I absolutely love my ruger 10/22. Personally I think its one of the best .22 rifles you can get for the money. Accurate and extremely reliable. But recently I got to use my brothers marlin .22 and realized how much easier his guns bolt operated. And that I really disliked Ruger's bolt lock mechanism, I'm sure anyone who owns a ruger 10/22 knows exactly what I'm talking about. It's a pain to unlock it and unlike every other rifle I've ever owned you have to pull the bolt back while it's locked, push the locking mechanism up just right and then hopefully the bolt will be released.

Just the standard warnings, firearms can be dangerous so if you don't feel comfortable with this, use your common sense and don't do it. Do this to your rifle at your own risk as I claim no responsibility for any stupid actions you make to hurt yourself.

So this instructable is split up into three parts,
Part One - Removing The Stock
Part Two - Polishing The Bolt
Part Three - Modding the Bolt Lock Mechanism. (Pull and release)

What you need:
Flat blade screw driver
Punch (or small screw driver)
Mallet
Small round file (found out these are like $12 and even the good ones don't really last that long but what I did was take the file out of a chainsaw sharpener and that works really well. )
Sand Paper (500, 1000, 2000 grit)
Polishing Compound
Gun Oil

Step 1: Disassembly

Ruger rifles are extremely easy to disassemble. In fact it only takes removing 2 screws to take the stock off.

But before continuing make sure your gun is not load, even if you know it's not go ahead and double check.

Remove the band off the front of the rifle, and and the screw on the bottom in front of the trigger.
When you separate the stock and rifle you need to make sure that the slide is forward, and that the safety is centered otherwise you may scratch up your pretty stock:)
and there you have it, easy enough right?

Now we need to take off the trigger assembly. it's held on by two pins. Get your mallet and punch and punch out the two pins that hold the trigger on.

Step 2: Step 2 - Polishing the Bolt

This is a really easy modification that allows your bolt to be pulled back easier.
There's one pin at the back of the brarel section that keeps the bolt from coming out. Go ahead and remove that pin. Take your barrel section turn it upside down, and pull the bolt back as far as It goes and with your other hand lift the bolt up and out of the barrel.

Now we're just going to polish it. You don't want to take off too much and you only want to polish it in the right places. So anywhere that's machined your going to polish to a mirror finish. I don't have a picture of it but my bolt was pretty rough from the factory. I started on 500 grit, then stepped up to 1000, 2000, and eventually hand polished it with turtlewax polishing compound.

when your all done make sure it's extremely clean (good time to clean out your barrel really well too.). And oil everything before you put it back together.

Step 3: Step 3 - Bolt Lock Mechanism.

Now for the harder part of the mods. The trigger mechanism is simple, but if this is your first time taking one apart it may be confusing for you when it comes time to put everything back together. So once again if you don't feel confident attempting this just don't.

We will be doing a little bit of filing to the part that locks the bolt In place, now I know you can buy these already modded for about $25 but hey this is instructabless! Let's do it for free!!!

Remove the top middle pin that holds the ejector half way then use your finger to hold down the spring and pull the pin the rest of the way out.
Next put your finger over the hammer and pull the trigger to let it forward and remove the spring behind it.
Push the pin out that holds the hammer in (remembering how the hammer and spring go back in) and remove the hammer.
Now push out the pin holding the clip release in and remove the bolt lock

Step 4: Filing Time

My picture only shows the after not the before, but there's normally a little lobe in that hole, your just going to file it until it looks like mine. Don't file too much away or you could end up having a bolt that won't lock and you'll just have to go ahead and buy that $25 pre modded plate. It may just take a couple times reassembling to try it out and then taking it back apart and filing a bit more off.