Tom & Ray,<br><br>Wow! Thanks for the wealth of info.<br><br>That will take a while to digest and apply. But it looks promising. <br><br>Tom, your comment about AO hits hard. Naturally, I have a 4X high powered rifle scope mounted on it. I also have a Rem 541 which inherited a superseded older Leupold Vari X III 3 1/2 - 10X with AO (that's adjustable objective for Ade). I won't mention the vintage lest Cyberraven read it and feel too young to comment. I've always adjusted the AO according to the range. Not surprisingly, it always out-groups the 10/22, even with the magnification adjusted to 4X. I always assumed that it was just the gun that was intrinsically more accurate (I still suspect that it is a significant contributing factor). I never bothered to hold the AO constant. DUH! Guess what my next test will be. I've also got a spare target scope to try on the Ruger to see if the AO helps it.<br><br>I really like the idea of personally gunsmithing the innards myself largely with drop-in replacement parts. It's quick, personally satisfying, and cheap. A few years ago, I did a dozen or so recoil pad installations myself, and thereby justified to my wife the purchase of a lot of new tools. It's also hard to lose your own gun or do a 3-month late delivery of the work (when you would you would otherwise be without the gun to shoot).<br><br>I've also heard from other sources that the current Ruger barrels are a lot better. It's good to hear that validated. Thus it would be practical to just get another gun for the project. Wouldn't it be wild if the new gun didn't require and modifications. But I'm dreaming now.<br><br>By the way, our most accurate rifle is actually my wife's--a bargain Rem 788 in .243 Win that was a demo model I got for a pittance. <br><br>Thanks for the load of test data on ammo. I also tested a large variety of ammo several years ago. Some of my best results were with some older lots of Rem. & CCI SV. Some of my older PMC shot very well, but the newer lot did not. Surprisingly, the cheapo Wallyworld Rem LR HPs were not bad. I'll retest the W W ammo mentioned. <br><br>Thanks for all the loads of info.<br><br>John