Sangamon County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois


Brent Harney


Training Rifles for Appleseed -
.22 rifles for 25-meter training
Brent Harney technical presentation
SCRA meeting 5/4/09
June 2009 GunNews









Brent Harney with a .22 Remington

Harney and his son are going to the Appleseed Shoot at the end of May.  They are taking extra weapons just in case. Harney is going to take an M4 with a .22 adapter kit in it and shoot that.

Harney bought this new in the box at K-Mart on Clearlake and they hadn't made it at that time for almost ten years.  He told the salesman he was looking for a .22.  The salesman said, "We have one sitting back there still in the box we'll sell you real cheap but it's missing the magazine."  So Harney bought it -- for thirty-five dollars in 1998.

When he got it home and opened up the Styrofoam box, two magazines were underneath it.

Normally what you see in the Remington nylon series that were made from the fifties up to about ten years ago.  Then you saw them made by FIE, MAG Tec, and CBC in Brazil.  Usually you see them fed with a fourteen-round tube that feeds in through the butt stock.  You twist this little thing and pull it out and it feeds fourteen rounds of long rifle up through here.

There were variations in Mohawk brown, Apache black, and diamond black.  This one was only made one year for K-Mart. This is a clip fed or magazine fed and its called an Apache 77.  They also had some green ones made before then that had five-round clips.  This one is a ten.

The receiver and everything is nylon with a metal cover in the steel barrel.  These are self-lubricating because of the nylon. There's also a lever action called the 76.  There's a 10C, a 12C and there's one of these that's a smooth bore that they invented for a game called Mosquito.  You could shoot cartridges at little clay targets about yeah big.

These things set reliability standards back then that were ungodly.  They shot little wooden blocks and Harney believes the guy shot five or ten thousand of them in the air with only missing four or five.  He was a Remington demonstration shooter.

Harney has seen these things sitting in boats and in behind seats in trucks out west that haven't been taken apart.  If you take one of these apart you'll probably come see Harney and ask him to put it back together because he's had several come in in pieces.  They're really hard to find the thing on how to put it back together.

They're very light.  This one doesn't lock back at all.  It isn't built for that.  The safety is up here.  These are very, very light. They have a really good reputation for reliability.  A lot of collectors are startng to do these now.

This is the one Harney is going to take as a backup.  Harney has had an offer of up to five hundred for it.  He's seen offers for some of the smooth bores and the Inter-made One in short only that was called a Gallery Special.  They were for the State Fair to shoot the star out.  They actually shot .22's out of it.  It's for .22 short and it's called a Gallery Special.  Most of those are in black.  You see some with the receiver cover and the barrel chrome plated in black and where the Diamond here is black, its white on those.  Its a really a sharp looking little gun.

These things are ridiculous how light they are.  The stocks are made in two pieces glued together.  That one too, you cannot put a sling on that.  If you put a sling on it or set it on something solid on the front, you can actually change the point of impact because the receiver is nylon, it bends.

They use a different style stock which you usually don't see.



The scoped rifle on top is the Remington.  The stock on that gun is two-piece molded
plastic, and not conductve to mounting a sling.  The bottom rifle, a Ruger 10-22,
also has a synthetic stock but it will take a sling.  The one above is fitted with
a military sling, and sling usage is taught and encouraged at Appleseed rifle
marksmanship training programs.


This one is the Ruger 10-22.  Harney bought this one for $125 for his son to use as an Appleseed rifle.  This one is lightweight as well.  It is an all weather carbine.   They don't make this style stock anymore, its a stiffer stock now.  The sling is a US GI sling which is what they want you to use at the Appleseed.  Harney drilled the back and found the piece that goes on the barrel band.  This one is also made of stainless steel.  The new ones have a plastic trigger guard and trigger.  You can go on Ruger's web site, put in the serial number and it will tell you when it was made.  This one was made in 1998 and bought at K's Merchandise Mart with one box of 550 rounds of Remington bullets.  When they opened up the box that came with it, there were probably 540 still in it.

They use a ten-round rotary magazine.  Each one is an individual pocket for the round.  They're almost impossible to jam.  You can also buy bigger magazines for them.  There is even one called the Brick that holds 500.

If you get on the internet and look on YouTube, they have these with autosears.

The newer ones are also drill tapped for scope mounts.  This one is waiting on a new set of sights.  A company called Tech Sights, you see them called Liberty training rifles and they're pretty much set up for this Appleseed thing where they teach people how to use this twenty-five meters and, everything you learn here translates out to longer ranges and bigger calibers. The front sight on it and the rear sight goes way back here which moves your sight back another eight inches.  The peep sight gives you the same sight pictures as the Garand.  So whatever you learn here at twenty-five meters translates out to about 500 yards with the Garand.  Same sight picture, same using the sling to steady everything and Harney believes his 12-year old is going to have a ball with it.

The Appleseed is a two-day thing.  Champaign is sponsoring this one at Darnalls.  There's a lot of interesting information on the internet with that.  It's a Revolutionary War group that started it and they teach both the kids and the adults a little bit about the history of Lexington and Concord and what started the country and what started the war.  They teach them the rifle at the same time.  In two-days you'll shoot about 400-450 rounds.  This is why most people have converted to shooting a .22 at it.

Harney then gave a brief demonstration on how easy it is to take the Ruger 10-22 apart with a regular screwdriver and then talked about all the different things you can change out on this rifle.


Brent Harney Index
Sangamon County Rifle Association Home Page