Scoundrel
08-09-2012, 08:28 PM
I won't talk about the price I paid for it, because it's nothing to shout about. I know I got taken, and I knew I was going to get taken before I even set foot in the shop. I did it because I wanted it, and I wanted it NOW, and the model (color) I wanted has been discontinued so I figured they were going to get harder to find.
Jeepster09 will approve of the color scheme, if nothing else. :)
At the LGS, I wanted to field strip it first, to make sure there wasn't any hidden damage. The sales manager didn't want to let me do it, even though I had dropped my ID, permit, and debit card on the counter in front of him. I stood my ground, told him I wasn't buying any gun I had not field stripped after the incident with the S&W AR-15 at Cabela's. I didn't quite have to go as far as putting my cards back in my wallet and turning my back on him, headed for the door - but it was a close thing.
His argument was that some guns gain cosmetic defects the very first time you take them down, and then nobody wants to buy that one. We finally compromised by letting HIM strip it, very carefully, and then I was able to inspect it. I took my time about it. I found nothing wrong with it. Hopefully not too many jackasses have dry fired it, causing deep hidden damage, but there was no way to check, and they did not have any more of them in the back.
So I took ownership of a shiny new OD Green Walther P22.
The first thing I did when I got home was take it apart and look it over again. Still nothing wrong with it. I considered cleaning it, but it didn't seem dirty at all. If the factory sent more than one round through it, someone cleaned it afterward. It was definitely brand new, there were no wear indicators on the friction/impact surfaces.
The factory goop was actually fairly thin (I think it was just motor oil), and everything seemed to slide/rotate smoothly, so I decided NOT to clean it before firing. I did, however, rack it 200 times and then brush a few plastic shavings out of some crevasses. It seems perfectly acceptable to me to receive a gun in this condition from the factory.
Then I went through the manual, becoming familiar with everything about it, and verifying the proper function of the action according to the manual's test procedure.
Today I went to the range to put it through its paces. Here's the ammo I brought with me:
Federal Bulk Pack 32gr Copper Plated HP 1250fps
Winchester Bulk Pack 36gr Copper Plated HP 1250fps
CCI Subsonic 40gr Lead HP 1050fps
Aguila SSS Sniper 60gr Subsonic Lead RN 950fps
Aguila Interceptor 40gr Copper Washed RN 1470fps
Aguila Super Colibri 20gr Lead Point 500fps
I did not bring ANY Stingers with me. I did my research on that and found that Stingers have a longer casing than standard .22lr, and as a result they do not fully seat in the P22's chamber, resulting in a dangerous condition where the unsupported casing can burst and spray brass and gunpowder everywhere (including in your eyes). Also, the P22 has a relatively small ejection port, so the longer casing is more likely to get stuck in there. Walther does not specifically mention Stingers in the manual, but people have contacted customer service and been told not to use Stingers for these reasons. That's good enough for me!
I started out with the Winchester. The nose on those things is pretty square, and I wanted to do those ones first, mainly because the Taurus 22PLY absolutely refuses to run that stuff and I was curious. I didn't run through ALL of it at once though. I did half, then came back to it later after running other stuff through.
I had a few failures with the Winchester. The second one failed to feed, one of them did a stovepipe, and a couple more did not knock the slide back hard enough to load the next round. Not great, but not terrible.
Next I ran some Federal bulk pack through the P22. I didn't have a single failure with that stuff. That's the stuff that the 22PLY likes best as well. By a very fortunate coincidence, it's also the absolute cheapest ammo I can find at just over $0.03/rd when purchased in 550-round boxes.
Then I decided it was time to go subsonic (of course, it is probable that ALL of the ammo I fired today stayed subsonic due to the short barrel, but I am talking about stuff that is subsonic even in its optimal environment).
In the subsonic category, I started with the Aguila 60gr stuff. I am well aware that the rifling in a standard short barrel pistol is absolutely not going to stabilize this bullet properly, but I didn't care much about that. I wanted to know whether I could sling 60 grains of lead without sonic booms, and have the action cycle properly. I was not disappointed. I have yet to find a gun that does not cycle properly with these beastly things. I have often suspected them of keyholing because of the size of the holes they punch in the paper, but this time I taped some thin cardboard to the target, and verified that they did NOT keyhole at 25 feet. I was able to hit a 3" x 4" rectangle of cardboard with a decent grouping (for a short pistol) at 25 feet. I like these rounds! I did have one feed failure in a box of 50. These rounds are pretty fat and the wax coating adds to that, so I'm not really surprised.
Next up was the Aguila Super Colibri. When I pulled the trigger, I almost could not tell that I had fired something. The slide did not cycle even once in 10 rounds, and I could barely even hear the pop with the earmuffs on. I might as well have been firing a CO2 pellet gun, and that's about how much damage I suspect they'd do as well. But they all loaded up fine from the magazine when I racked the slide by hand despite how short they are. There's a time/place for using those.
I didn't go through more than about 20 rounds of the Aguila Interceptors, but they cycled perfectly. If anything went supersonic, it was those.
The CCI Subsonic is my favorite .22lr round of all, but it did not work very well in this pistol. Out of a box of 100, I had about 15 of them fail to kick the slide back hard enough to feed the next round. Not very good statistics there. Oh well, I'll reserve those for use in the M&P 15/22 and the Ruger pistols, which love them!
After running through all of those, I put another 30 rounds each of the Federal and the Winchester through again, just to see if their performance stayed constant after letting the P22 stretch its legs and get choked up with some powder residue. They performed just as well as before (one more failure in the Winchester, none on the Federal).
When I got home, I took the P22 apart again and inspected for any damage, and to see how much gunk built up in it. I was surprised at how clean it was in there. The 22PLY is that way as well, which is a sharp contrast to the Ruger MKIII and M&P 15/22, which are dirty little ammo whores.
So that's a break-in and assessment of the Walther P22 with about 300 rounds of an assortment of ammo through it.
I've read online that the Walther P22 is/was finicky about ammo, like many small .22lr autos with slides, and that's certainly true with my Taurus 22PLY. However, I felt that the Walther P22 did very well with the ammo it was given, and only failed in ways that I was already anticipating. It exceeded my expectations, actually, and I am quite happy with it.
Here are some photos!
Jeepster09 will approve of the color scheme, if nothing else. :)
At the LGS, I wanted to field strip it first, to make sure there wasn't any hidden damage. The sales manager didn't want to let me do it, even though I had dropped my ID, permit, and debit card on the counter in front of him. I stood my ground, told him I wasn't buying any gun I had not field stripped after the incident with the S&W AR-15 at Cabela's. I didn't quite have to go as far as putting my cards back in my wallet and turning my back on him, headed for the door - but it was a close thing.
His argument was that some guns gain cosmetic defects the very first time you take them down, and then nobody wants to buy that one. We finally compromised by letting HIM strip it, very carefully, and then I was able to inspect it. I took my time about it. I found nothing wrong with it. Hopefully not too many jackasses have dry fired it, causing deep hidden damage, but there was no way to check, and they did not have any more of them in the back.
So I took ownership of a shiny new OD Green Walther P22.
The first thing I did when I got home was take it apart and look it over again. Still nothing wrong with it. I considered cleaning it, but it didn't seem dirty at all. If the factory sent more than one round through it, someone cleaned it afterward. It was definitely brand new, there were no wear indicators on the friction/impact surfaces.
The factory goop was actually fairly thin (I think it was just motor oil), and everything seemed to slide/rotate smoothly, so I decided NOT to clean it before firing. I did, however, rack it 200 times and then brush a few plastic shavings out of some crevasses. It seems perfectly acceptable to me to receive a gun in this condition from the factory.
Then I went through the manual, becoming familiar with everything about it, and verifying the proper function of the action according to the manual's test procedure.
Today I went to the range to put it through its paces. Here's the ammo I brought with me:
Federal Bulk Pack 32gr Copper Plated HP 1250fps
Winchester Bulk Pack 36gr Copper Plated HP 1250fps
CCI Subsonic 40gr Lead HP 1050fps
Aguila SSS Sniper 60gr Subsonic Lead RN 950fps
Aguila Interceptor 40gr Copper Washed RN 1470fps
Aguila Super Colibri 20gr Lead Point 500fps
I did not bring ANY Stingers with me. I did my research on that and found that Stingers have a longer casing than standard .22lr, and as a result they do not fully seat in the P22's chamber, resulting in a dangerous condition where the unsupported casing can burst and spray brass and gunpowder everywhere (including in your eyes). Also, the P22 has a relatively small ejection port, so the longer casing is more likely to get stuck in there. Walther does not specifically mention Stingers in the manual, but people have contacted customer service and been told not to use Stingers for these reasons. That's good enough for me!
I started out with the Winchester. The nose on those things is pretty square, and I wanted to do those ones first, mainly because the Taurus 22PLY absolutely refuses to run that stuff and I was curious. I didn't run through ALL of it at once though. I did half, then came back to it later after running other stuff through.
I had a few failures with the Winchester. The second one failed to feed, one of them did a stovepipe, and a couple more did not knock the slide back hard enough to load the next round. Not great, but not terrible.
Next I ran some Federal bulk pack through the P22. I didn't have a single failure with that stuff. That's the stuff that the 22PLY likes best as well. By a very fortunate coincidence, it's also the absolute cheapest ammo I can find at just over $0.03/rd when purchased in 550-round boxes.
Then I decided it was time to go subsonic (of course, it is probable that ALL of the ammo I fired today stayed subsonic due to the short barrel, but I am talking about stuff that is subsonic even in its optimal environment).
In the subsonic category, I started with the Aguila 60gr stuff. I am well aware that the rifling in a standard short barrel pistol is absolutely not going to stabilize this bullet properly, but I didn't care much about that. I wanted to know whether I could sling 60 grains of lead without sonic booms, and have the action cycle properly. I was not disappointed. I have yet to find a gun that does not cycle properly with these beastly things. I have often suspected them of keyholing because of the size of the holes they punch in the paper, but this time I taped some thin cardboard to the target, and verified that they did NOT keyhole at 25 feet. I was able to hit a 3" x 4" rectangle of cardboard with a decent grouping (for a short pistol) at 25 feet. I like these rounds! I did have one feed failure in a box of 50. These rounds are pretty fat and the wax coating adds to that, so I'm not really surprised.
Next up was the Aguila Super Colibri. When I pulled the trigger, I almost could not tell that I had fired something. The slide did not cycle even once in 10 rounds, and I could barely even hear the pop with the earmuffs on. I might as well have been firing a CO2 pellet gun, and that's about how much damage I suspect they'd do as well. But they all loaded up fine from the magazine when I racked the slide by hand despite how short they are. There's a time/place for using those.
I didn't go through more than about 20 rounds of the Aguila Interceptors, but they cycled perfectly. If anything went supersonic, it was those.
The CCI Subsonic is my favorite .22lr round of all, but it did not work very well in this pistol. Out of a box of 100, I had about 15 of them fail to kick the slide back hard enough to feed the next round. Not very good statistics there. Oh well, I'll reserve those for use in the M&P 15/22 and the Ruger pistols, which love them!
After running through all of those, I put another 30 rounds each of the Federal and the Winchester through again, just to see if their performance stayed constant after letting the P22 stretch its legs and get choked up with some powder residue. They performed just as well as before (one more failure in the Winchester, none on the Federal).
When I got home, I took the P22 apart again and inspected for any damage, and to see how much gunk built up in it. I was surprised at how clean it was in there. The 22PLY is that way as well, which is a sharp contrast to the Ruger MKIII and M&P 15/22, which are dirty little ammo whores.
So that's a break-in and assessment of the Walther P22 with about 300 rounds of an assortment of ammo through it.
I've read online that the Walther P22 is/was finicky about ammo, like many small .22lr autos with slides, and that's certainly true with my Taurus 22PLY. However, I felt that the Walther P22 did very well with the ammo it was given, and only failed in ways that I was already anticipating. It exceeded my expectations, actually, and I am quite happy with it.
Here are some photos!