Hello,
Recently, I purchased a "Dar-22". I am told that is the proper name of the barreled action 10/22 "clone" Dlask Arms manufactures. I called Dlask's phone number off of there website and spoke with someone in BC who assisted me through the process I will detail below. At this time I will not be discussing how this firearm performed down range. I am waiting until warmer weather and until I can achieve a reasonable number of sample groups with a large variety of rim-fire ammunition commonly available in Alberta before I put any words on paper as to this guns down range performance (despite I will say it cycles Remington subsonic and cbee 22 ammunition!).
I guess to make this review all it can be I will discuss why I settled on buying a Dlask DAR-22. I don't care much about anything except how accurate a firearm is and how long it will be that accurate. I want to know that after five shots the only reason I don't have one hole downrange is because of how inconsistent a shooter I am. To this end, I own many bolt action rifles, half of which are chambered for the .22LR round. Currently my two favorite .22's are a Winchester Wildcat with a bull barrel. I have come to expect groups which can be completely covered by dime at 50 yards from this gun and to be honest I use I a dime as my measuring tool for personal success. More recently I had the great luck of coming into the possession of a Mossberg 146B .22LR. I am told that it was manufactured during the mid 1940's by Mossberg. Despite that this rifle only has iron sights, I have come to expect groups that could be covered by a nickel at 50 yards.
Luckily given an upswing in my economic situation, I decided it might be worth giving the Ruger 10/22 another shot. I say another because one of the first guns I ever bought was an early model SR-22 when they first came out. I was so dismayed at the accuracy of this gun I sold it immediately. At that time I also started to hate the 10/22. For the last few years, a good friend of mine has used a 10/22 sporter model with a fixed 4 power scope as his primary gopher gun and I have to admit inside of 50-75 yards he does not do too shabby. Given his success and my financial situation coupled with my love of hiking I decided to buy a 10/22 take down model. Now not for protection or crap like that, just to have fun on the hiking trail. I liked the stainless barrel and imagined worst case scenario it could be fun to blast some trees after a few hours of hiking even if accuracy is like my SR-22( 3-5 inch groups at 25 yards). To be frank, I still have no idea how well the 10/22 takedown does for accuracy. I've had it out three times, Each time the only goal has been to shoot at cans or other random objects. Even at that, I have no idea how many of my shoots were hits. Given my dislike of the 10/22 I was more interested in seeing how hot I could get the barrel through firing rapidly then what I was firing at. You could almost say I hoped to break the gun hehe. Im ashamed to admit that through this rapid firing the 10/22 impressed me. I started to like the feel of the action, I liked how despite it was raging hot after 500 rounds in less then 10 minutes it wanted to keep going. Contrasting that with how my friend has crutched on his 10/22, maybe the gun has some merit.
I decided I would sink one thousand dollars into a 10/22 and maybe I could get something accurate and semi automatic action for my money. Of course I looked into CZ's semi auto rim fire offering as well as Remington's, Marlin's and Browning's but the market kept telling me to heavily modify a 10/22 as the most cost effective option. The CZ offering was hard to locate and given it was a carbon steel sporter barrel I was hesitant ( despite I do think that gun might have been a wiser choice then the end result of this which has cost a lot but is still unknown). The marlin didn't have the supply of after market parts if I was unhappy with its performance. Both Remington and Browning had widely varying reports of accuracy. I was browsing some forums and someone mentioned how a barreled action 10/22 might be a good idea.
Now I am not an expert but I have a few ideals I guess. The first is that regardless of the gun, I believe that anything which moves after the firing pin strikes primer has a negative affect on accuracy. I believe that this negative effect comes from inconsistent movement of moving parts. I could be crazy but that is what my gut tells me. For this reason I don't like semi-auto actions and never will. Even if the gun out performed my fewer parts bolt action, I will still have this belief and a dislike semi-auto's. I understand I could be wrong or this thing I believe could be incorrect but its ingrained in my shooting philosophy. The second thing I believe is that, separate from the movement of parts, the forces caused but the combustion and force required to move a bullet from a barrel cause my firearm to vibrate or/and oscillate before the bullet leaves the barrel. To that end ,force against mass, a heavier barrel secured to a heavy receiver behaving as a single object will produce less vibration/more consistent oscillation then a lighter barrel secured to a lighter action. Again I don't have much backing for these opinions besides things I over heard and some less than fantastic understanding of physical things. Even if what I expressed there is accurate it might not apply to "baby" rounds like a .22LR.
I was willing to try the 10/22 but I had zero faith in the V-Block barrel attachment system. I feel that it is not a wise way to attach a barrel to a receiver. I feel that the V-Block creates downward stress on the barrel at the action and unpredictable vibration/oscillation which, at the end of the day, I feel affects the bullet I shoot. True, that I also think this could be as little as half a millimeter of variation over 50 yards but I'm a perfectionist. I need it to be as good as can be within my two philosophies on shooting. So I was looking at the Dlask site and low and behold a barreled action 10/22 existed! Only on custom orders for $650 for the barrel and receiver I wanted but hey sweet. Looking at the Dlask web site, the pictures were ugly, gross and things didn't quite make sense but whatever, almost every review of the Dlask I could find was positive despite uninformative. I figured this might be my best chance of getting fantastic accuracy out of a semi-auto. Again I am chasing perfection- one hole five shots- a true curse.
After speaking with Dlask, I learned that they would be happy to send me a DAR-22 by mail. I learned that the barrel was held into the threaded receiver by a locking nut on the exterior of the barrel. I also learned, the receiver is aluminum but the barrel is steel. That scares me because I am concerned about performance across temperature ranges. I spoke with Dlask for almost an hour. The costumer service was above and beyond. I explained my goal was accuracy. Things like barrel length, weight, barrel material, look and finish, none of these mattered. I only cared how accurate the rifle would be. I told them that I almost exclusively shoot CCI mini mags. Despite my hesitation, Dlask felt that the best length of barrel for accuracy in a .22LR was a 18.5 inch barrel. I was offered my choice of carbon steel or stainless steel. Given the chrome additive and the fact it only cost me an extra $20 I jumped on the increased wear resistance of a stainless barrel. I asked for the barrel to be threaded and that I have one of the fancy " flash-hiders/muzzle breaks/compensators" mailed along with a standard thread protector. They also sold me on a custom CNC machined steel bolt and a $65 dollar trigger job to a $65 dollar Ruger trigger assembly. The steel bolt is exceptional quality. The trigger is insane. Normal amount of slack take up but it feels lighter then anything else I own and has basically no creep after release. Even the gunsmith, Rod Hendrickson expressed appreciation for the trigger job. I received the gun within 3 weeks of placing my order.
On that note I purchased a Boyd stock for the gun hoping it would fit. It fit on my take-down 10/22 but did not fit the Dlask. The DAR-22 had an extra receiver mount which had to be made into the stock as well as the barrel nut was not willing to fit. I took the stock to Rod Hendrickson given the lack of so called "stock smiths" in the Edmonton area. Rod was confident he could fit the stock to the receiver but for a price of $350. Yikes that is a fair bit of money. I would never have gone with this build knowing that price. All the same Rod Delivered. The stock looks and fits amazingly. He was able to inlet the rear receiver mount and the entire stock now fits as if it were better then factory. As Rod tells it he also custom machined screws and brass housings for this build. He did warn me and future prospects that this stock to this receiver would be looking at a minimum 450 price as it was a much more labor intensive job then he originally suspected. He also did this job in less then two weeks, I was impressed. Well end of the day I got what I hoped for but again it cost far too much.
That is all I will say on this Dlask DAR-22 for now. In the next few months I will say more as to its operation, grouping and how it handles various types of ammunition. But for now those are my experiences and I will let you enjoy the many photos I've added to show the detail of this gun.
Yeah lets not address how I ended up with a Bushnell Elite 6500 series scope on this.
Thank You
Dlask DAR-22 experiences/review to date
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