Reloading .22LR . . . . .

Shooting Supplies : Ammo - Reloading - Firearms - Optics - Accessories
Woodsmoke

Woodsmoke

Well-Known Member
Seems like an enormous faff to me :-| I can see the cost savings are potentially not insignificant, but does anyone here in the UK really shoot the .22 enough to warrant firstly the outlay on reloading kit, and secondly the massive investment in time? Not to mention the inevitable firing-pin strikes on previous indents, primer failures, and the fact that performance benefits are questionable, if they exist at all . . . . .

I for one wouldn't be in a massive hurry to rush out and buy a kit.

Reloading .22 Long Rifle—a new option for competitors
 
I saw a video on You Tube using a very similar system a while back. It just seems like a huge waste of time. Is it really that difficult to get hold of .22LR ammo
 
Most people wh load 22LR do not reload for economy, they load for special purpose ammunition to be used in the .22 Precision Long Range matches. There is an industry building to provide primed cases and precision swaged bullets. "PRS" shooting is all the rage but in some locales it is impractical to shoot 1000 yards so they have scaled it down for use with 22LR. The current 22LR loading is geared toward this.~Muir
 
Muir said:
There is an industry building to provide primed cases and precision swaged bullets
Click to expand...

That would make it a lot more practical, I reckon? Even having primed cases available would make a massive difference. Transporting them would be an issue though, surely? I know the existing primer compounds can't be shipped ready-mixed due to the explosives transportation rules, or some such . . . .
 
There is a small but lucrative industry that makes rimfire ammo for the larger calibers . I have an old Stevens Crackshot in 32 long that I still take out occasionally . I used up the last of my CIL ammo a number of years ago but have found a guy in Saskatchewan that makes a number of obsolete rim fire cartridges . There's another guy in Texas , who's name escapes me at the moment , that does as well . By the way , the 32 Long is a great small game round ............. the price of the ammo is enough to give you the vapours , but it's worth it .

AB
 
I did start researching into reloading .17hmr which is a fair bit more expensive. I've never reloaded before though and I think that starting with 17hmr was not gonna end well. £5 for 50 rounds of 22lr seems like fair enough, and not worth loading. £17 for 50 however, I can see being worth it. I stumbled across this interesting video of a bloke going through the process of how he does it

 
Having a pressure sensative powder/ mud anywhere on a reloading bench, makes my skin crawl, far to much chance of an accidental bang, and if that happens when you have a load of viht on the bench,,,,,, then throw in a bunch of rifle primers, the possibilities for disaster are endless, only way to make it anything like safe would be to have the primer/ mud process in a totally seperate room with a system of washing down available
But having said the above there will be people interested in this, all I can say is good luck to them, it is their choice
And that is before we think about the legal aspects of moving explosive materials around the country
Cheers
Ray
 
The poorest of our poachers (i.e. those without AKs) make a form of percussion cap by scraping the red goo from a half-dozen-or-so old-style dampened matches. They keep it wet, shape it in a piece of foil then dry it out by the fire. It works surprisingly well in their home-made muzzle-loaders but the hang-time requires them to give their target plenty of lead. Gunpowder is also homemade in the usual way that we all made it as kids. Incidentally, for bullets, they cut up pieces of 10mm rebar into 30mm lengths then wrap them in cloth to stop them falling out of the end of the barrel.

Mental, eh? However, it would be interesting to see if you could get Swan Vestas paste to work in a rimfire too. Anyone tried?

Kind regards,

Carl
 
As RAY7756 says this is a recipe for blowing yourself up. Eley prime their .22RF cartridges wet. Trying to do this at home is just plain daft. You'd be better to convert the breech or bolt face of the rifle to centrefire for one of the equivalents of (yes they were indeed made) the American .22 centrefire version of a .22 rimfire that specifically existed for people that wanted to have a reloadable smallbore. The book Cartridges of the World details them. Nearest European equivalent might be 5.5mm Velo Dog. Which most of the American websites think is for self defence against people. Nonsense. It was for defence against dog bites. Remember back then rabies was a real risk in parts of rural Europe where you might be out bicycling on country lanes.
 
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During the Great Depression, when people had more time than money, rimfires of all types were reloaded. The primer was dripped into the rim and the brass rotated around while drying the slurry under the heat of a lamp. When I was a boy, a well-worn book in the school library had the entire process spelled out in detail, with photos and drawings, along with 1,000 other cheap and neat things to do and make.
 
I stopped reading and lost any interest when I got to this:

"Handloading for competition is synonymous with precision. So far in testing I have not found reloading .22 LR to provide what we would call “target precision,” most likely due to the difficulty in working with such tiny quantities of priming compound and powder: a small deviation in a 1-grain .22 LR powder charge has far more significance in performance than the same error in a 48-grain .30-06 powder charge."

K
 
I believe the .22 rimfire reached the peak of it’s development around 30 years ago, maybe early 1990’s, since then I don’t think there have been any significant developments. Yes, there have been slight changes, clipping the nose off, staining the case black, copper wash bullets etc. but accuracy is little if any better for the most expensive match ammunition than it was then.
If you’re serious about match accuracy you will be taking your rifle to Eley to to find which particular batch of Tenex suits your rifle, then buy a bulk lot. Paying more than £20 per hundred you would think batch to batch consistence would be fairly good but when seeing the results of the tests it’s plain they're not.

Over the same sort of period the accuracy of centrefire ammunition/rifles has improved significantly, this is almost entirely due to the efforts of enthusiastic reloaders developing new wildcat cartridges like the 6mm ppc, .257 Roberts or 22-250.
I think if the .22 rimfire had been readily reloadable or primed cases available it would have reached the peak of it’s development a little earlier but the 100 odd year heeled bullet design has not much room for improvement.
 
If time is not a factor, you can get Tenex performance for the cost of Blazer prices. I know someone who actually does this, including casting the boolit as well. Would I or could I do it myself, nah, not a chance. But it does work. He working on 22WMR now!
 
Just for fun, we did this long long ago, just to see if it could be done.
Scrape the rim clean with a nail, with a tooth filed into it. Smear red batch compount in the rim and reload with black powder.
They occasionally went off and if they did, mostly went in the right direction.

I see from the latest Cartriages of the World, that unloading 22lr and necking them down to .10 cal is a thing.
 
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