This is a project that I have been playing with for a while, when I get things locked down I will do a full step by step write up of what I have done but it is still a work in progress.
The 17 WSM case is almost the same in diameter as the 25 Stevens so I decided to try cutting the case with a pipe cutter as close to the shoulder as possible, dump out the powder and load a black powder load with a .251 lead bullet on top.
I made a few rounds with a 72gr bullet and now a few with a 50gr bullet, the 50gr bullet over 8gr of FFFg gave me about 700fps at the muzzle and decent accuracy, this was with a tiny bit of compression, I know that the original BP loads used 10-11gr of BP so moving up to 9gr should not be a problem.
The question I guess I have here is, does anyone know what the pressure of the 25 Stevens would have been? These guns were loaded with smokeless, if I could work out a way to load smokeless it would be a lot less messy and my need to compress the BP would go out the window. I know the 22 WRF is the weakest rimfire though SAAMI now at 19,000psi and the 22 LR runs at a max of 25,000psi, the 25 ACP also has a max SAAMI pressure of 25,000psi. So now my brain is going, would a starting load of smokeless 25 ACP load be safe in this case? This is a Cooey Eatonia bolt action, they did run smokeless, just rimfire smokeless, so not sure what that would be.
The 17 WSM case is almost the same in diameter as the 25 Stevens so I decided to try cutting the case with a pipe cutter as close to the shoulder as possible, dump out the powder and load a black powder load with a .251 lead bullet on top.
I made a few rounds with a 72gr bullet and now a few with a 50gr bullet, the 50gr bullet over 8gr of FFFg gave me about 700fps at the muzzle and decent accuracy, this was with a tiny bit of compression, I know that the original BP loads used 10-11gr of BP so moving up to 9gr should not be a problem.
The question I guess I have here is, does anyone know what the pressure of the 25 Stevens would have been? These guns were loaded with smokeless, if I could work out a way to load smokeless it would be a lot less messy and my need to compress the BP would go out the window. I know the 22 WRF is the weakest rimfire though SAAMI now at 19,000psi and the 22 LR runs at a max of 25,000psi, the 25 ACP also has a max SAAMI pressure of 25,000psi. So now my brain is going, would a starting load of smokeless 25 ACP load be safe in this case? This is a Cooey Eatonia bolt action, they did run smokeless, just rimfire smokeless, so not sure what that would be.
