A Custom Ruger 10/22 for Project Valour-IT

We’ve just completed an epic building project. Successfully. Without bleeding. Or parts left over.

Over the past couple of months, we’ve been working with the great folks at Ruger and Brownells to customize a stock Ruger 10/22 Carbine. It’s now a fancy race rifle. A glamorous gun. A fantastic firearm. A phantasmagorical plinker. You get the idea.

Ruger graciously donated the rifle, and the always generous Brownells team donated the parts, and more importantly, the expertise for the project.

Our role was simply to be average and build this custom Ruger 10/22. Being average, mechanically uninclined and generally untalented was not at all hard for us, as most gunsmithing projects around here end badly – usually with a large ziploc of parts being delivered to a genuine gunsmith. But one of the primary ideas behind the project was to see how much can be done to customize a Ruger 10/22 without special tools or knowledge. The other main objective was to document the process so our readers could see exactly how to customize their own Ruger 10/22s.

Fortunately, we picked the right platform – the Ruger 10/22 – and the right partners – the Brownells Gun Tech Team. This combination of an easy to customize rifle platform, and always ready advice and expertise made a positive end result inevitable. Even for us.

You see, a quality outcome for the project was a critical objective, because as much as we wanted to keep this rifle, it was destined for greater things. Last week, we sent it off to Ruger for final cleanup and photography. Now it’s listed for auction on Gunbroker.com (editor’s note: the auction begins at 12:30 PM EDT today, August 15).

The best part? 100% of the proceeds are being donated to Project Valour-IT. In case you’re not familiar, Project Valour-IT is a group within the fantastic Soldiers Angels organization that aims to provide voice-controlled/adaptive laptop computers and other technology to support Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines recovering from hand wounds and other severe injuries.

This is a great cause and we’re glad to help them out.

Now you too can help Project Valour-IT and obtain a fantastic rifle in the process. Ruger will ship the customized rifle to the winners FFL for delivery along with all of the original parts and a signed letter of authenticity.

You can read all about the Ruger 10/22 customization process and the parts used.

More importantly, head on over to Gunbroker.com and place your bid!

Tom McHale

Tom is the primary author of the Insanely Practical Guides series of how-to books. He believes that shooting can be safe and fun, and works hard to make the shooting world easy to understand. If you want to learn about the world of guns, shooting and the American way, check out some of his books. Have a laugh or two. Life is too short for boring "how to" books. You can find print and ebook versions at Amazon. For more information, check out InsanelyPracticalGuides.com Feel free to visit Tom at his website, MyGunCulture.com. It's a half-cocked but right on target look at the world of shooting and all things related. If you want to learn with a laugh about guns, shooting products, personal defense, competition, industry news and the occasional Second Amendment issue, visit him there.