Return of the Space Gun

I got my G22 back from S&W yesterday, and was pleased to find they returned it with a Walther rifle case. The sheet that came with it indicated they had repaired more than what I had expected.
Tight chamber: The reason I sent it in, I'm glad they agreed with my assessment.
Missing springs: Missing springs? What springs would be-- ooohhhh.... the magazine disconnect that I accidentally lost by accident, and not on purpose.
Replace trigger bar: Uh, ok. The trigger bar worked fine, but hey, I'm not going to complain.
Repair broken handle: Handle? ... Where is the handle? The closest thing to a handle I can think of is the raised rail mounted in front of the rear sight, but that's just part of the plastic body. It certainly wasn't broken when I sent it out, but hey, not going to complain...
Replace bolt: They replaced the entire bolt, and left it right-handed even though the original was lefty. Not a big deal, but I didn't see any issues with the original bolt. Not complaining.
Replace ejector: The ejector is a piece of metal. When I sent it out, aside from being caked with a thin layer of stubborn carbon that refused to be removed, it was still a piece of metal. Not complaining.
Tested with CCI STD VEL: Cool.

I immediately took it apart and inspected the parts that had apparently been replaced. The mag disconnect was, indeed, the replaced "missing springs." I quickly re-lost that part, by accident and not on purpose. What? That spring is tiny, and shoots out when you open it up! I removed the bolt and switched it from right handed to left. I couldn't find the original 5 cent trigger job, so I cut up the box it arrived in, and made another. The trigger tightened up nicely, just as it did before.

I lubed, cleaned, and reassembled it for some dry-firing, and found that after the trigger break, there was so much overtravel with the newly tightened trigger, that I was canting the rifle to the right on my follow through (shooting left handed, remember). When I slowed down, I could just barely hit the break without too much overtravel or cant, but the heaviness of the trigger made it hard. I needed a trigger stop.

After looking at the problem for a while, I figured the easiest way to get results was to insert a short wood screw behind the trigger. It was a little fiddly to get the hole started inside the trigger guard, but I did it. I wound up using a small drill bit, and turning it between my fingers. It was slow going, but without a longer bit, attaching it to anything would have made me approach the hole from a much steeper angle, and I wanted the hole as straight through as possible. I used the seam in the plastic body to get my center, and switched from right side to left when hand drilling (finger drilling?) the hole. Once it was deep enough to get the wood screw started, I screwed it in a little bit at an angle, and pushed the screw straight, then finished screwing it in straight with the screwdriver at an oblique angle. The result was a few millimeters of overtravel (had to leave enough to get past the squishy break), and no canting on the follow through. Beautiful. I'll soon have a full post up on this with lots of pictures. I'll call it the 10 cent trigger job :)

Can't wait to shoot it.


There's something about the G22...