Walther SP22 Range Report

[zumoton]

1st real post. Got a Walt her SP-22 M1 at the Marlborough show as an impulse buy. Went to the range twice with it, so this is really two reports in one. 500 Thunderbolts and ~200 Federal Auto Matches (box of 325) were expended. overall the Remingtons had 6 primer failures (even after multiple strikes), and the federal had zero failures. no FTFs or FTEs, but did end up on a weird state twice where the previous round fires and the next round chambers, but it's as if the hammer didn't cock (no click upon pulling the trigger).

Walther says the sp22 has a a two stage trigger, not sure what exactly that is. I characterize it as a long smooth, but increasingly hard pull followed by a very crisp drop (no mushiness). Performance is hard to gauge as it was most likely limited by the user. Most shots grouped at 5" maximum spread w/ a 1-sigma value at around 2.5" @ 15yd (at around 10-20 rounds per group)

Cleaning was not as easy as I hoped. Cleaning through the breech requires complete disassembley of the firearm; as you can't remove the barrel just by field stripping cause the rear sight assembly gets in the way. So I tried cleaning from the muzzle end--and had metal shavings fall out! I concluded the metal didn't come from the barrel after putting a magnet next to the shavings and the barrel (barrel is para-magnetic, shavings yielded no perceptible response)--whew!

Overall I'm happy with sp22; although cleaning could be easier and I don't like the fact I need two different hex wrenches to disassemble the firearm. As far as using it as a tool to practice and learn for under $300 it's still a bargain.

 

[Texasshooter]

I just spent several hours putting on a 6" match barrel kit onto a Sp22 M1. I thought it would be a twenty minute job but it turned into three hours of frustration. The barrel was bad enough because you have to remove the rear sight to remove the barrel which requires you to take the mainframe of the gun out of the polymer grip and then knock out another pin to remove the rear sight. However, I had to just about toke the whole gun apart to get to the guide rod. Of course once I got to the guide rod, parts started falling out of the frame. It took me an hour to figure out where everything goes. I finally put it back together and was going to make sure everythign was working when I almost stepped on a small spring. So I had to disassemble the gun again, figure out where the spring went and then reassemble again.

The SP22 is definitely not an easy gun to work on. However, now that I have learned just about everything I can about the gun, I still think it is a well thought out gun. The modular design makes upgrading relatively easy and if I have to do a complete teardown and reassembly again, I am confident that I will be able to do it in less than an hour. Of course a Glock takes about 30 seconds to switch out a barrel and guide rod, but in the end, even with all the frustrations, I believe I learned a lot from the experience.

It was already a very accurate gun to begin with but I am hoping the 6" barrel will make it even better. In the process of converting it to the 6" match barrel, I also installed a set of rails and a 2x20 scope. If the weather stays dry in Texas, I will take it out for a test run next weekend. I have several other guns I need to try out as well.

 

[BossHarley]

Thunderbolt ammo is crap, and I would avoid it (and all Remy) LR ammo if you can. I have a couple boxes left after I bought a bunch for ammo testing... and I won't even shoot it anymore.

I get the same lead shavings with it when I shoot it. It could be oversized etc. Definitely has some coating on it that people really hate.