Remington 510 22 cal

[M1XdColt]

I haven't been on this forum since a year now and I got myself a Remington 510 22 lr SMOOTH BORED. What does everyone think of this rifle. The good the bad. Thanks

[golfish]

This is interesting....why would they make a smooth bore? Just for snake shot maybe?

I've got my dad old 512 Targetmaster. It's a good shooter for being 75 years old..

[TRAP55]

Remington Model 510SB for shot shells. No sights, just a brass bead on the front. There was a clay thrower that attached to the barrel, and the clays were about 2" in diameter. Came as a Rifle length, or Carbine.
They also made some with a Routledge Bore. The bore started out .22 cal smooth bore, and opened up at the muzzle to look like a .410 muzzle. They bring more money than the Smooth Bore, but both bring more than other rifled 510's.

[TAS]

Sounds like an interesting rifle of the ‘garden gun’ variety.

[Mike A]

Neat find!

The RIFLED Rem 510 is IMO the nicest of the old .22 BA single shots: self-cocking and has the same action as the Remington target .22s (511T, 513T) that many gun clubs and the Army used in the 1940s and '50s. Just no magazine and a sporter-weight barrel. Used the same action parts as those, except the receiver had no magazine cut or retainer parts.

The Winchester equivalents (Win 67 and 68) were nice guns but you had to cock them by hand with a cocking knob on the back of the receiver. Safe. Slow....

The SMOOTHBORE 510s were often used for pest control inside of barns, grain elevators, hangars, and warehouses because the little #12 shot they fired wouldn't penetrate wood or tin roofs or walls but would penetrate a small bird or mammal or any snake. Didn't ricochet either.

I used my bosses 510 to kill finches, sparrows, pigeons, and rats in his fruit dehydrator back in the 1950s. Fun job. And nobody likes to eat sparrow crap with their breakfast prunes!

Never saw actually anyone use a smoothbore 510 for miniature skeet ("Mo-Skeet-O") but the factory sets of gun, hand trap, and tiny "pigeons" now cost the earth if you find one. And I did see a Winchester Model 61 made smoothbore for that game once. Collector wanted a small fortune for it.