rimfire limitations?

hutchster

hutchster

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ok, i keep reading these posts about trying to skirt the law regarding ar's and such with mag restrictions due to the "centerfire law" mumbo jumbo.

i dont own any black rifles but just for sh!ts and giggles,my question is this...
is it possible to make a .223 sized rimfire cartridge that might come near the performance numbers of a centerfire?
and could a persons black rifle be modded to operate like a rimfire?

thanks
 
Huh?
Do you want to blow yourself up, or you want to see how fast they'd come up with a law to forbid it?
Remember the G22 case?

Not even worth thinking about it. What would be the purpose anyways?
 
Any sized case could be built as a rimfire, with some care to action design as the rim area of said case would be weaker. However, as soon as you did so it would get included in any bans, plus it would be quite expensive and non reloadable due to small markert and no demand outside canada. The advantage of centerfire over rimfire is the reloadability factor, otherwise it's actually cheaper to build rimfire cases.
 
A cartridge like the old .41 rimfire would be a fun plinking cartridge, especially if it was updated the way .22rf has been to take advantage of modern powders and meturlogy.

'Cept who the heck would make it?
 
Cocked&Locked said:
would you elaborate a bit on your consise response?:D
Click to expand...

Well worded.:)

To start with there are no rimfire cases available for reloading and there is no large rimfire ammuntion made. How could one ever experiment?

Then there is the fact a rimfire case requires a soft case, easy to indent to fire the priming compound. This means the case will not withstand the pressures that a centerfire case will. Without being able to handle high pressure the rimfire case will never be able to achieve anything close to a centefire case.
 
guntech said:
Well worded.:)

To start with there are no rimfire cases available for reloading and there is no large rimfire ammuntion made. How could one ever experiment?

Then there is the fact a rimfire case requires a soft case, easy to indent to fire the priming compound. This means the case will not withstand the pressures that a centerfire case will. Without being able to handle high pressure the rimfire case will never be able to achieve anything close to a centefire case.
Click to expand...


Ah, the first two are a given, but someone could tool up for them if they wanted to spend the money.

The second I wondered about and alluded to in my post. I think this could be engineered around, but it's hardly worth the effort. Rimfire has gone the way of the dodo and other then the .22's we (sigh, and 17's which are just .22's necked) we won't be seeing anything new.
 
The real issue is the pressure vs soft base problem raised by guntech. The cases are a minor problem because you can use either .22 blanks or .27 cal hilti shells as primers and make a firing pin which is tall and narrow so that it will strike a center mounted rimfire primer even though it is designed to strike the rim area of the shell.
I have made and shot rimfire shells for .32, .34, .38, .53 and .57 cal rifles and pistols. Going back to Guntech's point though; all of the rimfires I can think of were usually short cases and low pressure, with the .22 probably being the highest pressure round I can think of. I think the .22 operates around 20,000 psi and is probably able to do so because of its small diameter.

cheers mooncoon
 
It could <probably> be engineed around by making a sort of rimfire-centerfire "hybrid", but the cost of this would be prohibitive unless done at a huge scale.
 
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