal Finish, which produces a really nice flat black finish.

The 22A has a lot of fans, but it has also come in for a fair amount of criticism from some shooters who say that it won't cycle, or it's inaccurate, or it breaks. The fans say that failure to cycle is almost always due to "limp wristing" the gun, i.e., not gripping it tightly enough. (This can be a problem with many blowback .22 designs. If you let your wrist absorb the recoil, there isn't enough energy to operate the slide.) Accuracy seems to be a matter of practice and ammunition selection.

The breakage issue usually involves the lug that anchors the recoil spring and limits the rearward travel of the slide. I've seen a few photos of cracked ones on the web. Here's what it looks like with the slide removed:

You can see that the forward edge is radiused where it meets the rest of the frame, which prevents the stresses from the recoiling slide from being concentrated at the base of the lug, which in turn could lead to failure at that point.

 Here's another view of the lug , from above, with the slide in place:

Do you see the a thin white nylon shim right hand end of the spring and the recoil lug? S&W calls that the "recoil spacer" and it acts as a buffer between the slide and the lug. It's a sacrificial part; my 22A came with a spare in an envelope. This is a part that the shooter is supposed to monitor and replace if necessary. On-line discussions suggest that if you limit yourself to target or standard velocity ammunition, you won't wear this piece out for a long time, and if you do, S&W will send you a half-dozen for free.

Using nothing but standard velocity ammunition, this gun should las a long time between failures, but reading the forums it's clear that a lot of owners are stuffing high-velocity rounds in their 22As. Many use CCI Mini-Mags, which generate about 30% more energy than standard velocity rounds. One said his 22A was happiest with CCI Stingers, which generate twice the energy of standard velocity rounds. If his cracks, I wouldn't be all that surprised.

So while the S&W 22A isn't as rugged as the Rugers, or as tunable, it's still an interesting pistol that's easy to maintain and repair. If you can find a used gun cheaply (as I did) it's worth playing around with. But given the asking price of a new 22A ($349-360), my personal preference is still the Ruger 22/45 Target model.

Next: Shooting the 22A.