So I found this post by Michael Victor over on RimfireCentral about the Titan stock his company makes. I bought one last fall. Of course I used it on a 10/22 I have. It is indeed crooked exactly like he says. But this 10/22 (receiver and barrel) has been in the factory stock as well as 2 other after market stocks (both Hogue stocks) and I didn't notice any gaps at all. Do you really think my factory 10/22 receiver is not straight? Could this really be the case? I never really thought much about the gap in the Titan stock until last night when I was reading RFC.
Here is the post and link to the thread on RimfireCentral. In the end he says it's only cosmetic, but really, the only solution to fix the gap is to buy an aftermarket 10/22 receiver.
http://www.rimfirecentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=e004c437743b62d0a83d7bf64cdf1c16&t=579850
Here is the post and link to the thread on RimfireCentral. In the end he says it's only cosmetic, but really, the only solution to fix the gap is to buy an aftermarket 10/22 receiver.
http://www.rimfirecentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=e004c437743b62d0a83d7bf64cdf1c16&t=579850
WARNING ABOUT CROOKED RUGER RECEIVERS:
Ruger has produced more than an astounding 6 million 10/22 rifles in the last 50 years. While we love our Rugers, they are not without their flaws.
Our Titan 1022 stock is designed to be fully compatible with the Ruger 10//2 receiver but there is a problem we are seeing with some of the Rugers receivers out there, a few have been manufactured with a crooked barrel hole. (The hole in the receiver which the barrel slides into.)
It appears there are a certain percentage of these receivers which have been manufactured with a barrel hole which is slightly canted to the left and when installed on the Titan, it makes it appear as if the stock is bent. I assure you the stock is perfectly straight.
We discovered this flaw on two of our own Ruger receivers and scanned the barreled actions into a laser scanner to scientifically verify what we thought we were seeing... the barrel cants to the left approximately 0.070" at the end of an 16 inch barrel. This is a Ruger manufacturing error (or what you may call a very loose tolerance).
The easiest way you can check your receiver to see if it's straight is by removing it from the stock, removing the trigger group and bolt carrier group then C clamp it to to a flat surface (like a metal table or granite countertop). Measure the distance from surface of the table to the outside edge of the barrel. Then flip it over on the other side and do the same. The two measurements you get should be the same, if they are different then your barrel is canted. Bull barreled receivers work best for measuring this.
We have had a number of customers return their Titan stocks thinking the stock was bent. We took the returned stocks and installed three different receivers to check for straightness (a Kidd, a PWS T3 Summit and a straight Ruger 10/22). In EVERY case the stock was perfectly straight. There were no manufacturing flaws in the Titan.
We stand 100 percent behind our Titan stocks and will make good on any of our products that falls outside of our very high standards of manufacturing. While there is always the possibility that we could have produced an imperfect stock, if you are seeing your Ruger barrel canting to the left in the barrel channel, it is the Ruger receiver which is out of spec, not the Titan.
Please check your receiver before you purchase a Titan stock to see if it is indeed canted. If you purchase a Titan stock and find the barrel is canted to the left, we are happy to refund the cost of stock but we will not pay for shipping.
Thank you and happy shooting!
MV
ETA:
NOTE - THE CROOKED RUGER RECEIVERS SHOOT JUST AS ACCURATELY AS THE STRAIGHTER ONES. THIS IS A COSMETIC FLAW AS YOU CAN SEE THE BARREL CANTED TO ONE SIDE. AS LONG AS YOUR BARREL IS NOT TOUCHING THE EDGE OF THE STOCK YOU ARE GOOD TO GO.