My "Little Big Gun"
This is a bit long but it's a little tribute to one of the last affordable efforts at making a rimfire rifle from steel and quality wood; one of my favorite firearms ever is my Brno ZKM 611 .22 Magnum takedown autoloading rifle. It's a little gun made to big gun standards.
About 10 years ago a local dealer had obtained some and was selling them for $390.00. Beautiful little guns, all steel and walnut, in fact the only thing plastic on them was the buttplate. One day I was in the store with my wife and the old boy told me that I really needed one of these. I told him I needed a .22 WRM automatic like I needed another nostril. My wife asked me if I wanted it and when I said "sure" she said "well pay the man."
I took it out and shot it and the partridge non adjustable sights were dead nuts on at 50 yards. I put a little 4 power Leupold rimfire 'scope on it and with the 'scope and rings. sling and a full 6 round magazine it weighs only 6 1/2 pounds.
The rifle disassembles easily without tools, Unscrew the takedown bolt on the left receiver and slide the upper receiver and barrel off (taken down the rifle is a tad over 2 ft. long,) lock the bolt back, wiggle out the operating handle, pull the bolt out the back and you're done.
The operating system is different. The .22 WRM is a "tweener" cartridge. almost too powerful, generating 25,000 p.s.i, for a blowback action in a rifle, but do you really want to make a locked breach?? There are two possible solutions, a really heavy return spring or a really heavy bolt. The Brno people went with the really heavy, as in massive bolt. The bolt has an extension that extends in the forearm under the barrel and contains the return spring. I figure the bolt weighs every bit of four ounces.
As I said it's a steel rifle, the upper receiver is machined from a billet, it contains the heafty ejector and the barrel is screwed into it. The lower receiver, which is machined from an investment casting contains the Garand-ish hammer hook firing system. cross bolt safety, and a magazine disconector. The Euro style "hogsback" stock is a pretty piece of walnut with some burl at the heel, the forend has some nice figure too.
Now how does it shoot? Its a .22 Magnum light sporter and should be judged as such. Like many autoloaders the trigger is creapy but not heavy I estimate it breaks at 4 pounds. If I do my part and really hold 'em and squeeze em' I can keep everything in 2" at 100 yards with the little 4X 'scope. I've had a few really good days when I could hit 12 guage shot shells with some regularity at 100 yards, from a bench of course.
Downsides - The safety is positive, maybe too positive - you really have to mash it to disengage it. The trigger, as I said has some mush and while it's foolproof with everything else it doesn't like Winchester ammo for some reason. It digests everything else without a hiccup and loves CCI 40 gr. Maxi Mags.
Unfortunately the guns have been discontinued for several years. There was no market for them in Europe where the .22 Magnum seems to not be a popular cartridge, so they were exported almost exclusively to the U.S. and Australia. They were extremely popular "down under" and when the semi auto ban was passed there all Aussie ZKM 611s went into the smelter. Producing the guns then became non cost efficient.
The price of the little rifles has skyrocketed. Magazines, which are very robust, and I mean almost AK 47 robust sheet steel, now go for around $100.00 (fortunately I have two, a six round and a 10 rounder.) The rifles themselves are going from $600.00 to $900.00 if you can find them.
As a side note, Tom Knapp, for a time, did a lot of exhibition shooting with a ZKM 611.
The first picture is the ZKM 611 with my Remington 700 Classic in .250 Savage
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