Reloading .22LR

I recall reading about reloading .22 rimfire in South Africa, I believe it was. It was a good idea under their circumstances.
 
I see a purpose for this..... Factory ammo is mass produced and not always reliably.... There is lots of variation.....

With that few gr. In a cartridge, even one makes a difference if one were say, in a silhouette or 100 yard competition with built rifles....

I am a new reloader, admittedly, but I was partially drawn to reloading based on the ability to "accurize" a load..... And have seen many a debate over A few gr. in cartridges as large as .375 H&h......

To me, this may have an application for the Rimfire competition shooter....

That being said, if you are doing this to knock beer cans off a stump at 20 yards, you may have an issue......
 
Superbrad said:
I see a purpose for this..... Factory ammo is mass produced and not always reliably.... There is lots of variation.....

With that few gr. In a cartridge, even one makes a difference if one were say, in a silhouette or 100 yard competition with built rifles....

I am a new reloader, admittedly, but I was partially drawn to reloading based on the ability to "accurize" a load..... And have seen many a debate over A few gr. in cartridges as large as .375 H&h......

To me, this may have an application for the Rimfire competition shooter....

That being said, if you are doing this to knock beer cans off a stump at 20 yards, you may have an issue......
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getting the powder charge and bullet weight perfect would be easy but getting/making the priming compound is the hard part.
 
Spawn-Inc said:
getting the powder charge and bullet weight perfect would be easy but getting/making the priming compound is the hard part.
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For sure.... And priming a Rimfire requires centrifugal force...... Not sure how this works in this process to be honest.....

But I would guess that a pre primed case with the ability to load your own powder and projectile might have appeal in some situations.....
 
If there was source for primed casings this could be fun, and even useful. However repriming 22 LR brass still has the issue of the pinched rim from being used previously, and if and when it happens to line up just right, and it will, you end up with a misfire that must be rechambered and clocked properly to fire.

Now think about 2x fired, 4x fired, you get the idea.
 
I waste my time on quite a few things but this is a little over the top. Buy more than you need everytime you come across a good deal and you are set for .22 lr. Now 17 hmr might be worth it considering the price last time I took notice in the stores.
 
thump_rrr said:
I started reading about making your own .223 bullets using 22LR casings as the jacket.
I then started researching die set manufacturers.
By the time I was finished finding a set of dies that everybody could agree on being well made I found that I was looking at a $1500US set of dies.
I figured out my break even point was somewhere around 56,000 rounds.
They can keep their dies.
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Yeah, you pretty much need to have the interest, and the motivation, before the costs look even halfway reasonable as far as the whole swaging gig goes, not to mention simply swaging 'cheap' bullets instead of buying the expensive dies, and the even more expensive components to make accurate ones. When the retail price for jackets is over the retail price of the finished product (basic bullets, from the store) that are readily available, making the whole process be about making the absolute BEST bullets that can be made, to hell with the actual cost.

I had bought, then resold a set of Rimfire Jacket to .223 Bullet, Corbin dies, and other than having a good look at them, I never got around to using them. I bought them as much to have a good look at them as anything, as I pretty much have the capability to make all the parts, just not the experience or the access (prior to owning these) to any to look over.

I have seen a few guys selling their home made bullets at shows, mostly for about the same price as I could buy basic bullets for anywhere else. Yeah, the payback period isn't quick at all.

A lot of the 'Rimfire Jackets' guys are about being able to have when there are none to be had, but you pretty much have to subscribe to a particularly paranoid line of thought to base your buying decisions on that alone.

I could see reloading some of the old school rimfires so you could have the occasional range day with them, but when you consider when the last .41 RF cases or the bigger rimfires like the Spencer or their like were made, well you are right back to the start again, as the brass is not often fit to be fired once, let alone reloaded.

The whole gig of reloading .22 LR looks like a masochistic way to make yourself suffer, really. I know that there were guys in the States, that got a chance to buy cases of primed brass, which they used to load BP loads like the original loadings were, and they reported really interesting accuracy with very low deviations in the velocities they got from that. But that was pretty much a luckky find, and nobody seems able to source those reliably either.

Cheers
Trev
 
I have seen references to Lapua or Eley selling primed cases. But whichever company it was only makes or made them occasionally to cater to the extremely dedicated rimfire benchrest community.

It would have to be an EOTWAWKI situation for me to look at reloading .22 rimfire. And if it was that sort of situation I'd just break out the .36 caliber flintlock :d

For the all but unavailable rimfire calibers I can certainly see using a reloading setup to make enough ammo to allow me to shoot some of the antique guns. But that's a different situation.
 
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