Time for an update on the bicycle rifle. Over the last few days I have been playing around at loading and shooting 32 rimfire shells. Initial step was turning some 32 long shells out of solid brass. I drilled the base to accept 22 rimfire shells which allows me to use either ordinary 22 shells with the bullet pulled or 22 blank shells for primers. I did have to cut a shallow notch in the 32 rim so that the blade of the firing pin would strike the 22 shell. I think I have already mentioned that I had to modify the gun to accept a oval or blade shaped firing pin which would reach the 22 shell.
Because the 32 rimfire shell uses a healed bullet, the easiest way for me to make them was to make a swage and stamp the heel into a conventional cast 32 slug. After a impractical start, I ended up making a 3 piece swage which is in one of the photos below. The body is essentially a tube which accepts the slug and with a groove diameter section in the middle. It serves to guide the bottom heel swage onto the base of the slug and to guide the nose swage on from the top. One aspect of commercially made 32 shells is that the nose of the slug is under bore diameter and there is a relatively short driving band between the nose and the heel. The purpose of the nose swage was to create that shape. I also found that by silver soldering arms onto the components, I could twist the components back and forth after swaging and the swaged slug came free of the top and bottom portions. Prior to that method, I had to punch the slug from the base and from the nose portion. I also found that swaging left a small fin of metal on both ends of the slug and by running the slug through the die twice, these fins of metal were removed.
In loading the shells I used 22 acorn blanks as primers and put a drop of airplane glue on the blank so that it did not fall out from the shell. I filled the shell with Pyrodex to approximately level with the base of the slug and then pressed the slug into the shell. That final portion involved putting the primed shell and powder into a short piece of round stock with a shell diameter hole in it and sitting it on top of the ram in my loading press and dropping a slug down from on top (the nose sticks out) and with a bolt in the top of the press, pressing the two portions together. I do not use a lot of force with this step.
I shot the gun at 12 yards roughly because I wanted to be sure the bullets all struck the paper. As you can see, the gun seems to be quite accurate side to side and I think that the vertical dispersion must be from variable velocity and I am going to have to experiment a bit to solve that problem. In the photos and so far to date I have used acorn blank shells as primers but I intend to switch to 22 LR shells with the slug pulled and powder poured out. Reason is that I went to buy some 22 blank shells today and they were $20 for a box of 50 or about 40 cents each. Long rifle shells are about 8 cents apiece. I will also try to find some 22 cal Hilti shells and use them without additional powder
I use a 6 O'clock hold on the bullseye to get a consistant aiming point
cheers mooncoon
