May not be intended use or recommended, but with ammo obsolete for this old gun, or at least uber expensive if found, has anyone tried using a .25 cal Ramset load pushing a .25cal Benjamin 27.9 gr pellet? Its just gas pushing a pellet. Cheap plinking solution or good way to lose an eye? Who's tried it?
Ammo alternative for .25 Stevens Rimfire
- Thread starter steve-r
- Start date
Steve
I am looking at trimming 17 WRM rounds down to just below the shoulders. This would give a case very very close to Stevens 25 and in between the Short and Long ctgs.
Hoping to get my hands on some fired cases to check dimensions then buy a box of the loaded ctgs, pull bullets etc Real problem is finding a die that will crimp the bullets into case!
Phil Cressman, Waterloo, ON pwc@rogers.com
I am looking at trimming 17 WRM rounds down to just below the shoulders. This would give a case very very close to Stevens 25 and in between the Short and Long ctgs.
Hoping to get my hands on some fired cases to check dimensions then buy a box of the loaded ctgs, pull bullets etc Real problem is finding a die that will crimp the bullets into case!
Phil Cressman, Waterloo, ON pwc@rogers.com
vagrantviking
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- High River, Alberta
Look for posts by user Fox. He recently had a series of threads about using 17hmr cases to make ammo for a 25rimfire.
One of the biggest issues was trying to find a .251 bullet if I remember correctly.
One of the biggest issues was trying to find a .251 bullet if I remember correctly.
Hey, thanks for pointing to my post, I have to do a little more work on this.
It is not 17 HMR, it is 17 WSM, which is based on the 27 cal nail gun blank. Remember that nail gun blanks do not fit rifle chambers for a reason, so you have to look at the specs.
The 17 WSM is about 7 thou under sized to the 25 Stevens but the rim is the correct size. The rim is thicker though on the 17 WSM and the primer is harder, I have a Cooey Canuck and was able to get a bolt with a custom firing pin installed, I still need to fit it properly for the gun for headspace but this allowed me to go from 4-7 strikes on the primer for a bang to 1 strike and bang.
The key here though is that you CANNOT USE THE EXISTING POWDER, you do not know what powder it is and what sort of pressure curve you have, the 17 WSM is a modern gun running 33,000 PSI, the 25 Stevens is originally a black powder round.
That being known though I take a 17 WSM, use a small pipe cutter and cut the case just below the shoulder, I can then knock out and sell the .172 bullets. I then dump out the powder into a collection pan for use in the garden as fertilizer.
The case will now need to be straightened and flared for a bullet, essentially sized, I have 25 ACP dies for this, the powder through die has an expander on it, this works well. The shell holder that fits best is for a 30 Carbine. I ran a test load with 9gr of FFFg, I wanted to start low and compare to existing original short and long rounds.
The bullet is a .257 cast 72gr pure lead bullet sized down in a custom sizing die to .251. The die knocks off all the lube grooves, so I take the bullet and roll it through 2 coarse files to knurl it, then roll it in 50/50 beeswax and Crisco, this seems to work fine for me.
The only batch I have made so far involved seating the bullet directly on the powder but I now have a compression die made up for the powder, seating directly on to the powder causes a lot of deformation of the bullet nose and the weird velocities over the Chronograph proved I needed to bulk up the consistency.
I shot 5rds over the Chronograph, ended up with about 800fps with a 72gr bullet, this is with a low starting powder weight and coarser powder than what was originally used, they used to call rimfire black powder "dust", so going to get a can of FFFFg to try.
The gun cleans up like any other BP gun, take the barrelled action off the stock, hold it with a Silicone oven mit and pour a kettle of boiling water through it, no corrosion at all and not a lot of fouling when shooting a few rounds.
I have a spacer now for more consistent seating depth and the powder compression die as well as that new bolt and firing pin, looking forward to making a box of 50 for about $20
, that is shootable, just don't ask me about how much investment in the tooling, ha ha ha.They are 50gr and hard cast lead, not ideal in an old rimfire.
Milspectacles
CGN Regular
- Location
- Central Alberta
RCBS has a mould for .25ACP 50gr round nose and is .251, not sure if you’d be able to get one around here though
$95 and 15gr under stock weight but I do not mind that idea, a .257 runs about $70 for the mold.
I was playing again this weekend, my compression die is too wide, need to narrow it on the lathe to go at it again.
I found a box of .25 Ramset #4 at HD. It loaded fine, but took 4 pulls to fire. Didnt try a pellet yet.
It left a lot of dirt in the barrel, and made a pretty good muzzle flash. Watched a few Youtubes of guys firing .22 pellets with Ramset loads. With #4's they were getting over 2500 fps. Holy moly. The only issue they had was intermittent pellet separation and the leaving some lead in the barrel. Proceeding with caution!
It left a lot of dirt in the barrel, and made a pretty good muzzle flash. Watched a few Youtubes of guys firing .22 pellets with Ramset loads. With #4's they were getting over 2500 fps. Holy moly. The only issue they had was intermittent pellet separation and the leaving some lead in the barrel. Proceeding with caution!
How do they fit? A 25 cal ramset is undersized to the 25 Stevens chamber.
Be careful, those can be a lot more powerful than a standard cartridge.
Do some more checking on the Ramset cartridge power levels. As I recall reading something about this on another board from a fella wanting to do just this same thing there was a strong warning that even the lowest power Ramset or equivalent cartridge had more power in it than the old .25RF rounds. You risk having the back end of the gun snap off and come back into your face with extra power. Those old Stevens rifles for that sort of thing were not the best materials in the first place. I love the darn things too. But we need to respect that they were simple rifles made at the lowest possible cost in their day.
You're likely fine with just the blanks. But when you start sticking a pellet or other projectile in the bore ahead of the blank then the chamber pressure is going to rise. And you don't want it to rise any higher or at least only a little higher at most to what the old RF ammo produced.
Even the old Steven's .22 rimfires were not intended to deal with the extra snap of today's commonly found HV rounds. I did shoot them early on. But now it's SV or Quiet or other lower power stuff for the true oldies.
When Savage re-did the Favorite a few years back for a while they used better steel in it so it was fine for any of the modern power stuff.
You're likely fine with just the blanks. But when you start sticking a pellet or other projectile in the bore ahead of the blank then the chamber pressure is going to rise. And you don't want it to rise any higher or at least only a little higher at most to what the old RF ammo produced.
Even the old Steven's .22 rimfires were not intended to deal with the extra snap of today's commonly found HV rounds. I did shoot them early on. But now it's SV or Quiet or other lower power stuff for the true oldies.
When Savage re-did the Favorite a few years back for a while they used better steel in it so it was fine for any of the modern power stuff.
Very true, the 25 Stevens round is a very low pressure round. I have a 1960s semi and I will not run anything but standard velocity in it, just the extra recoil back on the action and no buffer makes me worry about running HV and ruining a family heirloom.
Back to the OP, I had to bring my BP compression die back into work to get it turned down a bit more, was a little tight in the case and was locking itself into the case when compressing the powder.
I was pretty happy with my tests though, 72gr bullet at 900fps, that is about the same hitting power as a mini-mag. I am also going to try to get some 50gr .251 pills and see what I can get with that too.
I am curious though as to your comments on the 22LR, I am pretty sure that the SAMMI specs take into account the old actions, so even the HV should not be over that, but if it were a BP only gun I sure as heck would not be running CCI Stingers in it.
25 ACP is a semi-rimmed, lots of guys convert falling blocks to 25 ACP and shoot it like that, many of those you can move the firing pin back and forth, so a rimfire/centerfire if you really want to.
It fit fine. They only had yellow Powerload #4, i will look for some lower power loads.
I have no idea as to value. My grampa taught me how to shoot carp with it at the family cottage. I have 6 bullets left, 65gr LR but dont want to shoot them. The gun has some sentimental value, i dont want to blow it up, but shooting it was a lot of fun, it has a nice peep-sight, and was quite accurate...hence the renewed interest!
There is bit of collector value to real good ones, most are poor, I collected them for a few years , but more the 44 actions which will handle center fire, but these old guns will not as all the pressure is on the pivot pin, on the Favorite that is.
44 1/2 action is the top model, but those are rare and huge money.
44 1/2 action is the top model, but those are rare and huge money.
The 25 powerload is smaller than the 25 rimfire, the 27 cal ramset is much closer in size, they do not size the ramset load the same as gun loads so people do not do what you are doing.
You are playing with fire here, I have a second bolt setup for my 25 Cooey, it is headspaced for the ammo I am making, shot an original 25 short out of it the other day to test and see if it would be ok, ruptured the case, blew powder into my face, not fun at all, I would advise against playing around too much before doing more research and taking some measurements.
